South Africa’s short arm of the law

“A sunny place for shady people.” So wrote Somerset Maugham about the French Riviera in the 1930s, when it was overrun by mentally unstable artists and ingénues, dissolute millionaires, chancers, spivs, con men and others on the make. 

He could have been writing about Dubai circa 2023, the emirate from which the rendition-dodging Gupta bothers were famously not extradited last week. Did anyone seriously believe we would ever see them back on these shores?

Strike one against South Africa’s short arm of the law.

To Arusha in Tanzania, then, where South African cops allegedly posing as tourists apprehended “celebrity fugitives” Thabo Bester and his moll, Nandipha Magudumana.

According to some accounts, they did so without the local constabulary being informed that an operation was under way in their tourist town. If true, so much for regional policing etiquette.

And on to Cape Town, where on Easter Sunday I was pulled over by two coppers in a police minibus for running an orange light. (They said it was red, I say tomato …)

On approaching my car with the sort of American cop swagger you see a lot on Facebook reels, the officer placed one hand on the top of his holster before reaching my window.

He was marginally less intimidating, I guess, than Maputo traffic cops whose AK-47s are usually slung over their shoulders so drivers of stopped cars can stare unhappily down the weapons’ barrels.

I thought of suggesting to the officer that a better way to swell the city’s coffers would be to fine the battalions of taxi drivers who, unhindered by Cape Town’s peace officers, bring mayhem to the Stanhope Road overpass in Claremont every rush hour. 

But then my mum didn’t raise a mouthy kid.