Last Friday, I was shocked and outraged when I read a piece by investigative journalist and author Jacques Pauw, in which he told how he was brutalised by police at a top-end restaurant in Cape Town.

He wrote that on Saturday, February 6, he went to a restaurant at the posh V&A Waterfront precinct. There he ate and, by his admission, drank a lot. His bill, which was more than R1,000, came. But his card was declined by the machine...