How South Africa's system now punishes the honest, and protects the powerful

SOUTH Africa has not collapsed.

- NOMVULA ZELDAH MABUZA

It has been inverted. What once punished wrongdoing now protects it. What once honoured the honest now humiliates them. What once upheld truth now turns it into a liability. We are now living in what can only be called the age of the unpunished where accountability is an illusion and wrongdoing is a stepping stone not a stumbling block.

This national inversion plays out not only in the streets or in the headlines but deep within our governance systems.

The medical aid racial profiling scandal, the collapse of oversight structures and recent internal disclosures from senior police leadership have laid bare how criminal sabotage and systemic corruption have infiltrated the state from within.

These are not opposition claims; they are acknowledgements from those entrusted to lead. Corruption is not an anomaly. It has become the rule.

This betrayal is not theoretical. It unfolds in three distinct ways affecting the working class, black professionals and unemployed youth differently but equally destructively.

For the working class, the betrayal is material and immediate. The state that should protect their safety and dignity instead leaves them exposed to criminal syndicates and collapsing infrastructure.

The 2023 Public Procurement Review found that over R28 billion in state tenders were under investigation for fraud, largely in service delivery sectors such as housing, roads and water. That is not inefficiency; it is institutional neglect.

For black professionals, success itself becomes suspicious. According to a 2021 study by the South African Medical Association, black practitioners face significantly higher audit rates from medical aid administrators.

Many skilled professionals report a pattern of systemic bias where regulatory scrutiny falls harder on those without legacy networks. The very mechanisms designed to ensure compliance become traps that obstruct transformation.