EDITOR – I refer to your article KwaDabeka man sentenced to 15 years for hijacking on 1 July where Maj Gen Langa is quoted as saying, “We hope the sentence will send a strong message to other criminals out there.”
I do not believe any form of imprisonment is sending any message to the criminals other than “break the law and we will look after you for a few years at the taxpayers’ expense.” No law-abiding citizen is fed and cared for in the manner in which the criminals’ whims are pandered to in prison.
What would send a strong message to the criminals would be action based on the following elementary deduction:
By breaking the law the criminal is in fact telling us that the law is not applicable to him, so when he is apprehended it seems ridiculous to then grant him any rights afforded by the law. Once he is found guilty of the crime, all of his rights should be suspended for the duration of his sentence.
He has no right to food, shelter, TV, medical treatment, study facilities, exercising in the sunshine and all the other fancy facilities or treatment that the bleeding-heart human rights activists are so anxious to bestow upon a criminal – all in the name of rehabilitation. They completely ignore the fact that the victim had rights which he was deprived of.
No court sat down to discuss whether or not he should be robbed, or injured or have his life cruelly and painfully stolen from him, and have his dependents forced to endure a lifetime of deprivation and hardship.
The word rehabilitation implies the ‘restoring to a former state or standard and I believe these self-glorifying and oh-so-righteous human rights activists should focus their attention on rehabilitating the victims of crime, and clamour as vociferously for the suspension of the rights of the criminal as they do for the soft and comfortable treatment of the criminal.
The mere fact that they do not is an indication that they seek only glory and recognition for themselves, and have no genuine caring for people.
It is time for a new order world-wide, and only by eliminating this disease will we and our grandchildren be free to enjoy the fruits of our labours and have the genuine freedom of movement that our constitution grants us.
It is the prerogative of a government to protect its citizens from the scourge of crime, and if they are not willing to be ruthless in their efforts to accomplish that, then they do not deserve to be in power and we do not want them.
Spectre
Pinetown
*Letter shortened
