What is the root of the rot?
The comradeship of the struggle against apartheid has become a twisted condonation of corruption
January 24, 2007 Edition 1
Allister Sparks
Carol Paton's superb analysis in last week's Financial Mail of the culture of competitive greed that has gripped the ANC adds a new dimension to our understanding of the forces that are shaping our political landscape.
Not that what she told us was entirely new. The air has been full of such accusations for months. But what Paton has done is to add substance to suspicion, to present evidence and even official confirmation of what was anecdotal chatter.
Particularly important is the startling admission she brings from the secretary-general of the ANC, Kgalema Motlanthe. "This rot is across the board," she quotes Motlanthe as saying. "It's not confined to any level or any area of the country. Almost every project is conceived because it offers opportunities for certain people to make money."
In John Perlman's After Eight Debate radio show on Monday, Motlanthe not only confirmed that statement, but amplified it. The rot constituted "a terrible situation", he said, and was "beginning to change the character of the ANC".
This is ground-breaking stuff, for it changes the framework of political analysis at a time when the ANC alliance is wrestling with a succession crisis that is threatening to tear it apart.
Yes, there are ideological differences involved in that power struggle. But what Paton has done is to highlight the fact that the ideological divide is not the only thing causing the bitter conflict between the new black middle class and the working and underclasses, between those riding on the upper and lower floors of Thabo Mbeki's double-storeyed economic house that has no interconnecting stairway.
It is also about the struggle to gain access to the cookie jar of jobs, tender contracts and business opportunities.
There is a correlation between the two, of course, but it is evident that the class divide is being greatly amplified by resentment at the way the new arrivistes are using their positions of political power to enrich themselves and their supporters - and then to flaunt the results with lifestyles of ostentatious affluence.
It is also clear that the mud-wrestling is not confined to the class divide. It is rife within the middle class as well.
It means the prime purpose of seeking political power has become personal enrichment rather than public service. This cuts across the entire history and traditional value system of the 95-year-old ANC, based as it was on altruism and personal sacrifice to liberate the people of South Africa from the scourge of apartheid.
To some extent the roots of this ethical corrosion go back a long way. As traditional African social systems and cultural values came under pressure from our industrial revolution and rapid urbanisation, apartheid prevented a normal adjustment to a new set of values.
When laws are unjust there can be no respect for the law, only contempt and a pride in defying them. When imprisonment becomes the common lot of nearly everyone, and particularly of the liberation leaders, it loses its stigma and even becomes a badge of honour.
Then again, under apartheid all black people were in the same boat. There was an equalitarianism about their oppression that made it natural to be united and idealistic about the struggle to end that common oppression and build a better society. But liberation has ended that commonality and opened the way for individual opportunism, which many are grasping with a greed born of long deprivation.
Nor did white South Africa set much of an altruistic example during those earlier years. It was a greedy society, and a conspicuously affluent one, living off the benefits of cheap black labour and deeply corrupt in its own ethnic nepotism. No one who was a political journalist during those years was unaware of the extent to which Nat politicians fiddled with the tender system and granted contracts to Nat companies of which they were benefactors.
Is it really so surprising that black politicians should now be saying: "It's our turn?"
But don't mistake explanation for condonation. This corruption must stop, otherwise it will destroy not only the soul of the ANC but the whole future of the new South Africa.
What has to be faced is that there has been a comprehensive failure of leadership in the ANC in not recognising the dangers to their own value system of altruistic service and nation building that would inevitably come with the acquisition of political power. In exile they had seen it happen in other newly liberated countries. They should have been forewarned.
Instead they have indulged the culture of comradeship. They had stood together during the hard years of the liberation struggle and now the instinct is to stand together in power even as they see comrades act corruptly. The instinct is to cover up, to support, to prevent proper investigations. And so the corruption metastases.
President Thabo Mbeki went hard for affirmative action and black economic empowerment - for the best of reasons. As he told me in an interview four years ago: "When you talk about the creation of a nonracial South Africa, it's not only about political institutions and the vote. It's got to be across the board. There has to be deracialisation of the economy as well."
Quite right. But he should have foreseen the attendant dangers and taken steps to counter them.
Some spotted the signs early and warned of them. Nelson Mandela warned of the need for an "RDP of the soul". But nothing was done. The culture of comradeship has been overriding. And so, instead of allowing the imprisonment of Tony Yengeni and Schabir Shaik to stand as warning signals of official disapproval, both have been given special treatment that sends out a message of condonation instead.
The same goes for the mild treatment of the Travelgate miscreants. And are we now going to see a reprieve for Mbulelo Goniwe?
History, I am sure, will record that the arms deal was the seminal event that started this rot. There were loud warnings at the time, but they went unheeded. All energies were devoted to covering up, to preventing investigations - and this is still ongoing.
The entire leadership must share the blame: Thabo Mbeki, who as president of the ANC should have spotted the danger signs early and countered them immediately; Jacob Zuma, who has allowed himself as deputy president of the ANC to become the focal figure of an entire movement to discredit investigations and prevent the judicial process from getting in the way of his presidential ambitions; Zwelinzima Vavi and Blade Nzimande for whipping up the alliance partners into a tsunami of support for Zuma; the ANC Youth League and the Young Communist League for doing likewise.
And, yes, even Kgalema Motlanthe. Although he must be commended for speaking out candidly now, in his 10-year tenure as organisational head of the ANC's operations he has allowed it to sink into a shambolic state where, as Paton notes, there is "a vacuum of oversight", and which can allow its official spokesperson, Smuts Ngonyama, to stand up and proclaim to every member of this venerable organisation, in a single phrase that sums up the whole malaise: "I didn't struggle to be poor."
That, too, is leadership failure.
Maybe then she will understand that the greed will be with us for sometime yet. Hell, it would be stupid not to jump on the GTRAIN if you have the opportunity.
lol. Pretty good article though.