Bailout that boosts crime

It’s often said that “justice delayed is justice denied”. Too often. This maxim is one of the most popularly quoted in our courts – a worrying indictment on an under-resourced, overburdened justice system.

This week, police announced they had finally made a breakthrough in Senzo Meyiwa’s murder case and arrested five men they said were involved in the former Bafana Bafana captain’s death at his girlfriend Kelly Khumalo’s Vosloorus home in October 2014. That breakthrough took six years.

The phrase “justice delayed is justice denied” is sometimes attributed – incorrectly – to civil rights activist Dr Martin Luther King. He used the phrase – or a version of it – “justice too long delayed is justice denied” – in a letter he penned from prison in 1963. But its origins are difficult to trace. What we do know is that the concept is not a new one.

Written about 800 years ago, the Magna Carta – one of the earliest Western developments in human rights – makes a nod to it. “To no one will we sell, to no one will we refuse or delay, right or justice,” it reads.

As does the Pirkei Avot – a collection of ancient Jewish teachings, dating as far back as 200 BC – which says “the sword comes into the world, because of justice delayed and justice denied”. The longer it takes to hold someone to account for their actions, the harder it becomes.

As evidence becomes stale – and the conclusions that can be drawn from it, less clear – the prospect of a successful conviction drifts further from reach. This month, six policemen finally went on trial for the murder of five people during the violence that erupted in the North West shantytown of Marikana in 2012. When the then captain tasked with bagging the evidence that day took the stand eight years on, though, the state’s case all but fell apart.

Likewise, in order for justice to be meaningful, it must be swift. Justice at its heart is about balancing the scales. Victims of injustice are owed a debt payable by those at whose hands they have suffered.

Philiswa Sokhanyile, whose husband, Phumzile, was killed on that day in Marikana, went to her grave before that debt could be paid. So did Phumzile’s mother. Former Constitutional Court Justice Johann Kriegler spoke about justice delayed being justice denied in 2002 in a judgment he wrote on the constitutionality of the use of state force.

“It is all the more true in criminal cases, particularly those involving serious charges where the stakes are high,” Kriegler commented at the time – adding that complainants, their next of kin, the public and even accused persons themselves all had a material interest in achieving “timeous closure”.

But this cannot be achieved without political will. When Finance Minister Tito Mboweni delivered his medium-term budget policy statement on Wednesday, he announced massive cuts – totalling billions of rands – to the police and the department of justice’s budgets to help fund yet another bailout – this time of R10.5 billion – for SAA.

The system cannot afford these kinds of cuts. To bring perpetrators of crime, especially violent crime, to book, we need more capacity and not less.

Bernadette Wicks.

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