What South Africa needs now

 The past years have highlighted many failings in South Africa, failings that need to be addressed urgently if the country is to progress. These failings have smothered many of the elements that make up its potential to be a force for good in the world, but those elements still remain, although an observer might be excused for believing that they do not exist.

Even under the Apartheid regime, South Africa’s economy grew strongly, creating an economy that was on a par with most of the world’s great economies, one that could have accommodated the entire population, although the system of legalised separation of the races, and the concomitant hardship that, and other policies, generated for the Black population was a significant factor in holding the country back from the greatness it could have achieved. There was certainly a large element of corruption in the government, although it seems that the corruption was not a driving factor in many of the important economic decisions that were made in those years.

Unfortunately, along with the promise of freedom and democracy that came with the accession of Nelson Mandela to the Presidency, there came a cohort of parasites and profiteers, of people who had nothing to offer the country apart from their pollical connections. They quickly subverted the principles of the Constitution to enable them to use the nation to generate enormous wealth for themselves, often tying that wealth to their association with the governing Party, and always disguising their real motives under a plethora of quasi-righteous doublespeak.

Corruption did not start with Jacob Zuma. Corruption was already present in the early days, when first the plan to indulge in the enormously wasteful and economically worthless purchase of a mass of military equipment was floated. Even at that time, people connected with Zuma and his ANC were negotiating deals for the payment of large bribes in order for investors to gain favourable consideration by the government, at all levels, for the approval of contracts which required consent at that level. Already, by 1995, Provincial governments were suffering from the multi-level corruption of thousands of ghost workers, employees of government bodies who showed up only once per month to collect their illegitimate salaries. Already in 1996, the Premier of the Eastern Cape complained that more than 30 000 ‘workers’ fell into this category, although he did nothing to correct it, and there is no reason to believe that the same situation did not prevail in the other Provinces. At this stage, the corruption was relatively simple: a low-level manager would hire an unqualified person to do a ‘job’ (in reality to fill a position that had been approved, but which achieved no economic benefit for the country). He would negotiate a salary for the job, demanding a cut of that salary for himself. The ‘worker’ would agree to that cut, in order to keep the difference between the balance of the salary and the after-tax total as a reward for his or her complicity. The manager would agree with his superior to share the amount he received, in order to avoid awkward questions being asked, and this process would be repeated on the next level, until the man or woman at the top of the chain would be collecting a small amount from as many as thirty thousand crooked partners in corruption each month. If the final share were as little as R10 per ‘employee’ per month, a high-level manager could rake in as much as R300 000 per month! It can surely be no surprise that many, if not most, of the long-deprived cadres bought into the principle of corruption.

It was in this atmosphere of greed, self-enrichment and crooked thinking that the Arms Deal was borne, and it became easy to see how the main players in that grand corruption were able to subvert the oversight mechanisms of Parliament, an ease strongly supported by the proportional electoral system which deprives the voters, the innocent suckers, of the right to demand accountability from their representatives in Parliament. It was inevitable that the petty larceny would quickly escalate to fraud of the nation on a scale that would make the Mafia envious. This trend was built into the Constitution at an early stage, almost certainly by the negotiators of that critical document, who, no doubt, had their own interests and those of their Party at heart, ignoring the needs of the nation. As always, when politicians are involved in negotiating a law, the good of the voters remained very low on the list of priorities to be satisfied, and then only if it did not stand in the way of them achieving their goals.

The atmosphere of corruption that has pervaded the nation has grown since those early days, with the public simply accepting the crookedness, the dishonesty and the falsity of so much of what we hear from the people the political Parties have put in place to ‘represent’ the voters. The blithe acceptance of strong evidence of corruption and of deviation from what the average citizen would consider to be fair and right has increased steadily, to the point that the State President can deny in Parliament that he received a payment of R450 000 from Bosasa, stating that he would conduct his own son to prison if he found that he had done so, and then correct that some time later, when he declared that he did not know that such a sum had been paid to his election fund, managed by his son. Is it not remarkable that he was not aware that an amount of nearly half a million had been ‘donated’ to his election fund by an organisation that he must have known was under suspicion of having crooked dealings with the State? Is it possible that the State President did not realise that such a sizable ‘donation’ would be made in the expectation of some quid pro quo in the future? Is it not remarkable that the man aspiring to the highest office in the land did not make good his intention to take his son to prison himself, but rather continue to allow the status quo to develop to the point where that son is, once again, involved in a large deal with the State in circumstances that should have aroused some concern? Ramaphosa is far from alone in the race of their families to wealth on the coattails of a willing State.

Ramaphosa has stated on numerous occasions that he would ensure that corrupt persons would be hunted down and prosecuted, yet nothing has been done to bring his own ANC to trial to account for the contract for the supply of turbines for Medupe, that money-sink that continues to blight any possibility of economic recovery, in consideration for the granting of which contract the ANC gained a ‘finder’s fee’ and a shareholding in the South African subsidiary of the supplier, which it subsequently sold at a huge profit. Nothing has been done to punish the perpetrators of the Estina fraud, the Life Esidemi tragedy, even Judge Seriti, who whitewashed the Arms Deal Commission of Enquiry. The many Party members who have been involved in fraud on a grand scale, many of whom have been found guilty, either formally in Court or by judicial commentary are running free and continue to perpetrate bigger, better and more malign frauds against the public purse.

