Memoirs detail sad deterioration of ANC ethos, writes
Make no mistake, this is an important book. It is also a very unusual one.
Its importance lies in the detailed exposure of not only the infamous arms deal
but also the sad deterioration of ethos in the governing
party of South Africa from principled liberation struggle to the
venal, power-hungry squalor of its predecessor. And
very unusual, in that the author "names and shames" without mercy.
Most memoirs exhibit at least some degree of diplomacy in naming those who have
transgressed, or, if they are named, their naughty deeds are usually fudged
(except for court records).
This is often for practical reasons getting sued is an expensive business; only
the dead cannot be libelled.
Perhaps the difference is that Feinstein discovered at first hand just how
destructive and dangerous the mantra of "party loyalty" can be, if it is placed
above a commitment to public accountability.
Perhaps he, like the rest of us, was naive. All political parties demand a
degree of loyalty in order to form a united front; what we had not predicted was
just how swiftly this would happen, and how fierce the stifling of dissent would
be.
This was ever the case in the National Party, which maintained an iron grip on
its public officials to ensure a long-held rule; we are doomed to repeat the
mistakes of our past masters.
It began so well. Feinstein was a young struggalista who had been conscientised
during his varsity years at "Moscow on the Hill" (UCT).
To escape military service he studied further at UCLA and then Cambridge, where
he watched, on his television set, Nelson Mandela walk free from prison in 1990.
This powerful moment inspired him to abandon his PhD and return to help rebuild
the post-apartheid South Africa, initially as part of the support staff at
Codesa.
Then, as member of the (then) PWV Provincial Legislature, he became economic
adviser to Premier Tokyo Sexwale, whom he grew to admire.
Though he agrees that the charismatic and creative-thinking leader is more
"White House than Shell House" (not necessarily a bad thing), Sexwale comes out
well in After the Party, a fate not given to many of his colleagues.
Sexwale persuaded his mentor, Nelson Mandela, to use Feinstein's finance and
economic skills in the national Parliament.
A delightful passage tells of Feinstein, rather mystified, being summoned to
Tuynhuys where a jar of homemade guava jelly was handed to him.
While visiting Bangladesh, an amused Mandela was asked by Feinstein's wife's
grandmother, whom he met there, to take it back to the rookie MP.
Feinstein could not have imagined at the time, euphoric as he was at serving
directly under Mandela's presidency, how destructive this move to Cape Town
Parliament would ultimately prove in his personal as well as public life.
Official trips abroad exposed him to the sordid world of corrupt business;
innocent that he was, it took some time for him to tumble to the shenanigans of
senior politicians such as Peter Mokaba, then chair of Parliament's tourist
committee, who on one posh junket to Hong Kong tried to persuade Feinstein to
promise casino rights to local businessmen to whom
he had sold himself as the likely first Tourism Minister post-1994.
(Later it transpired that Mokaba was paying himself $71 000 a year from the
National Tourism Forum in addition to his ANC salary.)
Mokaba was by no means the only one to figure out how to
dip his hand in the till. Nor was he the first or last influential ANC
figure to have a blind eye turned by the party to his dodgy activities.
Feinstein was initially delighted that corruption was being addressed as it
almost never had, publicly, under the apartheid regime.
He cites the recovery of half of the R14 million misappropriated in the Sarafina
II debacle by Mbongeni Ngema, who had been contracted by the Department of
Health to produce an ill-fated and almost never-performed HIV-Aids education
musical.
Mandela encouraged sharp discussion and passionate argument. But Thabo Mbeki's
presidency ushered in an era of stifled debate and
lurking suspicions inside caucus and without.
Feinstein began to take note (and notes), especially of such figures as the new
Chief Whip.
Earlier empathy with Tony Yengeni's torture during incarceration gave way to
alarm at his "immense arrogance".
This appointment marked a key political turning point for the ANC in Parliament,
writes Feinstein: "Yengeni set himself up as the centre of discipline and the
dispenser of patronage. He laid down the political line and meaningful
discussion in caucus began to dissipate."
Key to this particular problem, the author believes, is the "party list" system
of proportional representation. Every MP and MPL is
dependent on party patronage for their positions, and brown-nosing is
amply rewarded while spirited dissent is a one-way ticket either to the back
benches or political oblivion.
It stifles, in particular, the younger and less senior members, who as yet have
no particular clout or profile to trade; it therefore ensures "voting fodder",
as senior officials of the party make all crucial decisions and the rest vote
according to instruction.
The author was also aghast at the fanatical Aids denialism of Mbeki, which
continued in-house even after Mbeki had, in the face of international criticism,
supposedly withdrawn from the public debate. Feinstein's detailed caucus notes
of Mbeki's diatribes on this subject are chilling.
