In March 2003 former ANC chief whip Tony Yengeni was sentenced to four years' imprisonment after pleading guilty to having defrauded Parliament by not disclosing a near 50% discount he received on a luxury 4x4 Mercedes Benz. He hasn't yet seen the inside of a prison, having spent the last two years out on R10 000 bail pending an appeal asking for the "harsh and severe" sentence to be set aside. No date has been set for such a hearing, so that Yengeni remains free for the foreseeable future.

Although the story was vivid two years ago, a lot has happened since. At the time, Yengeni epitomised what many perceived to be the worst aspects of the new power elite which for a while indulged in a kind of feeding frenzy at public expense: the pursuit of a lavish lifestyle, the self-indulgence and rampant consumerism, the self-confessed advantage he took of his position in the political hierarchy. It seems remote now, in part, perhaps, because many top politicians have come to realise that with their position of privilege comes the demands of responsibility - although the Travelgate scandal reminds us that freeloading is by no means a thing of the past.

From one point of view, therefore, the Yengeni case is a positive indicator of South Africa's progress towards political maturity. Looked at from a different angle, however, the picture is somewhat less rosy. Yengeni, after all, pleaded guilty in 2003, even though, now, he claims to have been completely innocent, and says that the guilty plea arose from his inability to pay protracted legal costs. How believable is this? In the real world would a man confident of his perfect innocence, and a public figure at that, taint his reputation with a guilty plea, simply in order to speed up proceedings and save money?

And why have two whole years been allowed to elapse - years in which Yengeni has lived as a free man - with no sign of the case being resolved, let alone of his being incarcerated? Has the South African judicial system, as a special concession to some, contrived to build in a long time lag between trial and appeal in the hope that as months and years pass the VIP criminal and his grubby deeds will fade from public memory and the whole thing will just go away? If so, is this the reason why the judicial wheels are moving so slowly in dealing with Travelgate, and is the really important point to emerge from all this that our legal system is "streaming" people according to their relative political prominence?

With acknowledgement to The Natal Witness.