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Hold off with the schadenfreugasms

Aug 30th, 2011
by Pierre De Vos.
70 comments

It is not always easy to be principled and consistent, more so when one happens to be a politician in a constitutional democracy and one has to keep one’s core supporters happy while also fending off one’s enemies inside and outside the political party one belongs to. Most politicians cannot help but act in expedient and self-serving ways in order to advance their immediate interests and careers. In a well-functioning constitutional democracy this impulse is checked by ordinary voters who help to hold politicians accountable and force those politicians to pay at least lip-service to a set of core principles.

In a country like South Africa, there are far less pressure on politicians to act in a principled, honest and consistent manner.

Unlike Constitutional Court judges, who are constrained – at least to some degree - by the text of the Constitution and by the legal precedent established by a long line of judgments, politicians do not have to be consistent, particularly honest or principled. As long as they achieve their short term goals – which usually entails, on the one hand, avoiding humiliation and avoiding being exposed as charlatans or crooks and, on the other hand, advancing their careers to climb the greasy poll - they have a relatively free hand to say and do anything that the voting public will let them get away with.

Thus, a politician like Helen Zille could effortlessly lambast ANC leaders for launching a scathing and unwarranted personal attack on the judges of the Constitutional Court, only to launch a scathing and unwarranted personal attack on a judge of the Cape High Court a few months later. Those who support her party almost all staunchly defended her – regardless of the principles involved – just as many of those who defended Jacob Zuma during his legal troubles did so – regardless of the facts.

But sometimes even politicians get caught out and then the ensuing spectacle presents such a bizarre and macabre contrast between what the politician used to say and do and what he or she now says or does, that the politician runs the risk of completely losing any credibility – even with the very gullible voting public who might once have defended the politician regardless of the facts.

Recall that after Schabir Shaik was convicted of bribing Jacob Zuma and then President Thabo Mbeki removed Zuma as Deputy President of the country in anticipation of him being charged with fraud and corruption, Zuma skilfully exploited his image as a victim. Zuma subtly encouraged his supporters to defend him and to attack his “enemies”, especially Mbeki. This Cosatu, the SACP and the ANC Youth League and their supporters did with little care for the consequences of their actions or any appeal to reason or principle.

Thus Mbeki was vilified and branded as a snake, and ANC T-shirts with his face on it was burnt by Zuma supporters who claimed that they would die for their leader – no matter whether he was corrupt and no matter what he might or might not have done with that baby oil in that room with the young daughter of an old and dear comrade friend. Cosatu, the SACP and the ANC Youth League all rallied behind Zuma because they had the short term goal of getting rid of Mbeki to unite them.

Very few of these politicians paused to ask whether Zuma might not have a case to answer in court – given the fact that Shaik had already been convicted of bribing him. They did not ask whether Zuma would make a good President of the ANC and the country. They did not really explore questions about President Zuma’s values and never stopped to ask whether – as supposedly principled and progressive organisations – they should support a leader who seemed to be rather surprisingly patriarchal and conservative in his views.

One would therefore be excused if one had a bit of a schadenfreugasm – to use a phrase popularised by Jon Stewart’s Daily Show – about the events today outside Luthuli House. While ANC Youth League President Julius Malema was facing disciplinary charges inside ANC headquarters, outside some of his supporters were pelting police and journalists with bricks, burning ANC T-shirts with the image of President Jacob Zuma and chanting slogans about how they would kill for Malema. How ironic that ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe, who blindly supported Zuma, today issued a statement condemning the behaviour of ANC Youth League supporters, conveniently forgetting the behaviour of the crowds outside the court when Zuma was charged with rape and when he made appearances during his many court battles with the Scorpions

Of course, many reasons could be advanced for the embarrassing but not unfamiliar display outside ANC headquarters today: the fact that Malema’s message of nationalisation resonates with some unemployed youth, that Malema is a role model for people looking at his flashy success, that the ANC leadership had encouraged this populism with their own behaviour, as well as any number of other explanations could be offered. But as I am not a professional political analyst I am far from sure that anything I could say on this topic would be of much interest or would show any special insight.

