Jackie Selebi’s conviction was meant to teach; Bheki Cele’s allegations prove the lesson was ignored.
South Africa has a peculiar talent: it forgets what it should remember, and remembers what it should forget.
We forget the lessons of corruption scandals, but we remember the personalities who presided over them.
Jackie Selebi, once the country’s top cop and even president of Interpol, was convicted in 2010 for taking bribes from a drug dealer.
His fall was supposed to be a watershed moment – a warning that no-one, not even the commissioner of police, is above the law.
Yet, here we are, more than a decade later, with former police minister Bheki Cele facing eerily similar accusations of bribery and corruption, according to revelations by controversial businessman Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala at a parliamentary ad hoc committee hearing last week.
The cycle is not accidental. It is structural. South Africa’s institutions have become revolving doors for scandal, where accountability is treated as a temporary inconvenience rather than a permanent principle.
Selebi’s conviction should have rewritten the manual on police leadership, ethics and oversight.
Instead, it became a footnote in the country’s long anthology of corruption.
Cele’s alleged misconduct – claims of cash bribes delivered in Woolworths shopping bags, withdrawals traced to FNB accounts – reads like a sequel nobody asked for.
The details differ, but the plot is the same: a senior police figure accused of selling integrity for cash.
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The allegations are still under investigation, but the déjà vu is undeniable. This rot cannot be separated from the cultural contradictions of township life.
For decades, communities had a love‑hate relationship with thugs – feared, but also admired. Before democracy, “ethical thuggery” was encouraged: steal from whites, but never from your own.
Crime was justified as resistance. Today, the chickens have come home to roost. Township gangs like Boko Haram in Mamelodi extort spaza shops and taxi operators.
Corruption denies black patients care at hospitals. Poor service delivery is concentrated in townships.
There is also little difference between township strongmen like Matlala and the MPs who questioned him.
One such is Julius Malema, who styles himself as a revolutionary but has faced allegations of tender corruption.
Another is Khusela Diko, once the Presidency’s spokesperson, who fell from grace over PPE procurement scandals.
The accused and the accusers mirror each other; both thrive in a system where scandal is survivable and accountability negotiable.
It was unsurprising when uMkhonto weSizwe party MP Vusi Shongwe seemed sympathetic to Matlala, calling him grootman – a township term of respect.
He lamented seeing Matlala “dragging chains” despite being well dressed, and suggested that if Matlala was falsely accused, the country should deal with those responsible.
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Here lies the uncomfortable truth: there is little difference between the township thug and the tenderpreneur in government.
Politicians enjoy the high life while service delivery collapses. State‑sponsored elites, already fattened by salaries, manipulate tenders to steal more. Nobody is innocent.
Selebi and Cele’s scandals resonate because they are not aberrations; they reflect a broader culture where thuggery is normalised, whether in the streets or in the state.
The township thug and the police commissioner are two sides of the same coin: both exploit broken systems, both erode trust, both thrive in impunity.
Selebi’s conviction should have been a turning point. Cele’s allegations suggest it was merely a pause.
The country stumbles through cycles of corruption it refuses to break.
Township thuggery and state corruption are not separate stories – they are one story, told in different dialects of betrayal.
The lesson is clear, but unlearned: institutions must be stronger than individuals. South Africa cannot rely on the personal integrity of leaders; it must build systems that prevent, detect and punish corruption consistently.
Until then, we will keep writing the same headlines. Selebi yesterday, Cele today, someone else tomorrow.
The names change, the charges echo, the lessons evaporate.
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