There is a question my colleagues ask law enforcement authorities almost every week: how far are they with investigating the instigators of the July riots?
It has been more than four months since the government told us that at least 12 of the people who were behind the violence, which President Cyril Ramaphosa termed a failed insurrection, were known to them and would be behind bars in no time.
With the exception of a couple of personalities who have been arrested for posting one or other threatening thing on social media — often without any sign that they were working in cahoots — the police have made no progress.
None of the senior political figures we were promised would be revealed as the masterminds behind the carnage, which cost more than 300 lives and left scores of businesses in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng badly damaged, have even been taken in for questioning.
Senior law enforcement officials and politicians who held daily briefings in July, promising arrests were imminent, are today silent and as invisible as police officers on the ground themselves were during the first few days of looting and destruction.
If it was up to them, one suspects, by now we would all have forgotten about the violence that shook our democracy to its core. Also forgotten would be the promise “to leave no stone unturned” to find the perpetrators.
But the story won’t go away. In every conversation about the economy and the drive to attract more domestic and foreign investment, the question comes up: if the state is not able to identify and pick up those it claims ignited the riots in a co-ordinated fashion, what guarantees are there that the violence will not erupt again?
It is a question the Ramaphosa government cannot ignore.
Especially not when the evidence coming out of the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) hearings into the riots points a finger at the police for being culpable by their absence.
Melanie Venes, CEO at the Pietermaritzburg Midlands Chamber of Business, told the hearings this week that she phoned local police stations and got no response. She said that, as business people, they felt alone and were “just helplessly watching scenes unfold”.
If it was up to them, one suspects, by now we would all have forgotten about the violence that shook our democracy to its core
“The looting went on for days. People sat on the side of the road on top of their looted goods waiting for transport to arrive. There was no response, no adequate suitable response during the unrest and afterwards.”
Before the looting, her organisation had enjoyed a good working relationship with the local police, interacting with them regularly through their Business Fighting Crime Forum.
Venes told the hearings: “We have been directly told by some of the police personnel that they were to stand down, and that they were not allowed to respond.”
It is a startling claim but one that is hard to dismiss, given the experience of many other people who have said they could not get any assistance from the police.
Appearing before the commission a day earlier, Ntuzuma township resident Ntethelelo Mkhize — a TVET college lecturer who was shot twice by vigilantes near the neighbouring Phoenix township — also complained about the absence of the police.
Three of the people with him died in the attack. Mkhize survived, after three weeks in a coma in hospital.
Had police been visible and doing their job during the riots, there would have been little or no need for communities to form impromptu neighbourhood watch groups that were, in some areas, hijacked by vigilantes who embarked on acts of terror and brutality against innocent citizens they regarded as outsiders.
If anything, the testimony before the commission further demonstrates how ineffective our law enforcement agencies are, especially the police in carrying out their primary and constitutional duty to protect citizens.
The system is broken and it poses a clear and present danger to us all.
Yet the response to this crisis has been to pretend as if it never happened. Yes, the president reacted by making a couple of changes to his cabinet, but none was a direct response to the police failing us.
No police leaders, from national headquarters to cop-shop level, have had steps taken against them for failing to save lives and protect property.
Instead, where action is being taken against police chiefs, it is for reasons that seem to have little to do with us as citizens.
The SAHRC is doing a great job with the hearings, but all its work will be in vain if the law enforcement authorities continue to refuse to do their job.
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