Corruption in South Africa

 

The ANC and people close to the ANC have recently been spouting out about the dangers of corruption, the threat it poses, particularly to the poor, the danger it poses to any advance of the country from its present situation. 

Very admirable, if only it could be believed!

The view that these people are putting out to the gullible public, that corruption is confined to the lower levels of Government, is an obvious attempt to divert the attention of the public from the truth.  There is no doubt that there is extensive corruption at the lower levels of Government, and that this corruption has been a major drag on the development of the economy and the creation of jobs.  But that is not the whole picture.

The real fact of the situation is that corruption has become pervasive.  It is practiced at all levels of Government.  No person can have any doubt that the top people in the ANC have benefited to a huge extent from corrupt dealings.  The enquiry into the corruption in the Arms Deal Scandal of the late 1990s is a real example of this, and that has never been dealt with correctly.  That corruption, a theft from the people of South Africa of over R50 000 000 000 (that is not a misprint – the total cost of the munitions was the value of that fraud, since those arms were never needed by the country and should never have been purchased.  The deals were solely a means to allow the top politicians and Military officials to build in a bribe.) occurred at a time when President Thabo Mbeki was attempting to convince the public that the country could not afford to treat the victims of HIV/AIDS.  The Arms Deal was a prime factor in catapulting South Africa into the position of the country with the highest AIDS infection rate in the world!  The Arms Deals have never been effectively or openly investigated, and the cover-up of the Deals, the suppression of even a Parliamentary Enquiry into the transactions, remain a huge indictment of the corruption of the Party that has claimed to hold the moral high ground.

If there is to be any real attempt to wipe out corruption in South Africa, it must start with meaningful, transparent and independent investigation of the top people in Government.  It must look into the roles played by all of those in positions of power and influence in the Government during the dark days of the Arms Deal Scandal, followed by the resignation from any form of public office, including Party positions, of all of those found to have been implicated in the corruption and in the cover-up.  It must result in convictions and long prison sentences for the guilty, with no possibility of pardon or remission of the sentences.

If this is not done, if all that the ANC is capable of doing is making grand statements about how ‘corruption must be wiped out’, the public will always be entitled to ask, when it is announced that fraccing will be permitted in the Karoo, without the report on the subject being released for public scrutiny, “Who is receiving the bribe, and how much is it?”