In South Africa, crime pays

In a recent column, William Saunderson-Meyer writes "The Chapter Nine institutions ... have long lost any credibility they might have had". This is a common and true sentiment. About the July 2021 KZN riots that cost SA R70 billion, he's scathing of the SAHRC's and CRLC's reports that found no one and "Indians [sic]” respectively were to blame.

In South Africa lack of accountability is ingrained. The NPA and SAPS have given up or are unable to investigate and prosecute crime, with SAPS making arrests in only 14% of aggravated robbery and 14% of murders. 

With separate cases I reported, SAPS told me a fraud case I reported was a "nuisance". And Cape Town NPA said it would be "unfair to prosecute" (sic) the accused, after first, incorrectly, telling me no crime had been committed (they didn't even know the law here). 

In another far more serious case, SAPS, NPA and another officer of the court voluntarily - just like that - and unofficially gave the accused privileged and confidential information while the matter was still being "investigated". This is called defeating the ends of justice. The case will never come before the court because by their action and overall ineptitude, how would the corrupt NPA prosecute itself? Btw the director of public prosecutions for Cape Town is now the deputy NDPP. Incompetence and lawlessness is rewarded.

So if the premier organisations responsible for maintaining law and order are dysfunctional and corrupt, and their political master is the largest criminal enterprise the country has seen, would one expect any different from other regulators?

In addition to the above organisations, there are sectoral regulators enabled by their various laws. Given they're government agencies too, they're no different to the senior, Chapter Nine ones. Complainants, as I've discovered with a number of them, don't receive a reply, or if they do, receive no explanations why complaints will not be investigated. Where they bother to give reasons, reasons don't bear scrutiny. They're simply not interested.

Last of the ombuds are professional and industry guilds. These are funded by members and largely serve members' interests. The exception might be the Advertising Standards Authority which makes adverse rulings for non-members. Perhaps there are other objective and fair industry ombuds but if so, they work in the niches not affecting the majority of citizens.

Reporting crime is a waste of time. In SA it really pays to do crime or act unethically and unprofessionally because the odds of ever being prosecuted is slim. For the criminal, SA is a nice place to be.