The point I would like to make is perhaps more mundane. If we had lived in a more normal society - a society not haunted by the lingering ghosts of our apartheid past - the bizarre events of today, which harks back to the events that led up to the ANC’s Polokwane conference and then to the dropping of criminal charges against President Zuma, might not have happened. If we had lived in a better functioning constitutional democracy, one in which the gap between rich and poor were not so vast and so obscene and in which conspicuous consumption by those with old and new money alike were not celebrated and held up as the ideal, it might have been more likely that reason, debate and sober reflection - instead of illogical rage – would have dominated the public discourse.

If we had lived in a more normal society, reason and logic might have had a better chance of being the dominant mode of doing politics. In such a democracy, leaders and ordinary citizens would have been required to be far more rigorous in justifying their decisions and would have more quickly been called to account if they failed to justify their words and actions in a credible manner. Politicians would at least have had to pretend to have principles, intellectual prowess and integrity (although, granted, in the UK of “New Labour”, Tony Blair – who was very good at pretending - turned out to be a disastrous leader). Most voters would have been shamed into opposing leaders who so clearly did not have the best interest of the poor at heart and were possibly corrupt.

But today’s events remind us that we do not live in an ordinary or normal country. We live in a country where some people (politicians and the old business elite among them) eat sushi from the bodies of semi-naked models; are protected by bodyguards and high walls from the young men and women who have no money, no jobs and little to lose; a country where some people travel across the world in first class and throw lavish parties, while the majority of South Africans languish in poverty and do not have the life chances to make meaningful decisions about their own lives.

Railing against Julius Malema and his supporters and calling them thugs and rioters will not change this basic fact – just like railing against Jacob Zuma during his battle with Thabo Mbeki had little effect. Unless we do something to address this bizarre and immoral state of affairs so many of us often seem to take for granted, everything that Mr Malema and his supporters represent will not disappear. That is one reason I support a wealth tax and why those who rail against the idea – just like they rail against Malema and his supporters – do not seem to me to have the best interests of South Africa and all who live in it at heart.

Mduli’s conspiracy claim vindicates ConCourt

Apr 4th, 2011
by Pierre De Vos.
22 comments

The front page of The New Age (if you did not know, it’s a newspaper bankrolled by President Jacob Zuma’s good friends – the Gupta family) contains a story that would have sent shockwaves through the media and the political establishment a few years ago. Perhaps because the story appeared in The New Age (which is not widely read, either because it’s lay-out is ugly and cheap-looking, because it usually contains a high number of bone-grindingly boring stories, or because it has not built up much credibility amongst those people who buy newspapers carrying “serious news”) it has not yet – as far as I know – been commented upon or taken up by other publications.

The story “reveals” that supporters of President Jacob Zuma are being “undermined” to weaken them before the ANC’s next elective conference - all apparently part of a move to oust Zuma at said conference. I quote (no link provided on The New Age site):

Beleaguered crime-intelligence boss Gen Richard Mduli discovered – before his arrest – a “plot” by certain elements within the Hawks to discredit politicians who are close to President Jacob Zuma….The New Age has learnt that the targeted pro-Zuma supporters in the ANC and its alliance partners include among others SA Communist Party secretary-general and Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande, ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe, MKMVA chairperson Kebby Maphatsoe and the military veteran’s secretary-general, Ayanda Dlodlo…. [A crime intelligence source] said this included the leaking of damaging information by certain members of the Hawks and the police to the media that they were corrupt and benefited from lucrative deals because of their open support for Zuma.

Of course, the story sounds rather familiar. Last time Jacob Zuma and some of his supporters were targeted by a corruption-fighting unit (the now defunct Scorpions), the allegations of political conspiracies also did the rounds. Many people believed it too, perhaps because even some people who were not great supporters of Jacob Zuma suspected that then President Thabo Mbeki could not be trusted and that he and his allies might very well have been using the Scorpions to get rid of Zuma so that Mbeki could become President of the ANC for life. (A suspicion given some credence, one might add, by the release of edited versions of taped phone conversations which suggested that Mbeki allies wanted to time the arrest of Zuma with one eye on the Polokwane election.)

This time around the claims of a political conspiracy might be slightly less plausible as the head of the Hawks was appointed by President Jacob Zuma himself. Moreover, the head of the Hawks reports to “General” Bheki Cele, who was himself appointed to his post by President Zuma. Claiming that these two gentlemen are now plotting to assist with the defeat of President Zuma at the next ANC conference or that they might be turning a blind eye to such plots, seem rather implausible – and not only because the allegations were published in The New Age.

