South Africa experienced a dramatic leap in the direction of
injustice, or, should one say, unidirectional justice, with the sentencing of
Vicky Momberg to three years imprisonment for the repeated use of the ‘K-word’
while she was in a state of shock and anger after she had experienced a smash-and-grab
attack in Johannesburg. She has today been granted bail pending her appeal
against the conviction and the sentence.
The facts of the case are simple. Momberg was stopped in traffic
in her car when a Black thief broke a window and stole some goods from it. When
she called the Police Emergency, she used the K-word, and then again when she
was being assisted by the Police.
There can be no doubt that her aggressive nature was
aggravated by the smash-and-grab. These attacks are common in many cities of
South Africa, to the extent that motorists, particularly lone women drivers,
are repeatedly warned in the Press to beware of men loitering at intersections,
particularly exits from motorways. Disregarding these potential attackers is a
routine in Police circles. Many motorists near Police vehicles have counted as
many as thirty or forty ‘vendors’ loitering in these crime hotspots, all of
whom appear to be invisible to the Police. A smash-and-grab attack on one’s car
is always expensive, with the window in question having to be replaced, and it
is not uncommon for a lone motorist who resists the crime to be physically
assaulted with a knife or other sharp object, or with a club. The criminals who
‘earn’ their living in this way do not wish to endure the inconvenience of
being arrested and then having to bribe the Policeman in order to continue with
the night’s work. A smash-and-grab attack is not a petty crime, yet nothing
seems to be done by the authorities to prevent it, and very few, if any,
criminals are ultimately brought to book. However, it appears that the use of a
single word is enough to galvanize the ‘justice’ system into action.
One can easily understand Momberg’s state of agitation after
the crime. The facts of her ‘assistance’ by the Police have not been published,
but anyone who has dealt with the Police in South Africa must know that it can
be a harrowing experience. Not every Policeman is incompetent or corrupt, but
there are enough of those deviants in the SAPS for an average citizen to hold
the view that the Police are not there to help you. Virtually everyone has a
tale to tell, of being asked for a bribe, standing in a queue in a Police
station to report a crime while the cops eat lunch, pick their teeth, sleep or converse
between themselves, or getting no reaction to such report. Whatever the facts
of the event may be, Momberg’s state of agitation was not ameliorated by her
dealings with the Police, and she gave vent to that state by demanding that she
be dealt with by a White Policeman. One can only speculate whether that would
have improved matters. Generally, a good cop is a good cop, whether White,
Black, Indian or Colored, and a bad cop is a bad cop, but even the good cops
are not generally known for their intelligence or understanding of the laws.
The writer has personal experience of calling three Police Generals to get them
to perform their clear duty as set out in a statute, only to be told by the ‘Legal
Advisor’ that the Police policy prevents them acting in accordance with the
law. An associate was arrested at a order post under a Warrant of Arrest for a ‘crime’
that could not be explained by any policeman, only to find, after spending a
night in the filthy cells that the supposed ‘crime’ did not come onto the statur=the
books until nearly a year after its supposed commission, and that date of
commission fitted neatly into a four-year absence abroad, when it could not
have been committed, and that to the clear knowledge of the Captain who swore
out the Warrant.
Momberg was ordered by the Equality Court to pay
R100 000 to the offended Policeman, and she was then brought before the
Magistrates Court for the same offence, and sentenced to three years
imprisonment, with one year suspended.
While one cannot sympathize with Momberg, who used a racial
slur, one cannot fail to be shocked by these judgments, particularly in light
of the fact that no Black, such as Julius Malema (“we’re not threatening to
kill all Whites – yet”) and Jacob Zuma (“one Boer, one bullet”, “White Monopoly
Capitalists” and numerous others) have been ordered to compensate the aggrieved
victim of a racial slur, or been sentenced to prison. It is even more
disturbing in the light of the sentence initially handed down to Oscar
Pistorius for the culpable homicide of his girlfriend, by shooting four times
at her through a closed door. He was sentenced to five years, and the parole
conditions required that he spend only ten months – less than a third of
Momberg’s sentence – in prison. The Pistorius sentence was increased on appeal,
when the finding was changed to murder, but it seems to make little sense that
a simple word, albeit one that has gained a particular meaning, quite different
in post-Apartheid South Africa, from its original meaning, which was quite
innocuous, has a greater impact than the intentional firing at close range of
four bullets, designed to kill or maim, with the result that a young woman
died. The Court also seemed to ignore the effect of the extreme stress in which
Momberg found herself after a life-threatening experience. That stress is a
normal state for many South Africans, with murder at the highest rate of any
city in the world, rapes occurring every four minutes, and a Government that
seems to be bent on enriching the few connected persons at the cost of the vast
majority of the people. The Court also seemed to ignore the gross
disproportionality of the sentence to the offending act, as well as the fact
that the ‘victim’ had already been granted a disproportionately high
compensation for his suffering – how many of your words are worth R100 000
(nearly $10 000) each, to the person listening to you?
There seems to be no doubt that Momberg will appeal, but the
question remains: Have the Thought Police become effective in South Africa,
when all other forms of law enforcement, including the Priority Crimes
Investigative Unit, the South African Police, the National Prosecuting Agency
and even Parliament have proven themselves to be close to valueless in
combatting real crime, and when the Minister of Police was appointed after he
had been dismissed as Commissioner of Police when he was closely implicated in
a number of corrupt leases of Police premises, involving a loss of millions to
the Fiscus? Has the precedent now been established that only White people can
be racist?
This judgment is the start of a long and slippery slope into
a condition of biased and arbitrary laws in South Africa, aimed at the White
population (this case is not the first in this line. The Black Empowerment laws
have done a very good job of depriving virtually any qualified young to
middle-aged White man of employment) This is reverse Apartheid by stealth, one
step at a time. This happens at a time when similar laws protecting certain
classes of person against criticism are being enacted in several African
countries, a time when even the President of the United States can be called a
moron by the Secretary of State without a right to redress.
And Africa wants a Permanent Seat on the United Nations Security
Council?
Cry the Beloved Country.
