JUSTICE MALALA | Let’s call these people what they are: criminals

The word “businessman” has been thrown around liberally over the past few weeks without much interrogation of what it really means. 

Last week “Sandton businessman” Katiso “KT” Molefe and three associates (former police detective Michael Pule Tau, Musa Kekana and Tiego Floyd Mabusela) were arrested by members of the South African Police Service’s Political Killings Task Team and Gauteng organised crime branch.

The political killings task team, dear reader, is the very same unit that suspended minister of police Senzo Mchunu tried to shut down for no clear reason. We are all still eagerly waiting for the answer to one question: why did he want to shut the unit down against the wishes and sentiments of working career professionals? 

Anyway, “businessman” Molefe and his three friends face charges of murder, conspiracy to commit murder, possession of an unlicensed firearm, and possession of illegal ammunition in connection with a famed Pretoria deejay’s murder. The “businessman”, Molefe, is suspected to be the mastermind behind this and up to 10 other hits. His co-accused are alleged to have carried out the dirty deeds. 

This “businessman” is in custody just weeks after another so-called businessman, Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala, appeared in court on similar charges. We’ve learnt that Matlala’s sumptuous Pretoria penthouse was used by former police minister Bheki Cele, but we are asked to believe they were not friends at all. 

We have also learnt over the past three weeks that suspended minister Mchunu’s close comrade Brown Mogotsi assured this “businessman”, Cat Matlala, that the police unit investigating him had been shut down by the minister, and that Mogotsi had received money from Matlala.

I don’t wish to undermine the judicial commission of inquiry appointed by President Cyril Ramaphosa to probe all these matters, but the prima face evidence is damning: the country’s criminal justice system has been infiltrated and corrupted by ANC-linked hoodlums and gangsters. This is a Mafia state. It is extremely unsettling to go to bed knowing that the suspended police minister was shutting down police units at the behest of an alleged murderer and criminal. It is similarly worrisome that the police minister before him was sleeping in that criminal’s bed! 

All this is sadly just more of the corruption we have spoken about so many times before as a nation. Whether there will be consequences is not guaranteed. The accused are now, after all, the blood brothers of the gatekeepers. It is a very dangerous time. 

What I want to talk about is the degradation of language amid all these revelations and arrests. We keep talking about “businessmen” and “political leaders”, attaching these labels to these corrupt characters, yet what exactly do we mean? What does it say about black and white entrepreneurs who make meaningful and useful things, who provide real services, when a “businessman” is someone like Matlala or Molefe?

In one example, Matlala’s company was awarded a R360m health services tender from the SAPS. This is after the man had been flagged as unsuitable by auditors and other bodies. Only in May this year did national police commissioner Fannie Masemola cancel the contract. By then Matlala had been paid R50m of the fee. As Masemola said, Matlala’s firm should not have progressed beyond the initial bidding stage, so how did it happen?

We are in uncharted waters, in trouble, at sea without a paddle 

Matlala is not a businessman. He brought no value whatsoever to the government. Instead, he inflated prices and used the money to fund his lavish lifestyle. 

Let’s call these people by their real names: they are crooks. They besmirch the names and reputations of the many hardworking service providers and real businesspeople out there who seek to make government run efficiently. 

Last week the Hawks raided City Power's offices in Johannesburg. News24 reported that some of the crimes the unit is investigating is how City Power blew R335m on air fresheners and mops and paid a staggering R100m for an electricity distribution system it should have paid a mere R8m for. This is exactly the sort of thing these “businessmen” are doing. In cahoots with civil servants and leaders of state-owned enterprises. 

And what is a “political leader” when they are found at the home of the accused murder kingpin of Sandton? What am I to say when it emerges that the former minister of police was snoring away in the bed of the same Matlala who at that time was trying to murder his ex-girlfriend and was defrauding government? Or that the current, suspended police minister tried to kill off the squad that was after these criminals? 

What I am saying is that we are living through such a dangerous moment, such a perverted time, that even the words we use and read are far from truthful. If we were to call our businessmen by their names (criminals), and our politicians by their names (criminals), we would quickly realise that we are in uncharted waters, in trouble, at sea without a paddle. 

And we would do something about it. 

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