And the public stands back and waits for the second shoe to drop.

It will not, unless it is wrested by force from its place.

The Lebanese government has resigned, forced by the tragedy of the explosion to accept that it is accountable to the people for its lack of performance. Yet the ANC holds firm, although over 300 000 AIDS sufferers have died and South Africa has become the AIDs capital of the world, almost solely as a result of the inaction of Mbeki’s government to take timeous action. That is a multiple of the result of the inadequacy of the Lebanese government. The Arms Deal, which has been calculated to have cost at least R142 billion in present-day terms, and which has cost at least ten times as much in lost economic growth, continues to be denied by the ANC as a massive fraud, although one witness, at least, stated that he saw $20 million being paid into the private bank account of a senior politician. And yet the corrupt companies that undertook to make large (although easily affordable) offset investments in South Africa remain unpunished, although their promises have been largely ignored. One would be forgiven for believing that it is easier to pay R5 million to an over=zealous official than to make an investment of R2 billion. The Covid-19 disaster has thrown millions of citizens out of work, and set the economy back by at least ten years, yet the same incompetent who oversaw the Sarafina 2 fiasco continues to pontificate to the citizens on how they should behave, while presumably, playing a dominant role in the NCCC making ludicrous and almost certainly unjustified and irrational decisions that have continued to exacerbate the economic catastrophe over which the ANC is presiding, all without offering the ‘representatives’ of the people, worthless though they have shown themselves to be, any opportunity to evaluate the rationality of those decisions, all under the cloak of a State of Disaster. The multiple appointments of unqualified and incompetent Ministers of Finance, of Directors of the National Prosecuting Authority, of Commissioners of Police, of CEOs of numerous State Owned Entities such as SAA, SABC, Eskom and many others by Jacob Zuma and his chosen ones were some of the factors that have brought a once-strong economy to its knees, depriving millions of South Africans of their rights under the Constitution to health, to ownership of property, even to the ability to earn a living for themselves and their families, yet the only criminal charges brought against any of the perpetrators of these crimes are those against Jacob Zuma, for his almost petty participation in the Arms Deal corruption, and the chances are that the files will be lost, the Prosecutor will be of low grade and insufficiently prepared and the numerous objections and delays that have characterised the pursuit of justice against him will continue. The many fine words about correcting the dishonesty at all levels of government, the assertions that ‘we will eradicate corruption’, will continue to be uttered at the top level of government, as they have been since at least as long ago as 2012, when Jacob Zuma first put them into the boilerplate text of the State of the Nation address, and they will continue to be ignored for as long as the money flows, for as long as the citizens fail to realise that they are the ones who are entitled, not the politicians and the crooked businessmen.

That realisation may come in one of two possible ways. The one way, which the politicians should bear in mind as a distinct possible response to their continued treasonous conduct, is a public lynching when the people are finally gatvol, a realisation that seems, daily, to be more likely. People who have been made poor while their supposed protectors have continued to rob them, often have no mercy when that tipping point is reached. The other way, probably preferable, is that civil society get together to support a demand that a non-political Integrity Commission be established with the function of evaluating the fitness for public service of any person proposed for public office, from Deputy Director General to State President. The recommendations would be made after a careful evaluation of the background, the honesty, motivations, qualifications, as demonstrated by education and work history, and freedom from taint of the intended appointees. This is a requirement of law in the case of senior officials appointed to banks, insurance companies and financial service providers, and the requirement should not be less in the case of persons appointed to positions of trust in public service in the widest sense. The recommendations would not be politically motivated, as has been shown by the appointment of a Public Protector to be no more than a continuation of the ‘election’ of MPs by the dominant Party. The members of the Commission would be elected initially, and then each such Commissioner would be subject to a repeat evaluation at intervals of not more than two years, to prevent the possibility of such persons becoming tainted by the power they would exercise, and the recommendations relating to appointees, would be reviewed every two years for the same reason. The Commission would be entitled to conduct exhaustive lifestyle audits, and would be entitled to demand prosecution of those they find to have abused the position of trust implicit in public office. The Commission might choose to conduct an interim evaluation of its own accord, or at the instance of a complaint from the public. Most importantly. The Commission would have to be protected under Chapter 6 of the Constitution.

For those who might claim that such a Commission would be overkill, consider this: The much-vaunted Constitution of South Africa has been shown to be severely deficient in the protection of the citizens against the abuse of power by those in high office. Failure to correct that abuse may well result in the lynching of many of those suspected of such abuse. That happened in Italy, when the Italian people realised that their leaders, particularly il Duce, had gone astray. It has happened in other countries. Do you want to see it happen in South Africa? Really?