Issues At Stake: Time to throw the book at crime

THESE are perilous times in South Africa – a country vice-gripped by a spirit of lawlessness and moral corruption.

The last defence line between society and total anarchy, is law enforcers who will uncompromisingly fight for multiple convictions and maximum sentences without fear or favour.

Time is over for sloppy investigations, half-hearted prosecutions, weak plea-bargaining deals and a slap on the wrist.
The law should be used with maximum force to punish perpetrators properly, remove them from society for as long as possible and deter the like-minded.

In several recent high profile court cases, top prosecutors threw the book – and hit their targets.

Senior State Advocate, Gerrie Nel, aka ‘the Bulldog’, spectacularly displayed his skills as legal mastermind and brilliant strategist under scrutiny of the international media – those who know him say that is how he tackles every case.

Nel charged former Paralympic athlete, Oscar Pistorius, with the most serious crime of premeditated murder, following the shooting of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp.

He proceeded to methodically build his case, while shredding the defence to pieces with a vengeance that made onlookers cringe.

His brutal cross-examination of Pistorius, earned him a complaint at the South African Commission for Human Rights.

Islandic TV chef, Ebba Gudmunsdottir, Pistorius’ most loyal supporter, said: ‘I sometimes feel like he’s the devil himself’.

But Nel was not out to win a popularity contest – he wanted to win his case.

When Oscar was convicted of culpable homicide, Nel locked his jaws and appealed the five year imprisonment sentence, handed down by Judge Masipa, which he slammed as ‘shockingly inappropriate’.

When Pistorius was convicted of murder, with legal intent or dolus eventualis, Nel argued for the maximum sentence.

Top KZN prosecuors recently also used dolus eventualis, to secure murder convictions for members of violent crime syndicates, where armed robberies culminated in the death of their accomplices or policemen – even though they did not pull the trigger.

Local case
Last week in the Mtunzini High Court, State Advocate Dorian Paver succeeded in using the doctrine of common purpose and dolus eventualis to bag murder convictions for two men whose accomplice was shot dead by police, during an armed robbery.

The complainants were robbed at gunpoint of a meagre amount of cash, air time vouchers and a cellphone and left unharmed.

But Advocate Paver, argued successfully that the accused, acting in common purpose, planned and executed the armed robbery, knowing someone might be killed or injured in the process, yet continued, indifferent to the consequences.

They were sentenced b Judge Justice Madam Moodley to 20 years imprisonment each for murder.
Last month the Pietermaitzburg High Court sentenced six members of a cash-in-transit syndicate to five life sentences each and 186 years in jail.

In a case prosecuted by Advocate Kander, Judge Rishi Seegobin said the accused turned Richmond into a war zone in January 2012, when the heist culminated in random shooting which endangered the public.

Also on the basis of dolus eventualis, Judge Seegobin sentenced the six to life imprisonment for the murder of each of their three accomplices, who were killed in a shoot-out with police.

For the attempted murders of six bystanders, they were sentenced to 10 years for each of the charges, totaling 60 years per accused. The doctrine of common purpose and dolus eventualis are only two deadly weapons in the prosecution’s arsenal.

Let’s hope they are used more often, before the war is totally lost.