This week the Hawks announced they were shutting down the Arms
Deal investigation. There was no public outcry. There comes a point
when a country starts to suffer from scandal fatigue. Corrupt
governments (especially those whose prospects of re-election are
secure) know that most corruption scandals eventually fizzle out if
the cover-up can be dragged out long enough. The Arms Deal is a
case in point. The Hawks’ announcement is merely the latest in a
series of Arms Deal cover-ups that span an entire decade.
An opposition party cannot afford the luxury of succumbing to
scandal fatigue. We will continue digging and we believe that
eventually, the truth will out. We are, for example, pursuing a
court challenge against the National Prosecuting Authority’s
decision to withdraw corruption charges against President Zuma.
The way in which President Zuma’s legal team has used every possible
delaying tactic over the past decade to prevent the substantive case
from being tested in a competent court, is a scandal in its own
right. The abuse of the criminal justice system in the Arms Deal
cover-up will do even more damage to our country’s constitutional
democracy than the corruption itself.
As the Hawks drop this case, it is important to reflect on what
happened over the past decade and ask ourselves a few questions.
How did the ANC manage to cover-up such a massive corruption
scandal, involving so many individuals, for so long, and get away
with it? Why have all the mechanisms of our constitutional
democracy – the media, the courts, the opposition – failed to do
more than scratch the surface of this matter? What does this say
about our ability to prevent the slide into the corrupt and criminal
state that has destroyed so many other countries on our continent?
I believe the root cause of the rot, and the cover-up, can be
summarized in two words:
cadre
deployment*1. The key lesson of our continent over the past
half century is that this form of political patronage is
incompatible with constitutional democracy. Indeed, it is the root
cause of the failed state.
The ANC has openly explained that it deploys its “cadres” into
“strategic positions” in all institutions of state to place the
party’s interests first. A deployed cadre’s primary responsibility
is to protect the party and its leaders, not fulfill the
constitutional mandate of preventing power abuse. In fact, cadre
deployment turns supposedly “independent” state institutions into
extensions of the ANC’s power abuse. In this way, a corrupt ruling
party seeks to turn an independent criminal justice system into a
mechanism that will protect its political allies and persecute its
opponents.
Looking back over the past decade, it is clear that the Arms Deal
corruption was so successfully covered up because, at nearly every
step of the way, there was a deployed ANC cadre who was willing to
play their part in squashing the investigation. If they were not
prepared to do so, they were simply removed, and “re-deployed”,
bringing their political careers to an end.
Let’s go back to the beginning to see how it played out.
When allegations of Arms Deal corruption first surfaced, a Joint
Investigating Team (JIT) was set up by President Mbeki to
investigate. It was significant that the President ignored the
recommendation of Parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts
(SCOPA) to include the Special Investigating Unit (SIU), headed by
an independent Judge, as part of the investigating team.
The JIT exonerated government of any wrongdoing, leading to
widespread allegations that the report was a whitewash. These
suspicions were confirmed when it emerged later that crucial facts
and findings were edited out of the final report after the
Department of Defence and the Office of the President had directly
intervened. Most significantly, whereas the draft JIT report
concluded that there were “fundamental flaws” in the procurement
process, the final sanitised version concluded:
“No evidence was found of any improper or unlawful conduct by the
Government…There are therefore no grounds to suggest that the
Government’s contracting position is flawed.”
Somewhere along the line, loyal cadres could be counted on to cave
in to political pressure to “put the party’s interests first”. The
same could not be said of Judge Willem Heath, which is why Mbeki
excluded him from the investigating team in the first place.
Someone else who refused to yield to this pressure was ANC MP Andrew
Feinstein, a member of SCOPA. When he insisted that Judge Heath be
included in the Joint Investigating Team, he was demoted from his
position as head of the ANC study group on SCOPA and instructed not
to speak in the committee without permission. Feinstein eventually
resigned from Parliament altogether in August 2001. The ANC deployed
more pliant cadres to SCOPA to prevent further in-depth scrutiny of
the Arms Deal.
