This kasi crime cartel movie asks you to suspend your disbelief

The strange narrative of how the 'Big Five' cartel has managed to infiltrate the SAPS is in danger of becoming a disappointing straight-to-video release

- Bhekisisa Mncube

Ah, Chief Dwasaho! You and I both know there is no such thing as a criminal cartel called the Big Five operating across our sovereign republic.

Certainly not one involved in contract killings, extortion, kidnappings for ransom, tender skimming and the quiet capture of the criminal justice system to prevent its favourite sons and comrades from wearing orange overalls. Of course not. To suggest such a thing would be to undermine the republic's reputation for law and order.

Is the “Big Five” a criminal cartel or just a group of acquaintances?

Our favourite son of the soil, Lieutenant General Shadrack Sibiya of Crime Detection, put the matter to bed in Parliament. Before the ad hoc committee on corruption and interference in the South African Police Service (SAPS), with the calm of a man who has run out of patience for fairy tales, he said: “There is no Big Five.

And if there is no Big Five, then surely there can be no judicial capture, political interference, or shadowy network bending investigations and prosecutions to its will. The committee heard him. The country heard him. The transcript will outlive us all.

My leader, why are we still being marched into hearing rooms presided over by retired men with gavels and bedtime-story voices, lulling the nation into a gentle afternoon nap? Why must we sit through this performance while advocate Lee Segeels-Ncube, my brilliant sister and daughter of the republic who left her chambers in the spirit of service, is tasked with investigating something that the chief custodian of crime detection - Sibiya himself - has already told the nation does not exist?

If the man who heads investigations, intelligence, counterintelligence operations and organised crime disruption says there is no Big Five cartel, what exactly are we “probing”? The shadows of our own political anxieties? Or are we simply going through the motions of accountability so that it appears to be accountability?