Getting away with murder

There’s some spirit up there protecting people from bullets this week. Between Donald Trump and local Sars advocate Coreth Naudé, bullets fired turned out not to be lethal.

The same fortune has not embraced many others. Most assassinations, you rarely even hear about; from political ones in rural KwaZulu-Natal to business squabbles turned deadly in Free State.

It’s probably why it’s become so easy to find a gun for hire.

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High-profile matters get documentaries made about them before the case even goes to trial.

The last we heard about the AKA hit was in February. We were stoked when the Panayiotou hit was solved and successfully prosecuted.

A would-be assassin could look at the numbers and think that the odds of getting killed in a taxi collision are higher than being caught for a hit.

Cloete and Thomas Murray were gunned down last year and yet, we all seem to have forgotten about it, despite the important work they were doing.

If the solution to somebody causing you difficulties is to off them, it does feel like a South Africa of old and not the one supposedly granting dignity, equality before the law and justice.

There’s been so much noise since the election about policy ideas and money spent and positions of power and yet, alarmingly, little about retribution for those who pull the trigger and those who hire them.

People hire assassins to keep their hands clean and it appears to be working so well that even gunmen aren’t getting busted.

ALSO READ: Lawyers for Human Rights condemns assassination attempt on Coreth Naudé

The importance of dealing with assassinations cannot be overstated because the nature of the act is that of extra-judicial control of the law.

It’s not cool to say that some murders are more important than others; all should be dealt with.

That’s not what this is. This is a call to understand why assassinations going unresolved threaten the very core of our legal framework and opens the floodgates to invite more of itself.

Getting away with tax evasion, insolvency issues, missed child support and the like is easy if you get rid of the people tasked with enforcing your obligations.

That’s the legal system; a set of structures to maintain accountability and those structures are filled with people.

So, if you get rid of the people and fill the structures with people who are too scared to be got rid of, then those structures don’t count for much.

Assassination is not just murder, it’s terror and strikes at the vital lifeblood of our democracy; our checks and balances.

ALSO READ: Assassinations: South Africans ‘have no qualms’ taking out political rivals