Nevertheless, questions will be asked by the more credulous among us – even when the allegations of Mduli seem less than plausible – exactly because those involved in Mduli’s case is supposed to be – like Ceasar’s wife – beyond reproach (which they can never be, given the political nature of the leadership of the Hawks, the crime intelligence and of the Police Service).

Mduli was, of course, not arrested for corruption but for allegedly being involved in a murder. But the Hawks were involved in this case as it is apparently a “priority crime” to murder one’s former lover’s boyfriend. Regardless of whether this case deals with corruption or not, it does illustrate the problem that can be created when a police unit is not perceived to be free from possible political interference.

The story therefore underlines just how correct the Glenister judgment of the Constitutional Court was and how important it is for the fight against corruption that South Africa gets a truly independent corruption-fighting body free from political interference and free from any perception that the body is open to political interference. It also illustrates why the recent practice of appointing political party hacks like Selebi and Cele as Police Commissioner is a very bad idea. Politicising the police leadership serves as an open invitation to crooks, scoundrels, charlatans and the odd innocent person to try and discredit the police because of the alleged political agenda’s of the police leadership.

We know that whenever the word gets out that individuals (whether they are politicians, businessmen or full time crooks) are being investigated for corruption or whenever anybody is arrested after being implicated in corruption, the first thing the person and all his supporters inside and outside the ANC Youth League will invariably say (whether he or she is as guilty as Jackie Selebi and Schabir Shaik or as innocent as a heavenly angel) is that he or she is being persecuted and that the investigation or arrest is all part of a political plot by enemies of the ANC/the State/the National Democratic Revolution/the Truth/the Leader/God/Father Christmas. (I slipped in that last option just to check whether you, my dear readers, are still awake.)

This has become a political cliché and, quite frankly, a bit of a joke: as if every crook and charlatan has gone to the same public relations school and has been told that when arrested they have to allege a political conspiracy. Of course, some of us are now so cynical about these laughably stupid claims of political conspiracies that we might not be able to spot the few individuals who might be innocent (or might be less guilty than claimed). Who knows, as we speak some people might indeed be targeted for investigation and arrest as part of a political conspiracy and we might not know this because we would now never believe anyone making that claim.

Although most of us might be cynical about such claims and might laugh at the absurdity of it all (having heard it all before), quite a few South Africans (and a few journalists at The New Age, it seems) are prone to believe such allegations. The reason why anyone would still believe this kind of allegation is because those who investigate corruption and those who arrest people for allegedly being corrupt are not part of an independent body completely free from political influence. They are appointed by politicians and report to politicians and – let’s face it – when politicians are involved in such matters it is entirely plausible to believe that plots and backstabbing is to blame for the arrest of a person rather than to believe that the person’s own greed and corrupt activities led to his or her demise.

Even when individual members of the police or the Hawks act absolutely according to the book, the perception amongst some people will remain that political appointed corruption busters and police leaders, who are accountable to politicians and whose brief is determined by politicians (as is the case with the Hawks), can never be independent.  This leaves open the door for people like Mduli to claim that he is a victim of a political conspiracy to unseat the President of the ANC at its next elective conference.

If Mduli had been investigated and arrested by a truly independent body or by police officers led not by a politician who happens to be a close friend of the President, but by a professional and a career police officer, it would have been far more difficult for him to make allegations of a political plot. And maybe then even the journalists at The New Age might have thought twice before publishing these allegations of a conspiracy as if this was proven fact.

Will SABC ever regain any credibility?

Jan 27th, 2011
by Pierre De Vos.
44 comments

When the debate about the advisability of instituting a Media Appeals Tribunal (MAT) was raging last year, the honourable Minister of Higher Education Blade Nzimande made a dramatic intervention in favour of MAT by warning that the print media in South Africa was the greatest threat to our democracy. “We have a huge liberal offensive against our democracy,” he is quoted as saying. “The print media is the biggest perpetrator of this liberal thinking.” He reportedly said that the proposed MAT was necessary to protect the future of socialism in South Africa.

