As a compromise to attain unity, post-apartheid South Africa abolished the death penalty after it had been used to thwart the struggle for independence. So hitherto, architects of the brutal laws would walk scot-free after committing crimes, well knowing the very barbarian laws they had enacted against the citizens would not apply to them. The suspected killers of Lucky Dube, even when proven guilty, the worst punishment they can get under S. African law is life-imprisonment. And this is as good as letting them scot-free, and may not be deterrent enough especially against those with the Eugene Telleblanche ideology: To re-liberate S.Africa from the ‘kaffirs.’ And this is the reality that we need to dig up and face, rather than blaming crime on massive unemployment and poverty. The truth is the whites, especially the Afrikaners, are yet to come to terms with the new state of events: that ‘kaffirs’ can ‘walk’ and ‘talk’ freely...cut their veins and crimson-red apartheid will flow out. This is the very ‘venom’ that led to a Polish immigrant to shoot Chris Hani in broad light on the verge of independence, a Greek to kill Prince Louis Rwagasore of Burundi after he had written his independence speech, the same drove Dube’s killers. A few months into independent S. Africa, one commentator in Jeune Afrique, quoted an extremist Afrikaner as saying, ‘they have the powers, we have the power’, referring to the paradox of the reality in S. Africa. Blacks have political powers, but whites retain economic power, which drive everything. Attempts of the Black Economic Empowerment policy has not yielded much, since the few blacks that have joined hitherto whites-only managed companies and parastatals, have turned whites-in-black skin. In such a context, deterrent laws needed to stay in place, but since we cannot reinstate them in the short-run, let’s copy from Big Brother, George Bush: create a Guantanamo or do a rendition: send Dube’s killers to be handled by say Ugandan law and once found guilty, be convicted and we stone them live in Namboole, the very venue we used to struggle to enter during Dube’s shows. Fare thee well Lucky. You did your part. Let those ‘mourning’ your death do theirs. Kampala
