Why I’m not joining the lynch mob
Being crooked and being bad at your job are two different
things and as a civilised nation we must wait for the verdict on Phiyega
T WAS one of those casual conversations relating to national police commissioner Riah Phiyega’s seemingly unending woes. “I can’t understand why we in South Africa have a string of corrupt top cops,” said my companion. “First we had Jackie Selebi, then Bheki Cele, now it is Riah.”
I feel for Phiyega. She is the latest victim of the South African pastime of gratuitously taking privileges with a person’s reputation without ever having the intentions of testing the allegations in front of a legitimate tribunal.
It is for that reason that I am not about to join the Let’s Lynch Riah Brigade. I will wait until her criminality, if there is any, is proven before I join such a chorus.
Hopefully, it will not be necessary for me even to sign up for anything, she will just go to jail or be made to resign in shame.
My point of reference is Phiyega’s predecessor, Cele.
If you asked the average South African, they would tell you that he was corrupt and point to the stories about SAPS buildings as evidence of his errant ways.
Most readers will around now expect a disclaimer regarding my feelings for, or relationship with, Phiyega. If you are such a reader I am sorry to disappoint you. I will be offering none.
My argument will stand or fall on its own merits rather than whether I regard Phiyega as a friend or foe.
Of the three national police commissioners, only Selebi can without doubt be called dirty. A court process unfolded and his guilt was confirmed and he was sent to jail.
You might have an opinion about the motivation of the prosecutors or whether some of the accused should not have joined him in the dock, but that is a different argument altogether that does nothing to diminish Selebi’s guilt.
What we know about Cele is that he was found by a board probing his fitness for office to have been unfit for office, and they recommended his removal.
It is one thing to be bad at your job and totally another to be a criminal in executing one’s duties. If people were prosecuted for stinking at their jobs, new prisons for this special category of criminals would have to be built.
We have to step back for a moment and ask ourselves some questions about the whole Cele mess.
First, if indeed Cele is corrupt or there is some evidence of wrongdoing, what is he doing on the streets instead of being in prison?
We should be asking the law-enforcement agencies to explain to us laymen why they are yet to charge him, or say something about his alleged crimes after all
Ithese months.
It does nothing for the administration of justice and the fight against the looting of state coffers if there is a man who everyone understands to be dirty who goes on with his business as if nothing has happened.
Why should we wait until Cele is elected or appointed to another position of public trust or authority before we become excited about his alleged guilt? He should be facing the music now, if there is any to be faced.
The same applies to the beneficiary of Cele’s corruption. He too deserves either jail or for his image to be cleaned up.
The indifference of Cele’s detractors to what should be an obvious injustice – that he is not being made to pay for his alleged crimes – concerns me greatly.
It reads to me like a continuation of the fashionable trait of using the court of pub- lic opinion as an avenue for mob justice.
Unlike in a court of law, where the accused can be presented with a specific case to answer to and if found guilty, know why they have been convicted, this sophisticated kangaroo court relies on creating enough innuendo to convict its accused.
In this kangaroo court, there can only be one verdict and never a chance of a review. The guilty are forever guilty and their sentences are as long as memory allows.
I cannot see why this is an improvement on placing a petrol-doused tyre around a neck of an impimpi and torching him.
Most of us remain indifferent when accusations are made against someone because it is often people we do not know or what we know of them, makes us not trust them. We therefore find it is easy to believe they could be the things they are alleged to be.
It is a dangerous place for a society that considers itself to be civilised to only worry about the defamation of the characters of our friends and loved ones, without subjecting the defamatory matter to the usual scrutiny and equally importantly, appropriately punishing those whose name deserved to have been tarnished in the first place.
Principles must come ahead of personalities. The longer we make it about the people we despise in any way, the more the culture of this new form of mob justice will take root.
Once it has, it might be too late for anybody to care when you are the subject of talk that damages your career or life’s work, by people who do not have the courage to put their money where their mouths are.