Letters

The guilty verdict in the case of the state against Schabir Shaik has a number of implications for South Africa.

The interest generated by this case in local and international media was extraordinary when one considers that there have been other serious cases in recent months which failed to draw nearly as much attention.

In some of them gross violations of human rights were committed, eg the case of Nelson Chisale who was murdered and fed to lions by his employer.

I think the Shaik trial has exposed once again the contradictions in our society.

Having listened to radio call-in programmes over two days, I feel that we are still a long way from resolving what, in the congress movement, is called the national question. Black callers in general, have a distinct sense of grief at the verdict of Judge Hilary Squires.

In contrast to this, white callers generally support and almost rejoice at the guilty verdict. This illustrates to me the fact that even after 11 years of democracy we are far from achieving national reconciliation.

Many black listeners seem to think that our justice system is biased against black people. Some of them argue that the system was unfair towards Shaik because he did not kill anyone and he did not steal from anyone compared to the apartheid era murderers and corruption masterminds who were never brought to book.

This reminds me of the cases against Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, in which many black people rallied around her. They felt that since she had endured so much suffering in the struggle that brought about our democratic order, it was unfair for the same state she contributed to building to humiliate her in the manner that it did.

Black people managed to capture state power more than 11 years ago, but economic power is still largely in the hands of the same white people who had it under apartheid.

The state is the only tool that blacks (especially those who have a history in the liberation struggle) can use to achieve some resource transfers.

This means that there will inevitably be instances where the integrity of public representatives will be questioned as in the Shaik trial. Clearly, the integrity of Deputy President Jacob Zuma should be in serious doubt in the eyes of the public. But still, many blacks insist that Zuma and Shaik did nothing wrong.

Any black person striving for (capitalist) business opportunities, faces many hurdles in South Africa. The government is also under pressure to deliver to its constituency, the majority of whom are black.

The Schabir Shaik saga, therefore, ought to be viewed from the context of a cash-strapped liberation movement in government that has to deliver on its Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) obligations and also have the resources to function as a political party.

This corruption committed by Shaik is not that different from the government's privatisation programme that sought to build politically well-connected BEE-llionaires while at the same time bringing huge socio-economic hardships to bear on millions of black workers and poor people.

This brings me to the question: can capitalism solve our problems in South Africa? My answer to this question is a resounding no!

With acknowledgements to Luthando Nogcinisa and the Cape Times.