Dyer: South Africa's justice system miraculously OK
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Last updated 28 minutes agoYou can save this article by registering for freehere. Orsign-inif you have an account. Protesters march during a demonstration calling for the removal of undocumented immigrants in Alexandra township on July 30, 2026. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa called on July 27 for African countries to work together to manage migration, as his government faces mounting pressure over attacks on foreign nationals. n on public services. (Emmanuel Croset/ AFP via Getty Images)You’re at your hobby farm in the country, just pottering around, so you stuff the $580,000 in your pocket under the sofa cushions temporarily just to get it out of the way. Then you forget it when you are gathering things up to go back to the city. It could happen to anybody. Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Exclusive articles from Ryan Pyette, Dale Carruthers, Jane Sims, Norman De Bono and others. 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Get email updates from your favourite authors. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one accountShare your thoughts and join the conversation in the commentsEnjoy additional articles per monthGet email updates from your favourite authorsSign In or Create an AccountorHowever, thieves break into your country house while you’re away and steal the money. You consider reporting it to the police, but you know they are struggling to keep up with the crime wave so you decide to forget about it. And even though it was foreign currency, you don’t report it to the tax authorities either because you never got to spend it. Or something like that. But then, events take a turn for the worse. A man called Arthur Fraser sends a dossier to the police reporting you got the money. Since Fraser was the country’s former chief spy, they take him seriously and come to you looking for answers. What do you tell them?This is the dilemma South African President Cyril Ramaphosa faced in 2022, and the rather far-fetched story above (with a few grace notes about the money being the proceeds of a cash sale of some buffalos to a foreigner) was his explanation to the police. Miraculously, the police believed him, as did his party, which had a majority in parliament. After the 2024 election Ramaphosa remained in the presidency, but the new government was a coalition in which some parties were willing to impeach him. It’s now a tag team match between the Parliament, the High Court and the media, and the outcome is uncertain, but he really could be impeached. He is just as much subject to the law as everyone else. This is as good as it gets. Perfect justice is not on the menu, but a rough facsimile of justice most of the time is good enough for most purposes. There is even an international rule of law index compiled by the World Justice Project that scores and ranks countries on how close they get to that rough facsimile, and it makes for interesting reading. The four top countries are, of course, the four Scandinavian countries, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Sweden (in that order). The four bottom countries are equally obvious: Haiti, Cambodia, Afghanistan and Venezuela. New Zealand comes in at No. 5, right after the Fab Four, and most other developed English-speaking countries (Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom) cluster at 11, 13 and 14. But the United States comes in at 27, just behind Slovenia but ahead of Costa Rica, and South Africa ranks at 60 (but still ahead of Thailand and Brazil). This is not your usual comparison of GDPs or per capita incomes. It is specifically ranking countries on their adherence to the rule of law, measuring categories like absence of corruption, open government, and criminal justice. And a rival rule-of-law list by the Freedom House produces almost identical rankings, except it puts South Africa higher. So would I. The violent crime rate is very bad (although down by half since its peak in the immediate post-apartheid years), and the inequality of wealth is as bad as in Brazil or Russia. However, South Africa has managed to avoid most of the horrors that lay in wait after centuries of colonial rule topped off with half a century of flat-out racist oppression. The fact the courts managed to keep their independence right through that decades-long siege was not just a miracle. It was the key factor in preserving enough of the democratic structures of the old whites-only democracy to resurrect a multi-racial democracy from the ruins of the apartheid state. Of course, I would say that. My wife is South African, and some of my best friends are South African lawyers. Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist based in London, England and author of a new book about climate change, Intervention Earth: Life-Saving Ideas from the World’s Climate Engineers. Join the ConversationThis website uses cookies to personalize your content (including ads), and allows us to analyze our traffic. Read more aboutcookies here. By continuing to use our site, you agree to ourTerms of UseandPrivacy Policy.