It may well be that our last line of defence is holding, albeit under difficult circumstances.
The rule of law is literally fighting for its life, and in doing so, it is also fighting for our lives.
Let me first recognise the restraint shown by the EFF after the sentencing of Julius Malema.
The riots of 2021, which occurred after Jacob Zuma went to jail, reminded us of the risk of sending Malema to jail.
The gathering of EFF members to support Malema in KuGompo City added significantly to this risk.
Though Malema did not really go to jail, the EFF still behaved surprisingly well.
Malema did well to disclose their legal strategy before sentencing.
He told members that his team was ready to appeal the sentence as soon as it was handed down.
As such, the risk and expectation of going to jail was mitigated by the legal team’s forward planning.
This gave enough signal that Malema would accept the sentence and rather use the provisions of our legal system.
If the EFF must be commended for their conduct after the sentencing, then Malema must also be commended for handling this in a relatively mature manner. He could have easily fanned the flames.
On the other hand, it is an indictment against SA political leadership to have a powerful leader such as Malema appearing in court for such careless criminal conduct as shooting a gun in public.
If this criminal conduct was an isolated case, maybe it would not be so concerning.
The incidence of political leaders crossing paths with the law is so entrenched that it is almost a culture.
Yet the regularity with which political leaders are prosecuted, convicted and sentenced is very rare.
The flag bearer of this model of political leadership remains Zuma, who managed to rise to the presidential office despite allegations of his associations with crime and corruption.
He remained there for close to a decade, doing untold damage to the rule of law while under the protection of the ANC.
The disregard for the law in SA is now a subculture, to a significant extent because of the ease with which politicians intentionally attack the judiciary.
This is especially true for politicians who have crossed lines with the law and the courts.
The fervour with which they often attack the integrity of the judiciary in reference to individual judicial officers and the entire judicial system is shocking.
This conduct is a betrayal of the status of politicians as lawmakers (MPs).
As these leaders berate the judiciary, they tow behind them millions of followers.
They effectively lead the public to attack their own laws, the instruments of their own wellbeing, and the courts, which are tasked with adjudicating those laws.
“The most incompetent magistrate, who read a judgment for three days. It is never done.
“She does so because we suspect she doesn’t write her own judgments,” Malema said after his sentencing.
One of the signatures of the political leadership which has dominated SA for the past 30 years is its propensity to draw everything into politics.
Malema is no different. He has learnt the blunt art of politicising everything.
In the depths of this depraved political arena, the self-confessed dirty game of politics, neither truth nor common sense survives.
In his speech, the extreme care taken by magistrate Twanet Olivier in this case, a sign of respect for Malema’s legal team, is taken by Malema and used against her.
To add salt to the wound, Malema blurts out his “suspicions” publicly, knowing very well this is a political attack against a magistrate, to which she cannot respond.
Malema may have stopped short of directly inciting his followers to go on a rampage against the state, but he has not done this nation any service.
Given an opportunity to uphold the law, promote it and inspire people to respect it, considering our acrimonious past relationship with it, he has thrown that opportunity to the dogs.
Perhaps he missed that opportunity even more when he picked up a loaded gun and fired it inside a stadium full of his own supporters.
Without any sense of responsibility that should go with his status as a leader and an lawmaker (MP), he then told the court throughout the trial that it was a toy gun.
When these things are looked at through the lense of political expediency, their weight is diminished by the blindness of political self-interest.
But when we face the reality of the extent of disrepair in our nation, the realisation is scary.