Unreasonable

The five Supreme Court of Appeal judges in Bloemfontein have stitched up Comrade Schabir Shaik very tight indeed in terms of the law as it stands. In their 122-page document, linked below in PDF format, they seem to have left little room for manoeuvre. In the main judgement they have rejected Shaik’s appeal on all three counts, namely the “generally corrupt relationship”, the “fraudulent write-off”, and the “encrypted fax” affair. They also substantially rejected Schabir’s appeal against “asset forfeiture” (page 93). The last seven pages of the document contain a brief summary (page 115). The judgement carefully avoids making Schabir’s conviction dependent upon the subsequent conviction of Jacob Zuma. For example it says: “Even if Mr Zuma was unaware of the request or had not agreed to accept the bribe there was nevertheless proof of commission by Mr Shaik of all the necessary elements of the offence charged” (p. 120, para 11). So if JZ is charged again and acquitted, Schabir will still have to do his 15 years of time, if these judges have their way. At the same time, and particularly in the separate asset-forfeiture appeal, the court comes as close as it possibly can to convicting Jacob Zuma in absentia. For example: “Between 1996 and 2002 Shaik and Mr Jacob Zuma engaged in what the trial court appropriately called ‘a generally corrupt relationship’ which involved frequent payments by Shaik to or on behalf of Zuma and a reciprocation by Zuma in the form of the bringing to bear of political influence on behalf of Shaik’s business interests when requested to do so.” (p. 98, para 8). The weakest parts of the document are those that seek to define what corruption means. It is described as “a cancer, eating away remorselessly at the fabric of corporate probity and extending its baleful effect into all aspects of administrative functions” (p.20, par 50, quoting Hillary Squires). What fabric of corporate probity is that? It is only a bourgeois fiction and a rotten "whited sepulchre". In paragraphs 102 and 104 there is reference to Schabir being “aware of many business opportunities of the new political era” and to him pushing his “political connectivity”. How many hundreds of others do we all know like that? They are found all over South Africa, not least in academia. Actually there is no objective way to distinguish corruption from general capitalist practice. What Schabir Shaik was doing was no different to what every other capitalist is obliged to do all the time in a monopoly-capitalist state such as South Africa. And therefore all those who are on the capitalist road are at risk of being pulled over at any time and found in breach, because a corrupt act is no more or less than what some privately appointed judge says it is. It has no intrinsic definition. The difference between the businessman in jail and the others outside is only that the one was a target and the others are not (yet). The entire system is corrupt in nature. Intercourse between the capitalist and the state (whether as bureaucracy, legislature, judiciary or special bodies of armed men) is not avoidable so long as business continues, but can at any time be held to be corrupt. The most nauseating part of the document is on page 91, para 226, where Squires is said to have “considered that far from achieving the objects to which the struggle for liberation was directed the situation that Shaik developed and exploited was the very same that the ‘struggle’ had intended to replace and that this whole saga was a subversion of struggle ideals.” Squires and the appeal court judges here project themselves with supreme arrogance beyond their law-books and into an area where they are supremely ignorant. How dare they try to rewrite the people's history and redefine the objectives of the struggle! Who the hell do they think they are? Schabir Shaik got fifteen years because it is the minimum sentence. Minimum sentences are a knee-jerk response to the periodic crime panics of this country, not unlike Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula’s recent proposal for extended detention periods for interrogation. See the link below for an assessment of the minimum sentence policy and where these knee-jerk responses are taking us in South Africa. Ngoako Ramatlhodi is an ANC NEC member and also lawyer who can’t practice, effectively because the Scorpions are after him but won’t charge him. See the link for another example of arbitrary coercive rule. If fascism is the future, the Scorpions would be the way to build it now. The biggest beneficiaries of fascism are always the monopoly-capitalist concerns such as De Beers in this country. The SACP in the Northern Cape has issued a strong statement about unilateral retrenchments by these bourgeois monopolists. See the link below. Click on these links: Supreme Court of Appeal Shaik Judgment, 6 Nov 2006 (PDF download) Sentencing of maximum concern, O’Donovan and Redpath, B Day (1098 words) Ngoako Ramatlhodi and the Scorpions, COSATU Media Release (390 words) SACP statement on De Beers Mines planned retrenchments (442 words)