In retrospect, comrade Nzimande was perhaps slightly over-exuberant when he made these comments. It is easy to understand why he might have felt that the print media was a threat to “democracy” (if not democracy) and to “socialism” (if not socialism). It was, after all, the liberal print media who first reported that comrade Nzimande had stayed at the Mount Nelson Hotel at taxpayers expense for more than two weeks at a cost of more than R40 000. This same, untransformed, liberal print media also first reported that comrade Nzimande had acquired two rather un-revolutionary Ministerial cars which cost us tax payers more than R2 million. Still, in retrospect the statement made by comrade Nzimande might be considered to have been slightly over the top.

If one assumes that honest and fair reporting and the free flow of information is the friend of socialism and democracy (which one imagines is a sentiment that would be endorsed by comrade Nzimande) and if one asumes that dishonest, twisted and unfair reporting is the enemy of socialism and democracy (as comrade Nzimande surely does), then one would have to concede that the print media might not be the biggest enemy of socialism and democracy in South Africa.

It turns out that comrade Nzimande should rather have turned his guns on the SABC.

After all, the vast majority of South Africans get their news from SABC television and radio stations – not from the rather struggling print media who caters to bourgeois, liberal elites who live in metropolitan areas. And this week we were reminded again of what a cesspit of dishonesty, lies and manipulation of news the SABC has become. As comrade Nzimande will surely concede, the SABC – captured by a faction within the ANC  – probably poses a far greater threat to our democracy (and presumably to socialism) than the print media ever did or will.

In a remarkable judgment in Freedom of Expression Institute v Chair, Complaints and Compliance Committee and Others the South Gauteng High Court reminded us just how utterly discredited and dishonest the SABC news reporting became under the direction of that staunch Thabo Mbeki apologist, Dr Snuki Zikalala, who also moonlighted as the SABC’s Director of News when he was not acting as an informal spin-doctor for Mbeki. If this was not reported in a court judgment one might easily have thought that it was all made up.

As the judgment points out, Dr Zikalala (PhD Bulgaria) had been accused in papers before the Complaints and Compliance Committee (CCC) of Icasa and then before the High Court of “crass manipulation of the SABC’s news and current affairs” during his tenure as its Director of News. Yet he never responded to these allegations when they were first made to the CCC and it was left up to a person in the legal department of the SABC to make statements based on “double hearsay” to deny these serious allegations of dishonesty and dereliction of duty by Zikalala. As the court remarked:

His failure to respond to the accusations against him, could only mean that he did not deny them or that the SABC and its lawyers had concluded that his denials would not withstand cross-examination. Either way, the only reasonable inference is that Dr Zikalala could not honestly deny the accusations against him.

Similarly the then SABC Board had been accused “of serious dereliction of its duties”. Its failure to explain itself gave rise to the same inference. It either did not deny the accusations against it or its lawyers had concluded that its denials would not withstand cross-examination. The only reasonable inference that could be drawn from this, said the Court, was again that the SABC’s Board could not honestly deny the accusations against it.

And what were these allegations which the High Court accepted as true? Well there were a number of incidents in which the SABC’s News Management and Dr Zikalala in particular, manipulated its news and current affairs, where they dishonestly tried to cover up this manipulation when it was publicly revealed and where the SABC’s Board subsequently failed to take any action when the manipulation and dishonest cover-up was exposed by its own Commission of Enquiry.

The Court takes up a few of these cases. One such case is that of poor Mandla Zembe who was almost fired for doing his job. I quote:

Mr Mandla Zembe was a young and highly talented SABC reporter who covered an ANC rally at a stadium in KwaMashu on the outskirts of Durban on 16 June 2005.’ Drama was expected because it was two days after President Mbeki had dismissed Deputy President Zuma from his cabinet. The Kwazulu-Natal Premier Mr S’bu Ndebele addressed the rally but was booed and pelted with plastic bottles and other objects. He found it hard to complete his speech. At the end he had to be escorted from the podium by his bodyguards who held a metal table over him to protect him against the missiles pelted at him. Mr Zembe filed stories on this incident throughout the day. Just after the 6 p.m. news bulletin, Dr Zikalala called Ms [Pippa] Green and instructed her to institute disciplinary proceedings against Mr Zembe the following day. When she asked why, he replied that he was in the TV “visuals room” and there was no evidence that the Premier had been booed or pelted. Ms Green called Mr Zembe to check the story and he confirmed that it was accurate.

