Comment and analysis : the crisis of criminal justice in South Africa

• Published date: 01 September 2020
• Author: Edwin Cameron
• Pages: 3-10
• Date: 01 September 2020
• DOI: 10.17159/2413-3108/2020/v0n68a9253

4 – 1

SA CRIME QUARTERLY NO. 69 • 2020

Comment

and analysis

The crisis of criminal justice

in South Africa

South African

In 2017, I delivered a lecture at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) aimed at confronting a

controversial and often overlooked crisis in the criminal justice system – the minimum sentencing

regime.2 While writing that lecture, which forms the basis of this article, I originally entitled it ‘Crisis?

What Crisis? Why Criminal Justice is Failing All in South Africa’. Shortly after that, the tragedy of

Uyinene Mrwetyana’s death hit South Africa. The anguish of a vulnerable woman at the very

University where the lecture was to be delivered having her life brutally ended, in unspeakably

nightmarish moments, by the exertion over her of ghastly destructive male dominance, shocked us

all to the core. It elicited a national outpouring of grief and rage – and, rightfully, a new demand for

answers from our criminal justice system. A whimsical title no longer seemed appropriate. Things are

too deadly – deathly – serious.

CR I ME QUA RT E R LY

Edwin Cameron1

cameron.edwin@gmail.com

http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/2413-3108/2020/v0n68a9253

No. 69 | 2020

I do not suggest that criminals, especially those

that are violent against women, do not deserve

harsh punishments. My central thesis is that

minimum sentences are no response at all to

curbing crime in South Africa and to making our

people – vulnerable young people like Uyinene

– safe. The minimum sentencing regime is

a misdirected, hugely costly and above all

ineffective way of punishing criminals and

dealing with crime. It has been an extravagant

mistake of science, understanding, and policy

and social response.

In this article, I summarise some of the

arguments from that lecture and consider