EDITORIAL: Bester debacle exposes cabinet of last resort

“Here tog.” You couldn’t sum up last week’s portfolio committee hearings into rapist and murderer Thabo Bester’s escape more aptly than DA MP Werner Michael Horn.

And, lord knows, divine intervention may be the only thing capable of saving South Africa’s justice, crime prevention & security cluster at this point. Because it’s clear political leadership isn’t going to do the job.

Horn was referring to the police failure to question Bester’s partner, Nandipha Magudumana, despite her suspicious body-snatching activities last year. You’d think fabricating more dead relatives than Carl Niehaus would trigger an alarm — yet it was only after news outlet GroundUp’s exposure of the sordid saga last month that Magudumana apparently sauntered onto the police radar. 

Horn may just as well have been referring to police minister Bheki Cele, who couldn’t have shown himself to be more of an empty suit if he’d tried.

When asked what would have happened if Bester had assaulted more women while on the run, Cele said he wasn’t “a speculator”. Besides, he added, it hadn’t happened. No harm, no foul. 

It was a display of wilful ignorance or utter ineptitude that saw him entirely miss DA MP Glynnis Breytenbach’s point: the authorities, when they misplace violent criminals, have an obligation to inform the public — not least their victims — of the danger they pose.  

Yet Cele would have us believe the police were onto Bester; they knew where he was and didn’t say anything for fear of jeopardising a complex investigation.

It was an excuse as thin as a Gupta extradition application. After all, Bester has already been brought to justice: he was serving time for multiple crimes when he absconded. No bungled investigation of his escape would change the fact that he’d still have to be returned to prison to serve a life sentence.

Surely getting him back behind bars should have been the priority? Surely additional charges could be brought to bear once he was no longer on the loose?  

Completely missing from Cele’s performance was any sense of responsibility for a police service that is clueless, incompetent or corrupt. For someone whose job is oversight of that service, it’s hard to overstate his failure.

Not that Cele is unique. He’s a vaunted member of a cabinet of last resort; President Cyril Ramaphosa’s ham-fisted attempt to keep his allies on side.

Consider a few of his colleagues. There’s mineral resources & energy minister Gwede Mantashe, obstructive and mulish in clinging jealously to powers he has no interest in using for the public good. There’s Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma; commissar Naledi Pandor; basic education minister Angie Motshekga and more …  Deadwood, all of them.  

It’s a mind-bending lack of political authority. So it’s no surprise that Old Mutual chair and former finance minister Trevor Manuel is calling out the absent leadership. In the company’s new annual report he writes of South Africa’s “epidemic of crime” and “alarming descent into lawlessness”. It’s a problem, he says, “exacerbated by a lack of strong leadership and political will”. 

Manuel may be referring to crime prevention in particular, but it’s a sentiment that could be stretched to cover a disconcertingly large number of ministers. Would that our leaders put half as much will into their jobs as Cele does into his vacuous political performance.