From New York to New South Wales people have waited with baited breath to find out if Oscar Pistorius would be found guilty of murdering his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, in South Africa's version of the OJ Simpson trial. As commentators analyzed every evidentiary turn, the trial revealed the paranoid world in which many wealthy white South Africans live. From the assignment of a highly regarded prosecutor and judge to the case, it also showed that the South African state is willing to expend incredible resources to bring a high profile suspect to justice. Yet even as the Pistorius trial has dominated international headlines about South Africa, two lesser known public hearings - the Khayelitsha and Marikana Commissions of Inquiry - reveal more about the challenges with crime and policing average South Africans face. They are also more consequential. Together they show that who has access to the country's basic institutions of the rule of law is decided as much by party politics as the rights of citizenship. The Khayelitsha Commission demonstrates this clearly. Presided over by a former Constitutional Court judge and head of the National Prosecuting Authority, the Khayelitsha Commission investigated police inefficiency in the Cape Town suburb of [...]
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