The South African political, social and moral atmosphere is invaded by a pungent smell of unbridled selfishness that has left the citizens apoplectic.
If it is not court cases dealing with shocking crimes, it is a parliamentary hearing on a broken police service, or a commission of inquiry investigating the same thing, or it is Fort Hare students burning their university.
The news in multiple media forms in the country is dominated by gross malfeasance, sleaze, murder, corruption and theft. At the centre of it all is an overwhelming spirit of I, ME, and MYSELF. No one else matters.
This spirit has given us a cesspool of murder, theft, corruption, intrigue and skulduggery in which ministers, police officers, thugs and businessmen swim together.
An Ad Hoc committee was established by parliament to investigate serious allegations made by Lt-Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi about alleged collusion between certain individuals in the criminal justice system and criminal syndicates.
The minister of police, the national police commissioner and others beneath them have so far appeared before the committee to be grilled by legislators.
But even some lawmakers tasked with this grave matter of national importance could not resist the temptation to ask partisan questions, seeking to make the matter about them and their political parties.
From what we have heard so far, it is clear that there is an unsavoury, dangerous and completely unacceptable entanglement of the top brass of our criminal justice system with criminal syndicates.
Most of what some of them have said is what we have heard at the Madlanga commission, which is investigating the same allegations.
What we have heard so far is enough to give us sleepless nights. Our country is inexorably careening towards becoming a mafia state.
Although magistrates and prosecutors have not yet appeared at any of these hearings, they are apparently in the queue for grilling.
The cosying up of these senior criminal justice system personnel to the underworld is driven by the craving for illicit riches.
They have been given huge responsibilities to protect the state; they get huge salaries and benefits, but they want more and more. And the bulk of what they want to get through gross corruption is at the expense of the citizens they are supposed to protect.
So far, the hearings have woven for us a milieu where syndicates are alleged to have stolen around R2-billion at Tembisa Hospital. Babita Deokaran was murdered for blowing the whistle on that crime, and the Special Investigation Unit seized expensive goods from alleged looters of the hospital.
This is just one hospital.
What’s happening in other health facilities throughout the country? We wonder.
Several people in the entertainment space were gunned down, while others survived the shootings and police investigations suggest the killings are related to drugs; syndicates
allegedly connected to the criminal justice system honchos engineered the closure of police units investigating the criminal rings, while several alleged criminals were arrested in
Johannesburg and brought to the courts.
Meanwhile, students at the University of Fort Hare, laden with a heavy burden of grievances, as students often are, burn down university buildings, causing damage estimated at R500-million.
With that, records, books, laboratories and other academic infrastructure went up in smoke.
These students don’t care about the younger ones coming behind them who need the university and its resources. How can you burn a university simply because you want SRC elections or the resignation of the principal? And these are supposed to be our young intellectuals, our future leaders.
All these things: university students torching their institution to bolster demands for elections; the syndicates robbing hospitals blind; ministers, police and others in the criminal justice system making common cause with the underworld, suggest that South Africa is overtaken by the demons of compulsive greed.
Too many people are morally bankrupt.
• Mangena is a former cabinet minister, an academic and a former Azapo president
