Jabulani Justice
Little surprise than in the dull early stages of this year’s World Cup, journalists’ attention wandered. The journalists over at Bakchich had a little rubberneck at the judicial system of a country which sees 50 murders a day, and annual rates of burglary and carjacking of 18,000 and 15,000/yr, respectively.
And what they saw, for a country trying to ‘rebrand’ itself, was troubling. Anxious to ensure that crime didn’t spoil the marketing and festive spirit, a system of hardcore ‘FIFA courts’ was setup to deal with ‘World Cup-related crime’ in the rainbow nation, rapidly doling out harsh punishments for a wide variety of crimes. These ran the gamut from pissing off the sponsors, to mugging the tourists, even being used to seemingly ‘get one back’ at foreign journalists whose pen was not unquestioningly friendly to all that was going on.
Giving the SA justice system a booster shot is not, invariably, a Very Bad Thing. But this is arbitrarily streaming certain types of justice over others, to protect and further a political and economic motive. That goes against basic principles of the rule of law and the separation of powers.
Nor is it seemingly fair on the few fools who committed World Cup-related crime, given how tough the sentences are and how ridiculously expedient the sentencing was. It’s Judge Dredd-ish, and politically motivated. One would have thought that a country with South Africa’s history would have been reluctant to return to a system of inequality before justice…
Case(s) in point:
- a 15 year sentence to hard time for the robbers of two Portuguese journalists. Time from arrest to sentencing took just 48 hours.
- a full 3 year sentence for a Nigerian convicted of handling 30 stolen tickets in Pretoria: arrest to sentencing in 24 hours
- a full 2 year sentence for a 21 year old that pilfered a German tourist’s picnic blanket, 3 beers and guidebook; arrest to sentence in less than 24 hours
- a full 3 year sentence, delivered in just 20 minutes’ court time, to a 22 year old Jo’burg youth South African unarmed youth with no criminal priors that nicked an Argentine’s mobile
This in a country with 400,000 thefts each year…
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