The murder of insolvency lawyer, Bouwer van Niekerk, who was shot dead last week inside his offices in Saxonwold, Johannesburg exposes South Africa's criminal state, argues the letter writer.
Image: Ian Cameron X account
The callous murder of insolvency lawyer Bouwer van Niekerk has horrified South Africans and reignited the debate around the criminal state of the country, and many, including Ruda Landman, have demanded that the minister of police take action to find the killers and whoever ordered the hit.
The problem is that South Africa’s minister of police, like its president, is compromised, completely inadequate to the job and out of his depth. He's even had to be suspended and replaced with an acting minister, despite already having two deputies, so ineffective and compromised is his ministry and his position. Both minister and president are backed by a corrupted and moribund ANC, thirty years mired in ineptness, scandal, corruption and now state capture.
This is the result. A country awash with crime and violence and a deputy president who is one of the biggest crooks of all. A thug with countless criminal charges and allegations against him who cannot explain how he amassed a residential property portfolio (that we know of) valued at nearly R30 million over just ten years on a public office salary. A man who fails to fully disclose his assets and interests in the parliamentary register.
How can one seriously face down crime and criminal gangs, stop the hits and arrest and jail the thugs and murderers when our country’s deputy president and so many in the Cabinet, provincial executive committees and state-owned entity boards and executives, past and present, are all themselves crooks, thugs and thieves mired up to their double chins in corruption, multi-billion rand fraud, state-sponsored theft and racketeering?
The rot starts at the very top, and all that Ramaphosa can do or say is that he is “shocked”. For shame. | Mark Lowe Durban