With the lid firmly placed on SCOPA, things went quiet for a while
on the Arms Deal front.
The matter resurfaced only when it became a tool in the ANC’s
growing internal battle between Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma. In 2003,
the NDPP, Bulelani Ncguka, (an Mbeki appointee and ally) took the
decision to prosecute Jacob Zuma’s “financial adviser” Schabir Shaik.
Shaik was found guilty of corruption, leading the trail directly to
Jacob Zuma. The war was then on between the “deployed cadres” who
supported different factions within the ANC.
This is the lens through which one must analyse the battle to
prosecute Jacob Zuma, and his counter strategy to get off the hook.
During this process Zuma himself made the point that, if he was
selectively prosecuted, he would implicate others, and bring down
the ANC’s whole pack of cards.
In the context of this raging battle, it was instructive to see what
happened to “deployees” who refused to put the Party’s factional
interests ahead of their constitutional responsibilities. The
clearest example is Vusi Pikoli (who replaced Bulelani Ncguka as the
National Director of Public Prosecutions). Pikoli managed to defy
instructions from the leaders of both factions of the ANC as he
sought to undertake his constitutional responsibility without fear
or favour.
When Pikoli pressed charges against President Mbeki’s ally Jackie
Selebi, Mbeki set up the Ginwala Commission to investigate whether
Pikoli was fit and proper to hold office. Before Ginwala reported
her findings, the winds of political change had blown through the
ANC and President Mbeki had been replaced by acting President
Kgalema Motlanthe. Although Ginwala found that Pikoli was actually
fit and proper to hold office, Motlanthe seized on a technical
aspect of her report and fired Pikoli anyway. Pikoli had, after
all, decided to prosecute Jacob Zuma. It was equally essential for
the Zuma faction of the ANC to stop Pikoli in his tracks. Pikoli’s
successor Mokotedi Mpshe duly dropped charges against Zuma for
reasons that defy rational analysis.
Until the truth is uncovered, the Arms Deal will remain a festering
sore on our body politic. Not just because of the scale of the
corruption involved, but because of the way that constitutional
institutions were manipulated and politicised through cadre
deployment, with profound and lasting implications. In fact,
through cadre deployment, the ANC has fundamentally undermined our
constitution without changing a single word of it.
Unfortunately there are still many people who do not get it.
This week a group of about 30 “lawyers and activists” sprang to the
defence of Janet Love, who was recently “deployed” by the ANC from
its National Executive Committee to the Human Rights Commission.
This move was described by ANC Secretary General, Gwede Mantashe
himself, as a “deployment” for “strategic” reasons.
I criticized this move, describing the deployment of various ANC
“cadres” (including former MPs) as a threat to the independence of
Chapter 9 Institutions including the Human Rights Commission.
The group of “lawyers and activists” singled out Janet Love for
protection, arguing that she has a sterling record as a human rights
lawyer and would never kowtow to the ANC.
That may be so, but it misses the point entirely.
Deployed cadres have a DUTY to promote the interests of the dominant
faction in the ANC in whatever institution they are deployed to. If
they do not, they are soon “re-deployed”. The practice of “cadre
deployment” has destroyed public confidence in any institution
staffed by people that the ANC itself describes as strategic “deployees”.
Perhaps the lawyers and activists might like to undertake a closer
study of what happened to key people who once served on the Human
Rights Commission (both staff and commissioners) who had the guts to
stand up to the ANC. We have already begun this study, and the
results are revealing, to say the least.
An isolated “cadre” here and there who believes her duty to the
Constitution comes first, does not in any way lessen the threat the
“cadre deployment” poses to our democracy.
With acknowledgements to
Helen Zille and DA Newsroom.
Actually, this is only partly true.
The main reason why there has been no proper will to investigate the
Arms Deal is another pair of words, Nelson Mandela.