Eskom fugitive Lomas ran but he couldn’t hide

Perhaps it’s slightly on the nose using the ‘run but not hide’ turn of phrase to a person in a wheelchair, but there’s an even better quote for the moment: if you’re gonna be dumb, you’ve gotta be tough.

On Friday, Michael Lomas was extradited back to South Africa to face fraud charges relating to the Kusile Power Plant.

But I have to ask the question. Who goes to hide in the UK? London is notorious for all its cameras and South Africa is probably one of the few countries that escaped the empire but still enjoys good relations with 10 Downing Street.

How would anybody expect not to be caught and sent back from the UK when facing charges in South Africa? More annoyingly, how could somebody making such a silly decision have had access to Eskom tenders amounting to R1.5 billion?

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If you want to flee the country, go to Lebanon. It worked out gloriously for Carlos Ghosn. Not even Japan can get to him there.

But skipping bail and heading to the UK – that just seems like a stupid idea. It seems even more stupid now that we can see it didn’t work, but who would have thought that it would have worked? Clearly Lomas – and that’s where we find our problem. It’s even more refreshing that it seems it hasn’t worked.

The attitude of thinking one can run away from the law in South Africa will always be offensive. It’s part of the narrative that the law only applies to poor people when convenient. No poor person could afford to just jump on a plane and run. That’s the jurisdiction of the rich – even if they got rich at the expense of Eskom funded by our lovely electricity hikes.

So, yes! Well done South Africa. It would have been so easy to give up and let Lomas get away with it, not have to deal with international protocol and treaties and forget any of this even happened. So few of us even knew about this situation, it would have easily flown over our heads.

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Yet, they went after him and put so much effort into it. It’s an indication that our prosecuting teams really do have the determination to see accused people have their day in court.

It’s not just a successful extradition – it’s a successful application of our legal system. It’s a successful application of our desire for justice. It’s an exceptional application of equality, and it’s exceptional to the extent that I think Lomas would even take exception to it.

The founders of our constitutional democracy never left room for giving up on justice and they’d be smiling on our law enforcement system for the work done on this front. They don’t always get it right – and we only know that they’re keen to get it right when we see it happening.

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In times like this, as we gear up to braai, it’s great to have something good to discuss around the fire among all the complaints we’ve been armed with. It may not be a successful trial yet but just noting the lengths taken to get this person in court is already positive.

All the departments who made this happen are worthy of taking several bows. There are few victories, so to have an occasional one is great. To foreshadow more is even better.

Now, there’s just this matter of this Jacob dude. Looking forward.