Malicious damage to property? No! Nail truck arsonists with terrorism

The South African prosecution administration has been on the ball lately with a string of interesting convictions. Sure, they haven’t gotten the big wigs as many would like, and we hope that still may come, but there is yet another avenue remaining unexplored.

How intensely do we choose to prosecute?

So, some okes decide to burn trucks down on national roads. Frankly, I’m amazed they were caught, but now that they are, is malicious damage to property really the thing we should charge them with. Are we really going to lump them in the same category as a jealous ex who rams a Checkers trolley into your Mercedes? It doesn’t quite feel like it is an accurate grasp of the level of disdain we should have towards truck arsonists.

Fortunately, we have this thing called the Protection of Constitutional Democracy Against Terrorist & Related Activities Act, 2004. You’ll be forgiven for never having heard of it because it’s seldomly put to any good use, but just by reading the title of the Act and thinking back to those KwaZulu-Natal riots, you could ask, “what better time to apply something that’s named to protect constitutional democracy against terrorism?”

ALSO READ: Torching of trucks ‘an attempt to sabotage economy to get attention from govt’

Maybe the arsonists had a more just reason to start the fire beyond getting hyped on a Billy Joel or Prodigy song, though I doubt it. Had that been the case, surely by now we would have gotten some sort of message or rationale for their supposed protest but it seems not to be.

More frustrating is that the burden of proof for an act of terrorism is actually pretty easy to prove. One merely needs to show that a person committed an act that “causes the destruction of or substantial damage to any property… whether public or private”. I’m no prosecutor but burning down some trucks on national highways, seemingly in a coordinated manner, seems to fit that bill.

Why wouldn’t those tasked with applying the law apply the one that is appropriate?

Naturally, we should be concerned about why the appropriate punishment isn’t being sought and a lesser charge is being pursued in each of these individual cases. But there’s a bigger worry here; what’s the point of having laws that we don’t use when the time is appropriate? How protected are we really when those tasked with protecting our rights, freedoms and safety couldn’t be bothered to apply a law so blatantly named in the interest of protecting our democracy?

ALSO READ: WATCH: Arsonist caught on video setting truck on fire

It could be intentional or it could be laziness but either way it’s worrying that when an act of terrorism happens, the law to protect against it is whimsically forgotten.

This is not a question of whether one has harsher punishments than the other or whether malicious damage to property may be an easier case to make (even though it isn’t). This is a matter of what is appropriate to apply given our legislative landscape.

You’d think a good prosecutor would be chomping to get their hands on this case to use legislation that is rarely accessible in our context, but no. Here are a bunch of arsonists trying to destabilise the country and we’ll act as if it’s just another thing in South Africa.

It isn’t. It shouldn’t be. When we talk about the potential of South Africa, we need to look at what we have and build on it. The same argument applies to our laws. They may be robust and well considered but they’re pretty pointless if we’re not going to use them.