To comrade Jackie Selebi from a fellow comrade
On Monday, the 05th of December 2011, you began serving in Pretoria Maximum Prison a lengthy sentence imposed to you by the courts of our country for your involvement in criminal activities whilst you were our national police commissioner. You were tried in our public courts with all due legal processes followed. Your constitutional rights as an accused person were dully accorded to you as a citizen of our country. I therefore have no reason to doubt that you were indeed given a fair trial.
Accordingly, it would be very easy for me to condemn you as a hardened criminal as many have done, but I will not do that. I will also not hero-worship you for what you did because it was wrong and you deserve to be justly punished for it. Suffice it to say though is that, instead of totally losing respect for you, I am rather very disappointed in you. I wish you will be able to use this time to reflect and realize the error of your ways. The kind of responsibility and trust that we had bestowed upon you as a country, you should never have taken it lightly. You should have exercised more care and protected us from the clutches of the criminal underworld.
In the same spirit though, as a fellow human being and fellow comrade, I still have respect for you given your commitment and the contribution you made in bringing about the current democratic state that is in action in our country today. Ironically, it is this same democratic order for which you fought so hard, sacrificing everything, that has made sure that when you broke the law, you were punished, just like everybody else. Remember the injunction in our constitution that everyone is equal before the law.
I am also forced to wonder if you do realize the corrosive and corruptive power of the capitalist system in making you the antithesis of that for which you fought so hard to achieve - a democratic and clean governance where the needs of our people are paramount in your daily work. I hope you have learnt (or should I say re-learnt) the lesson that in your efforts to change any historical phenomenon, that same phenomenon also changes you. The trick is to carefully manage the proportionality of the change between you and that phenomenon, so that you don't find yourself crossing the line to the other side.
I further wish to salute you though, for not organizing storm troopers to derail our constitutional order when it was clear that you were going to jail. I also like the fact that there was no political frenzy as you were taken to Pretoria Maximum Prison.
I also want you take solace from the fact that your case has now set an example for the struggle to ensure a just and equal society in our country. The fact that as a former top cop you freely subjected yourself to the legal processes of our country has made our democracy to mature even further. Your case has also made us a better people, proud of their democratic traditions where all are equal before the law. I wonder if the same would have happened under that pernicious system of apartheid and colonialism.
I also wish to tell you that as a member of that society which you have wronged, I do forgive you for the crimes you have committed. I forgive you because I believe in the natural instinct of all human beings to commit mistakes. The commission of such mistakes is in most cases through misjudgment, miscalculation, misuse of power or sheer negligence, or a combination of all these factors. But what is critical is that you need to show remorse when your mistakes are exposed.
I further believe that if our African Customary law jurisprudence were to be seriously taken into account by our courts, they would realise the African instinct to forgive as informed by our sense and feelings of justice. They would have discovered that in your case the African customary law would place premium to the objective to correct than to harshly punish, taking into account the fact that you are a first offender, the contribution you made to our country, your willingness to show remorse, your willingness to repay what you took, your age, health and so on. Accordingly, I strongly believe that fifteen years would not have been the sentence. The corrective sentence, in my view, would have been the one that satisfy many in our society.
I forgive you also because the crimes you committed are far less compared to the heinous crimes of those worst apartheid criminals I forgave through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. I forgave those because as a human being and an African imbued with a value system of uBuntu, I believe in the absolute necessity to forgive for the sake of our common good as a people; and for the sake of our society and myself to move forward.
Even though they had murdered, tortured, raped and maimed my people, I forgave them. Even though they ensured the breaking of my family and community unity, I forgave them. Even though they ensured that I was a refugee in my own country, I forgave them. Even though they tried so hard to make me a sub-human thus crushing my dignity and self-worth, I forgave them. So, what kind of crimes have you committed that should not necessitate my forgiveness?
I hope that you recover soon from your illness so that you can serve your time with humility, dignity and resilience knowing that my thoughts are with you comrade. I for one will never forsake nor forget you comrade Jackie. The best qualities of a comrade show themselves during the most trying times. Hope you will use your time in there productively.
So long, comrade.
Mzukisi Makatse is a member of the ANC and ANCYL. He writes in his personal capacity.
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