Call The Blackmailers' Bluff [Business Day, 2005-06-07]

Publication	Business Day
Date	2005-06-07
Reporter	Karima Brown
Web Link	www.bday.co.za

The African National Congress (ANC) has no choice but to crack the whip against corruption in its own ranks following the conviction last week of Schabir Shaik financial adviser to Deputy President Jacob Zuma on two counts of corruption and one count of fraud.

Failure to do so would strengthen the growing perception that the ANC creates “escape clauses” for wrongdoers in the party who are so powerful they can hold it to ransom by threatening to air its dirty linen in public. For the ANC, the stakes cannot be higher.

Dealing with the political implications of Shaik’s conviction for Zuma, who is also the ANC’s deputy president, means the ANC must confront stark questions about what kind of party it wants to be and what calibre of leader and cadre it wants to develop. This means, among other things, that the ANC must provide clear guidelines for members involved in business and take a firm stand where conflicts of interest arise for those holding public office.

The ANC must also act decisively against those who abuse public office for personal gain. Stalling on these thorny issues means the organisation runs the risk of having its legacy as a liberation movement that fought for transparency and clean governance tainted forever.

There are compelling reasons why the ANC must act now against those who exploit their positions in the party to gain money and power. Politics is as much about perception as it is about power, and the general view is that corruption in the ANC has become almost pervasive.

The ANC finds itself with its back to the wall, battling graft allegations on several fronts barely 10 years into our democracy. The weak defence that apartheid rulers were no different simply does not hold, given that the politics of liberation demand of necessity a different and higher moral code.

At local government level, the ANC has been forced to admit its councillors are often the main culprits in wasting public funds, resulting in slow or nonexistent delivery of basic services. ANC MPs also make up the bulk of those fingered in the travel voucher scam which defrauded Parliament of more than R16m.

Judge Hillary Squires’ judgment last week that the relationship between Shaik and Zuma was “generally corrupt” has catapulted the issue of corruption to the highest levels of the ruling party. It forces the organisation to look inward to see how the core of the ANC has been eroded by the actions of those who have succumbed to temptation.

Senior ANC leaders, including President Thabo Mbeki, repeatedly rail against “careerists” and those who use the ANC to “feather their own nests”. Yet the party's commitment to root out corruption with “firmness and resolve” rings hollow because of the ANC’s failure to match its words with action.

Always slow off the mark when it has to deal with its own, the ANC is partly to blame for the perception that corruption has become part of the organisation’s political culture. The fact that its MPs continue to serve in public office despite being found guilty of defrauding Parliament is a case in point. The dragged-out approach to dealing with wrongdoers such as Beaufort West strongman Truman Prince, and the re-election of ANC Northern Cape leader John Block after he confessed to using public funds for private use, also lend credence to criticism that the ANC lets its own get away with murder *1. How else is one to understand its reluctance to act against wrongdoers?

Part of the answer lies in the fact that the ANC panders to political blackmail.

Often, party bosses warn that tough action against corrupt individuals makes the organisation vulnerable to having its dirty linen aired in public. This threat is often expressed along the lines that “so-and-so will not go down alone” if the ANC acts against him. This prevents the ANC from taking stern measures.

The ANC, always keen to preserve what analysts call the “political centre”, often sidesteps corruption as it tries to balance the interests of various factions within the organisation.

The downside of this approach is that the party is forever beholden to cliques which threaten to “bring the house down”. This fear means no action is taken. The result, according to ANC secretary-general Kgalema Motlanthe, is the “erosion of the core” of the ANC.

The ANC also fails to rebuke its senior members who question the legitimacy of the legal system.

ANC Youth League president Fikile Mbalula, for example, sees no problem with slating Squires as an “apartheid judge” who presided over a “miscarriage of justice” in the Shaik trial.

His sentiments are similar to those expressed by ANC supporters when Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and Allan Boesak were found guilty of wrongdoing by the courts.

The ANC’s silence in these instances bolsters those who cast aspersions on the integrity of law enforcement agencies and the individuals who head them, such as former director of public prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka.

By not protecting the legitimacy of institutions over which it presides as the ruling party, the ANC has allowed a perception to cement that state institutions are being used to settle political scores.

If the ANC does not unambiguously protect the criminal justice system while pointing out the transformation challenges that face the system it will always send out mixed signals to its members and supporters. They will feel confident in rejecting not only the people who preside over these institutions, but the institutions themselves as relics of apartheid. This will undermine efforts to combat corruption.

It also means that a political and business elite can easily manipulate popular sentiment and use it to undermine state institutions. The ANC, by its own admission, has difficulty coping with all manner of people who flock to it in the hope that it will give them access to power and resources and not because they share its political and economic vision. It is no secret that powerful business interests have made a play for the organisation.

A member of the ANC’s national executive committee said recently that the factions within the organisation had little to do with ideology and everything to do with factional alignments to competing business interests.

“We are no longer arguing about issues of relevance in the ANC but about who is getting what tender,” he said.

This “scramble for tenders” is an example of the increasingly problematic relationship between money and politics in the ANC.

The Shaik verdict has provided the ruling party with a window of opportunity to decisively act against corruption.

It is time for the ANC leadership to pull the rug out from under the blackmailers and let the chips fall where they may *2. It does not take a rocket scientist to know which side will enjoy the confidence of the South African people.

*2 The ANC-led government is so weak on corruption that when the Arms Deal Joint Investigation Report handed over the DoD's Chief of Acquisitions on a plate on their finding of a material conflict of interest, the DoD held a secret tribunal during the Christmas period. This tribunal was presided over by one Zam Titus and convicted the party on a count of "the illegal disclosure of information" (and possibly also one of insubordination). The sanction was a written final warning.

The man was allowed to return to work and later to resign some four months later with his integrity intact and even to get a parting cocktail party and complimentary article in Armscor's Salvo magazine.

What kind of cover-up could have been done in the four month period between returning to work and vacating office?