He admits in After the Party to being so shattered by the president's views, and
the sycophantic cheering of his comrades with few exceptions Pregs Govender and
Barbara Hogan among them that he leaked his caucus notes to the then political
editor of the Mail & Guardian, Howard Barrell, who printed them almost verbatim.
Leaks are common in politics. It is, however, unusual for someone to publically
own up to it. But then Feinstein has faced a bigger demon: for this book's
crucial core is a very detailed account of how the Parliamentary Public Accounts
Committee, on which he was the ranking ANC member under the peerless and heroic
chairing of Gavin Woods (then an IFP MP), was methodically subverted in its task
of investigating the arms deal.
This expose, at the end of the book, is so disheartening that it deserves to be
read in full: Feinstein warned at the time that unless the arms deal was fully
investigated, the corruption associated with it (especially
key figures such as Joe Modise and the
Shaik brothers) and the many
lies exposed, it would come back to haunt the ANC.
(Current overseas investigators into our arms deal believe that
R1 billion was spent on bribes *1.) It was a
prescient prophesy, and has deeply diminished public opinion of the new
politicians. We expected better; alas, we got more of the same.
After the Party is, despite its subject, grippingly readable. It is not
beautifully written, but then it doesn't need to be. All that is needed is
clarity and passion and for the most part it has that, and more.
It is, of course, Feinstein's personal reflection of politics and whereas his
notes are presumably accurate, some of his suppositions may not be so.
There are a few niggling mistakes, but nothing that detracts from the big
picture. Anyone with an interest in current events will simply not be able to
put it down: I couldn't.
In a way, After the Party is a funeral oration for the golden past, when the
hope of the future lay in the hands of a victorious liberation movement and its
remarkable leaders, including Oliver Tambo and Chris Hani, neither of whom lived
to see a democratic South Africa.
It's hard not to feel that we have fallen a long way since those days. I guess
what has happened is the glum feeling that we've joined the club politics as
usual. What a shame.
With acknowledgements to Beverley Roos Muller and Cape Argus.
*1I think it's more like R2,5
billion in bribes across the spectrum of the equipment acquisition alone.
Me thinks it goes something like this :
LIFT: R750 million
ALFA: R750 million
Corvette Platform: R300 million
Corvette Combat Suite: R300 million
Submarine: R300 million
LUH: R100 million
Total: R1 500 million
This was in respect of purchases of R30,2435 billion.
And we haven't even come to the National Industrial Participation (NIP) side
yet.
This was in respect of "business" supposedly worth of R105 billion.
To put the above into perspective, some time in around the 2003 timeframe I was
visited by Dr Peter Batchelor of UCT's Center for Conflict Resolution and Prof
Paul Dunne a respected UK academic. They had been contracted by the Department
of Finance (now Treasury) to investigate and report on the offsets (i.e. DIP and
NIP) of the Arms Deal.
During the meeting, which was more the form of an interview based on a very
comprehensive questionnaire I had completed prior to the meeting, Dr Batchelor
asked me my estimate of the graft that went down in the Arms Deal.
I explained to him that I had no idea of the NIP side because everything was so
secretive, but on the acquisition side that it probably amounted to between 3%
and 5% of the total (i.e. between R900 million and R1,5 billion in 1999 Rands
[equivalent to between R2 billion and R3,5 billion in 2008 Rands]).
Dr Batchelor's response was some like "good try" and that their estimate was
between 5% and 7%, maybe 10%, of the total.
Unfortunately we don't know what this total is because of the unquantifiable
magnitude of the NIP component of the Arms Deal. But it must be at least R50
billion in 1999 terms.
Therefore the total Arms Deal graft probably amounts to between R4 billion and
R5,6 billion in 1999 Rands [equivalent to between R9 billion and R13 billion in
2008 Rands]).
And what happened to Dr Peter Batchelor and his report?
My understanding is that he got so fearful of completing his research and
writing the report that he resigned from UCT and disappeared to Switzerland.
But this all fades into comparative insignificance with the ANC's Chancellor
House's 25% share of the latest Eskom R80 billion acquisitions for the Medupi
and Project Bravo power stations being built in Limpopo and Mpumalanga as I
write this sad tale.
And this R80 billion is just the beginning of Eskom's R1 300 billion capital
expansion programme for the next 20 to 30 years..
And just who is Eskom?
Eskom is the giant electric power company owned by each and every South African
citizen and for no good reason having as its chairman one Valli Moosa who also
just happens to be an ex-ANC government minister and current member of the ANC's
funding committee.
Probably makes Chippy Shaik's conflict of interest fade into comparative
insignificance.