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?
