MALAIKA MAHLATSI | The dangerous lesson that Gayton McKenzie internalised about optics and (in)justice

The PA’s deputy president, Kenny Kunene, repeatedly stated that the South African National Defense Force (SANDF) and the Border Management Authority (BMA) were failing to stem the flow of undocumented migrants into South Africa.

The BMA is the mandated, armed, and integrated frontline authority responsible for securing the country's borders, managing ports of entry, and enforcing immigration laws.

It coordinates cross-border movements, prevents illicit smuggling, and manages biosecurity, agricultural, and health, phyto-sanitary regulations across all land, sea, and air borders. The SANDF complements the BMA’s work.

McKenzie, Kunene and members of the PA are not authorised officials – they are political actors who broke the law. But they were celebrated by millions of South Africans and treated like heroes for their actions. This is understandable given the extent of polarisation in our country.

But when people who engage in unlawful action are rewarded with a ministerial position and the position of a member of the mayoral committee (MMC) in the wealthiest metropolitan municipality in the country, the message it sends across is that political mileage is more important than the law, and by extension, more significant than justice.

Her mother, Kelly Smith, and her co-accused, Boeta Appollis and Steveno van Rhyn, were arrested following the disappearance, and were subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment for human trafficking and 10 years for kidnapping.

Joshlin has still not been found. McKenzie became deeply involved in the case and recently launched the Joshlin Smith Foundation, appointing his own friends and associates to the board. Not a single member of Middelpos or Saldanha, broadly, form part of the board.

This is despite the fact that several community members have been consistently involved in the perilous work of searching for Joshlin since her disappearance, using their own financial and non-financial resources in the process.

Cheslyn Steenberg, board member of the foundation who also happens to be a member of the PA, trivialised this by arguing that the board is in its infancy, implying that issues of representation would be dealt with over time. And while it may be true that newly formed institutions require time to stabilise, the fact that a foundation of this nature would exclude members of the missing child’s community at inception speaks volumes about whose voice is McKenzie deems important and whose, unimportant.

Just as he so casually spat on the principle of administrative justice with the border patrols, he is today spitting on the principle of representational justice with the Joshlin Smith Foundation.

Today, optics matter too in the case of Joshlin Smith because the scourge of gender-based violence (GBV) and the abuse of children is so deeply personal to all of us that we would give anything to see it end.

McKenzie knows that being seen to be doing the work of searching for Joshlin earns him political mileage in ways that it does not for the individuals in Saldanha who have been doing the work long before he entered the scene.

South Africans will applaud McKenzie and say he is at least doing something, disregarding that this “something” comes at the expense of sustainable and meaningful justice. They will do this because they have done it before and McKenzie knows this. This knowledge, in the hands of someone who is committed to playing to the gallery at all cost, is dangerous.