From Struggle to Shame: South Africa’s Moral Fabric in Tatters

By Themba Khumalo

South Africa is rotting from the inside out. The stench is unmistakable now — it seeps from the polished shoes of our lawmen, from the marble corridors of political power, from every office where justice was once meant to dwell.

The revelations spilling from the Madlanga Commission and Parliament's Ad Hoc Committee have stripped away the last pretence of decency. What stands exposed is a republic in moral collapse; a country where the police shake hands with the very cartels they are meant to destroy.

The allegations are not merely scandalous — they are apocalyptic in implication. Senior officers of the South African Police Service, political figures, and tender millionaires stand accused of conspiring in the shadows, of trading influence and protection like currency.

It is a grotesque choreography of power and greed, where the defenders of law become the servants of the underworld, and justice itself becomes a commodity sold to the highest bidder.

It began, at least publicly, with a single voice — that of KwaZulu-Natal police Commissioner Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, who in July stood before the nation and uttered the most damning indictment yet: that organised criminals had infiltrated South Africa’s criminal justice system.

It was not the angry exaggeration of a frustrated officer. It was a cry from within the belly of the beast. And it struck a nerve so deep that President Cyril Ramaphosa was forced, however reluctantly, to establish the Madlanga Commission to probe “political interference and corruption in the criminal justice system.”

Since then, the commission’s hearings have peeled back layer upon layer of decay. In recent weeks, testimony has painted a picture so sordid that even the cynics are gasping. What we are witnessing is not petty bribery or opportunistic graft — it is a wholesale capture of the state’s moral core. It is the institutionalisation of betrayal.

The name on every tongue is that of Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala — a tenderpreneur turned alleged kingpin, accused of plotting the murder of his ex-girlfriend. When confronted by police, he reportedly boasted of his powerful connections, of how his money bought him protection at the highest levels of law enforcement. He spoke, almost casually, of paying millions in cash to those sworn to uphold the law — of greasing the palms of generals and ministers, of feeding the political machine that devours the nation’s integrity.

What emerged from that testimony is a portrait of a system so entangled in criminal patronage that the lines between the syndicate and the state have blurred beyond recognition. Matlala’s confessions — frustrated, bitter, dripping with a sense of betrayal that his protectors had failed him — read like the diary of a man shocked that corruption, too, has loyalty limits. He believed himself shielded by money and influence; instead, his empire of deceit collapsed under the weight of his own arrogance.

But the tragedy lies not in the downfall of one man. It lies in the chilling realisation that he was not an anomaly — he was the symptom of a culture that has festered unchecked. From the corridors of Luthuli House to the corridors of SAPS headquarters, a new breed of politics has taken root: one that thrives on secrecy, cash deals, and the manipulation of justice.

In the commission's sterile hearing rooms, amid the monotone recitations of evidence, something sacred is being buried — the very idea that justice in this country can still be trusted. Each revelation is a shovel of dirt on the coffin of public faith. Cash delivered at night to a gated estate. Police generals meeting tender barons by circular driveways. Campaigns financed by men under criminal investigation. This is not a democracy under strain; it is a democracy under siege.

South Africa once prided itself on its institutions — the Constitution, the courts, the watchdogs that barked in defence of freedom. Now, even those guardians seem exhausted, their bark fading into a whimper. The commissions keep coming — Zondo, Nugent, Mpati, and now Madlanga — each uncovering another dimension of rot, each concluding with polite recommendations that gather dust while the predators regroup.

Meanwhile, the public watches in weary disbelief. The people who once sang freedom songs now sing dirges. The poor who once believed the state was their shield now know it is merely a sieve through which justice leaks. For how does one report a crime when the criminal wears the same uniform as the investigator? How does one cry for protection when the protector has sold the silence of his gun?

In the Madlanga Commission, even the language of corruption has become poetic in its cruelty. Millions exchanged for “assistance”. Campaign “sponsorships” dressed as loyalty. A townhouse in Sandton transformed into a vault of complicity. The banal details — bank cards handed to intermediaries, envelopes passed under the cloak of midnight — are not mere logistics of bribery; they are symbols of a country where the sacred trust between state and citizen has been shredded.

Parliament’s Ad Hoc Committee, investigating these same allegations, has echoed the Commission’s alarm. Members speak in tones of disbelief, yet the nation no longer shares their surprise. We are beyond shock. We are living in the afterlife of disillusionment. South Africa weeps, but her tears are old now, recycled from every betrayal that came before — from Marikana to Phala Phala, from Bosasa to the Guptas. This is not the first unmasking. It is merely the latest act in a long, tragic performance of decay.

The political class responds with its usual theatre: denials, deflections, promises of accountability. Ministers swear innocence. Generals claim ignorance. Everyone clings to plausible deniability as if morality were optional in public service. But while they rehearse their alibis, the people sink deeper into despair. For every rand stolen, a clinic closes. For every bribe exchanged, a case of gender-based violence is ignored. For every campaign funded by a crook, another community buries its sons and daughters.

There is a cruelty in watching a nation so young and so bruised bleed from self-inflicted wounds. The people who once promised to defend the republic now preside over its slow-motion assassination. And the cartels — once skulking in the shadows — now swagger openly, confident that their money buys not only protection but respectability.

It is not enough to say that South Africa is in crisis. Crisis implies a turning point. What we face now is corrosion — a gradual, merciless decay that eats through the very steel of our institutions. The Madlanga Commission has merely shone a light on what many already knew: that the state’s arteries are clogged with greed, that the pulse of integrity is faint, and that those charged with saving the patient are the ones tightening the noose.

When history writes this chapter, it will not be kind. It will speak of a time when gangsters funded political campaigns, when senior police took instructions from businessmen, and when justice became a marketplace transaction. And it will ask — where were the good men? Where were the patriots who remembered that public service is not a career, but a covenant?

South Africa still has a chance — a fragile, flickering chance — to claw back from the abyss. But only if outrage becomes action, if inquiry becomes prosecution, and if the Commission’s findings do not end in the familiar graveyard of reports unread.

Because if this moment passes without consequence, then the betrayal will be complete. The thieves will inherit the state. The cartels will own the republic. And the people — weary, wounded, and wordless — will finally stop weeping. For there comes a time when even grief runs dry.

Khumalo is an independent columnist and a former newspaper editor.