Crime is Bheki Cele’s only medal

With his thuggish swagger, thunderous face and 1930s mafia-style headgear, Bheki Cele looks and behaves more like an archetypal gangster than a minister of police.

So he will be chuffed – even as the dismal law enforcement statistics mount up – to be awarded a medal last week to honour his achievements.

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The Chinese Ministry of Public Security awards the Great Wall Commemorative Medal to officers “who have made outstanding contributions to protecting the safety of Chinese citizens”, specifically that of President Xi Jinping at the Brics Summit.

No matter how inconsequential this latest gong and ribbon, Cele will be delighted to add to the chestful of medals he boasted during his short stint from 2009 to 2011 as national police commissioner. It will serve to confirm his opinion of himself, a stratospheric level of vanity that appears to be immune to cold realities.

For Cele, lately, has been having a bit of a rough time. On Monday, in a written parliamentary reply, he reported that in the past five years, more than 7 000 police officers had been arrested for serious crimes, including 110 for rape and 220 for murder. In total, only 686 had been prosecuted successfully.

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Then, on Tuesday, the second Global Organised Crime Index was released, scoring South Africa as the 7th worst of the United Nations’ 193 member countries for gangsterism and criminal syndicates.

Myanmar was the worst, followed by Colombia and Mexico on the podium. Then follow Paraguay, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, and South Africa. It’s another dismal marker of accelerating decline.

In 2021, South Africa was “only” the 19th-worst in the world. In the space of only two years, it has overtaken Venezuela, Panama, Paraguay, Lebanon, Syria, Philippines, Türkiye, Kenya, Honduras, Central African Republic, Iraq and Afghanistan in the criminality stakes.

The compilers of the index, the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime, write that South Africa is a “hotbed” for organised crime and a haven for money laundering. Mafia-style groups are increasingly prominent, with some allegedly acting as surrogates for certain politicians.

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With impeccable timing, the same day that the index was released, Cele called a media conference to boast how “this administration is stamping the authority of the state” on organised crime and is “flushing out ruthless and greedy organised crime syndicates”.

He also lashed unnamed critics of Saps who, he said, found the police’s “triumphs over crime a bitter pill to swallow”. This was part of “an emerging criminal block that is attempting to push an anti-police agenda”.

Gareth Newham, head of the justice and violence prevention programme at the Institute for Security Studies, defends Cele against my assertion that he’s the worst police minister yet.

“Reputedly,” Newham says, “Cele is hard-working and passionate, unlike a number of his predecessors.”

“However, there has been a profound deterioration in the Saps over the past decade. Instead of using his authority to address the decline the institutional capacity, Cele is focusing only on operational matters. As a result, although there are pockets of ability and excellence, the Saps is largely dysfunctional,” says Newham.

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As Cele’s comments illustrate so well, there are two mutually exclusive narratives about South Africa.

There’s the country as dispassionately described by international agencies, academic analysts and political commentators.

Then there’s the ANC government’s rosy-hued version. Each year, the gap grows bigger and more noticeable.