South Africans should be more critical of their own role in societal decay

At the height of the EFF’s national shutdown frenzy last Monday, media houses started reporting on the bombing of Soweto parliament’s leader Nhlanhla “Lux”’ Mohlauli’s house.

Mohlauli had hogged the spotlight the week leading up to the shutdown with threats that he would personally arrest EFF leader Julius Malema on the day, should Malema’s followers engage in unlawful activity.

So the bombing of his house – allegedly because of his opposition to the EFF – should be big news, right?

Except that the breaking news of the bombing came from a tweet by Mohlauli. And most respected media houses ran with the unsubstantiated story, bolstered by Minister of Police Bheki Cele turning up at the scene of the “bombing” that, according to the tweet “killed Lux’s entire family.”

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There was no real engagement with the source of the news for details, everyone wanted to err on the side of having been first to break the story or to be first on the scene. And there was no real crime there, except one of willingly partaking in a story that misleads the public at large.

Hardly a week later, the nation is up in arms that convicted murderer, the so-called Facebook rapist, Thabo Bester, faked his own death at the Mangaung Correctional Centre in order to escape.

His escape and subsequent revelations about the lavish lifestyle he led once outside, coupled with the allegations that he led a company on the outside while still in prison has led to everyone asking: where is the government in all of this? The department of correctional services? Are they that corrupt that a convicted murderer could buy his way through the entire system to his freedom?

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It now turns out Bester not only staged this elaborate escape that involved staging a fire in his cell and a burnt corpse, but also signing leases with estate agents on the outside.

The gullibility that the media houses displayed in elevating Lux’s bombed house story is the same gullibility displayed by estate agents, who should do proper due diligence on potential tenants. A prisoner concluded deals with them and they handed over keys to very expensive houses to him and his accomplices.

The question that keeps getting asked of the department of correctional services and government – how did all of this happen on your watch? – must also be asked of the institutions that made it possible for Bester to do what most normal free citizens cannot do without being investigated as if they’ve committed a murder. And here’s a real murderer not being investigated when closing property deals.

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South Africans are quick to throw their hands in the air at the smallest sign of government incompetence – which they should – but are not critical enough of their own contribution to the general societal decay that allows people like Bester to know they can stage the sort of daring and elaborate schemes they do because even society is in cahoots with government – without knowing it.

Just as it will take a conscientious and concerted effort by opposition political parties to make real change to the political landscape of the country, it will take all of South African society to accept their responsibility in building of that society.

Citizens cannot outsource their own role in ensuring that it is not easy for the likes of Bester to live freely. It would most probably have taken just a call to the authorities from a suspicious real estate agent to expose Bester or have him running for the hills.

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