#Guptagate – my glass half-full view

At last.

Guptagate has come and gone.

The Executive has been exonerated.

The opposition parties had their opportunity to grandstand and show their voters that they are still in parliament.

The pro-ANC and anti-ANC analysts and commentators had their 15 minutes of fame.

But alas. Nobody really looked at the positives that came out of the entire saga.

It was all glass half empty stuff.

I prefer to look at the glass half full side of things.

For the first time in a very long while our dear President had full credible deniability.

The closest he got to the entire debacle was the receipt of the very elaborate wedding invitation.

Not a single person told No. 1 that the Guptas had requested to land their chartered jet at Waterkloof airport.

When our Minister of Defence refused the application she never thought to mention to her boss that she had this silly request from the Guptas.

Ditto our Minister of Transport and our Minister of International Relations and Co-operation.They kept mum about any approach made to them.

Our President was therefore blissfully unaware of all these goings on and thus he was completely dumbstruck when he was told that the GuptaJet landed at the countries biggest airforce base. A condition that prevails up until today as he has not said a word about GuptaGate other than darkly muttering that people should stop dropping names.

Secondly, South Africa is really turning out to be the land of vast opportunity and wealth for immigrants. The Guptas came to South Africa in 1993 and 20 years later they allegedly own senior ANC officials lock stock and two smoking barrels.

Just think how empowering this must be to other immigrants. One just has to look at how African immigrants have taken over the retail business in the townships. Soon they will have their spaza shop  chains all over South Africa. In 20 years they might own Pick n Pay or Shoprite. Then they can own the ruling party lock stock and barrel.

Thirdly, our government officials have really been fully empowered by their political bosses. How else would it be possible for the head of government protocol to convince the Airforce that they should allow a private jet full of wedding guests to land at the premier airforce base of the country. By all accounts he then got the South African Police Service to provide full VIP services and to top it all off, he managed to convince off-duty Metro Police to moonlight as security guards.

I say: Give that man a Bell’s if he was not already given a few boxes of much more expensive single malts.

So all in all I think South Africa came out pretty well from the experience.

I am now waiting for the wedding of the niece of those three Somali brothers who own a spaza shop  in Paarl and who in 20 years time will own Pick n Pay.

I have no doubt we will extend the same courtesies to them and let their chartered jets all land at Wingfield Airforce base for the wedding festivities at Ratanga Junction.

#SA criminal system – Justice for the Rich; Injustice for the poor

During the apartheid days we got used to there being different kinds of justice for Blacks and Whites.

There was a general perception, that if a White person was charged with any kind of crime the criminal justice system apparently bent over backwards to ensure the individual suffer as little inconvenience as possible.

The fate of a Black accused was demonstrably different from the time of his arrest to the time he was invariably found guilty and consigned to the scrap heap of society – the prison.

All of this changed of course in 1994 when a majority Black government was voted into power.

It got even better for Black accused person when the final Constitution was adopted in 1996.

Right?

I think not so.

Two recent cases starkly illustrates that instead of a straight divide between black and white, we have now moved to a system where we get justice for the rich and more and more injustice for the poor.

I came across a story of a wheelchair bound accused in the Free State who was applying for bail in a magistrate court. Apparently he was trying to get treatment in the prison hospital while he was on trial for fraud or something similar. The prison doctor, who happens to be the wife of the head warder at the prison, was adamant that he is healthy enough to remain in the general prison area. Two external doctors (one a professor) described bed sores, severe lung problems and other health problems.

The magistrate decided to kick the problem into touch and told the accused that he will have to come back later for a decision.

The picture told it all: – the accused was crying.

Switch to another crying accused.

This time somebody who had shot and killed his girlfriend.

He was sitting there in his nice suit.

But,  instead of him being held at the local prison as an awaiting bail accused, he was allowed to sleep at the local police station so that it was easier for his family to come and visit him and bring him food.

This accused’s name is Oscar Pistorius.

He had an attorney and a highly experienced and paid senior counsel.

He was out on bail in no time.

Don’t get me wrong.

Oscar is as entitled to bail as any other accused.

The problem is just that the first accused, and thousands of others like them are sitting in prisons simply because they are not rich and powerful enough to afford spin doctors and highly paid lawyers.

In our constitutional democracy we are all equal before the law. It turns out however that some are more equal than others.

The question is therefore whether this is sustainable.

How long will the poor  accept that see justice can be denied simply because they do not have the means to access justice.

What is the tipping point and when will the vast majority decide that they want real justice.

Are we not staring at an oncoming train of a growing sense of injustice on the part of the most vulnerable sections of our society.

Just yesterday our Minister of Justice said that the National Prosecuting Authority is doing its job because our prisons are overflowing.

The irony is that many of those contributing to the overflowing prisons are awaiting trial prisoners – in other words: not yet convicted.

A large number of them are waiting for bail hearings.

Years ago the slogan of our Legal Aid Clinics at the University of the Western Cape was: Justice for All.

It is a pity that in 2013 we still seek Justice for All irrespective of race, gender or financial standing.