The assassination of insolvency practitioner Cloete Murray and his son Thomas on the N1 highway in Midrand over the weekend underlines South Africa’s slide into a mafia state.
Murray had been appointed to a number of high-profile cases in recent years, including the liquidation of services company Bosasa. As a result, he locked horns with a number of people in the ANC, from which he claimed R3.6m. He was also the liquidator of Trillian, the consultancy firm linked to the Gupta brothers, from which Eskom sought R595m.
But the fatal attack on the Murrays at 2pm last Saturday is a macabre corroboration of what MTN CEO Ralph Mupita told the FM last week, which is that crime in South Africa is out of control, and that the authorities have no grasp of how to counter it.
A prosecutor has been assigned to “guide” the investigation by the Hawks and the South African Police Service, which presents a degree of hope that there may be accountability.
But this does little to address the deeper problem, which is that murderers are entirely undaunted by our crime-fighting apparatus, seemingly sure there’s little chance of being apprehended, let alone prosecuted.
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