A criminal waste

ABOUT nine years ago, my husband found an artist among the roadside vendors, a shy quiet chap from a neighbouring country whose sweet smile and charming work compensated for his poor English and Zulu.

For years my husband supported and mentored him, buying his art and keeping him in art supplies. We both got to know Rui (not his real name) as a gentle soul, an honest, decent and kind person.

We were in Grahamstown for the Festival when Rui called. He was in prison, using a fellow prisoner’s phone to call and beg for help. Could my husband bail him out?

It was a shock, made even worse by the fact that the signal was too bad to grasp the story, but Julian said he would be home two days later and would rush over to Modder B as soon as he got back.

R1 000 was enough to release Rui. Julian was shocked by his appearance. The smile was gone (for good, it seemed) and he looked really ill.

Julian took him to court and met the court-appointed lawyer who would defend him. When he realised that the lawyer did not fully understand Rui’s story (neither did Julian, for that matter), he took him to Portuguese friends, who spoke to him at length, and found out what had really happened that had landed him in jail.

It’s a tale so simple and unlikely, yet so typical of Rui, generous and unsuspicious as he was. He had been to a Clicks in search of fabric dyes for his batiks; unable to find what he wanted, he was standing in the entrance near the tills, wondering where to go next, when a woman with a baby on her back called to him and asked him to hold her plastic bag for a moment. He took the packet and she disappeared.

A security officer called Rui over, and as he walked towards him, he passed some sort of security gate which beeped. And all hell broke loose. I still shudder as I think of how frightening the next few hours must have been for him, as he was shouted at, roughly searched, handed over to the police and finally jailed.

To me, it’s clear what happened: madam with the baby had shoplifted something; she saw the security guard and figured she needed to get rid of the goods. She gave them to Rui on the off-chance that he would walk out with them; I’ve no doubt she would have reappeared to claim her packet if he’d negotiated the entrance without trouble.

What was in the packet? Some creams and baby lotions, none of which Rui was likely to want. What burned me was that a simple fingerprint test would undoubtedly have shown that Rui had never touched anything inside that bag. But it wasn’t done.

And nobody ever asked if the entrance was covered by CCTV, which could have supported Rui’s evidence.

Instead, Julian and Rui entered the maelstrom that is the justice system. Time and again, they would meet at the court (I bought Rui some smart respectable clothes to wear) and wait on the hard seats for hours, as case after squalid, sleazy case passed through the system.

And as with many of them, when Rui’s case finally came up, the magistrate would postpone it for one reason or another: it was too late in the day, some evidence was missing, the interpreter wasn’t present, or some such reason. (The interpreter, by the way, spoke Zulu, so he wouldn’t have been much good for Rui anyway, who was fluent in Portuguese and Shangaan.)

Each wasted day in court seemed to increase Rui’s depression and anxiety. He wouldn’t talk about it, but I was convinced that something had happened to him in Modder B – some kind of assault, perhaps – which had put the light in his eyes out.

Finally, on the fourth occasion, Rui did not appear. Julian waited for hours, then went to look for him at his home in Ivory Park, but his landlord had no idea where he was. He had plainly lost all hope and courage and fled. Perhaps all that dithering in court had made him lose faith in the justice system.

Since he was an essentially honest person, it must have cost him something to cut and run, knowing Julian would lose R1 000 thereby, but the fear must have overwhelmed him.

Julian was not the only one to lose. South Africa lost too; we lost a decent man who had become part of a community and was managing to make a living out of his own resources and talents.

But we also lost all the resources that were wasted on processing this case – a case that could have been tossed on the basis of a simple search for evidence in the form of fingerprints and film.

And it made me think: do we not, as a country, as the taxpayers who both support and rely on this justice system, have a right to demand a stringent and public audit of how much of our state’s resources and funding is wasted like this?

Should we not demand that police and law courts account for how effectively and intelligently they gather evidence, make and present a case, so that more of the really bad guys are convicted, and people like Rui don’t have to suffer so needlessly?

 - Fin24

*Mandi Smallhorne is a versatile journalist and editor. Views expressed are her own.