In 1975, a round-the-world biker named Ted Simon arrived at a decrepit border post in Bolivia. There was the usual blizzard of paperwork, fees and payments for arcane things.
Then the cop handling the paperwork plucked a $10 bill from Simon’s wad of cash, popped it in his pocket and said: “Señor, you are 10 dollars short.” When Simon pointed out that the cop had taken the note, he replied: “No, señor, this $10 is for me.”
Simon wrote later that he didn’t mind a bit of corruption when it was out in the open like that. By which, of course, he meant brazen, and after all, it was “only” 10 bucks.
Fast-forward to the Pretoria regional court in June 2025, where the Lucky Country seems to have been dragged howling through the looking glass into a place where we do not much like what we see.
The storm now swirling like a dust devil around seven top cops — including senior members of crime intelligence — who have appeared on corruption charges, might in another time have looked like merely another instance of well-connected people using their position to look after their family and friends.
The charges include appointing the daughter of a top Hawks officer to a senior post in crime intelligence, with the rank of brigadier, without any vetting or, apparently, policing experience.
It is a way of doing things that’s been baked into South African life probably since the Dutch set up their refreshment kiosk in storm-lashed Table Bay in 1652.
That isn’t a cop-out (sorry) and yet the saga still feels as inevitable as Simon’s bill-plucking Bolivian.
An anonymous source told the Sunday Times that the arrests marked the beginning of a cleanup, with more arrests coming soon. “Some big trees will be chopped down.”
Stay tuned for the next episode then. Not so much Squad Cars, though. More Apocalypse Now, in blue.
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