Only a few seconds of the mayhem was shown on the 7 p.m. English television news bulletin. The Premier arrived at the SABC and demanded to be given airtime to deny that he had been pelted. He was allowed to do so on a current affairs show and was again given “considerable airtime” on the 10 p.m. television news bulletin despite the fact that his denials were manifestly false. When Mr Zembe returned to his newsroom, he found the Premier’s armed bodyguards walking around the newsroom in intimidating fashion. Ms Green says that this incident violated the SABC’s Editorial Code in that its reporter Mr Zembe “was intimidated not only by the Premier’s bodyguards but by the MD of news himself who threatened him with a disciplinary hearing for reporting the truth.” The substantial airtime given to the Premier “also served to distort the truth of what happened”. In my view this uncontroverted evidence establishes that Dr Zikalala also interfered with the news coverage of this incident.

Then there was the banning of several analysts and pundits who, SABC journalists were told, could not be used by the SABC. When the Sowetan broke this story and it became a big scandal the SABC, under the direction of Dr Zikalala, did what it knew best how to do: it lied. Once again the judge takes up the story. Faced with these rather embarrassing allegations, the SABC issued a statement which said:

“The SABC would like to state that the News Division has not imposed any blanket bans on the use of individual commentators by our current affairs programmes as reported by the Sowetan today.”

Mr Perlman says that this statement was “blatantly false and a deliberate attempt to mislead the South African public on an issue of critical importance”. That was indeed so. Dr Zikalala had by then blacklisted many individual commentators including Ms Elinor Sisulu, Mr Moeletsi Mbeki, Mr Trevor Ncube, Archbishop Pius Ncube, Ms Paula Slier, Ms Karima Brown and Mr Aubrey Matshiqi.

“After a number of problems experienced with experts and analysts, and some public feedback received by the SABC, a proposal was taken at a News Management meeting to devise policy guidelines on the use of commentators. These problems did not relate to commentators’ views on the succession debate or any specific topic or person, but to occasions where it was clear that commentators were sometimes ill-informed, providing viewers and listeners with analyses based on facts that were either incorrect or out of date”. (Emphasis added)

These statements were also false. It was not true that there was no more than a “proposal’. Dr Zikalala had already blacklisted many people for which he had advanced diverse excuses. The only thing these blacklisted individuals had in common was that they were all perceived to be less than friendly to the governing party under the leadership of President Mbeki.

“A discussion document was drafted by News Management, which would assist in establishing what kind of analysts was appropriate, in terms of expertise and experience to comment on a relevant topic to be discussed on a current affairs programme.” (Emphasis added)

This statement was also false in two respects. It was firstly not true that the issue had not proceeded beyond a mere “discussion document”. Dr Zikalala had already blacklisted a number of people. It was secondly not true that there was a discussion document at all. Mr Perlman says that he had never seen such a document and neither had his producers Mr Lang and Ms Dlamini. He points to further evidence which makes it clear that the statement that there was a discussion document was devoid of any truth. Mr Perlman categorically stated that two senior managers in the News Department, Mr Lang and Ms Dlamini, “openly said they had not seen them (discussion documents) either.” It is significant that the SABC has made no attempt to produce such a document in these proceedings.

Of course, Dr Zikalala has been fired and a new Director of News has (again, rather controversially – don’t these people learn!) been appointed who seem to represent another faction within the ANC. The SABC Board has since then also been changed but we all know that it is not the most well-functioning corporate entity in South Africa. Despite these changes, I am not sure that many reasonable people find the SABC news credible or the management fair, honest and impartial. It might well be that the whole atmosphere at the SABC has improved since the bad old days of Snuki Zikalala, but it would take a lot to restore the credibility of the SABC after this fiasco. (One is not even talking about many other SABC fiasco’s including the non-broadcast of a Bafana Bafana game due to sheer incompetence.)

Reading this judgment, one gets the impression that the problems at the SABC are deeply entrenched and that in order to fix it one would have  to change the entire culture within the organisation. This culture, which eschews fair and honest reporting and fair and honest dealings with the world and revels in intrigue, serving political factions and general politicisation of every aspect of the Broadcaster, has poisoned the SABC.

What those who are now considering appointments to the SABC Board should keep in mind is that political circumstances change. While a certain faction might be in the ascendancy in the ANC today, this might change tomorrow. When one makes Board appointments purely on the basis of political loyalty, one creates potential problems for the future. Better to have an SABC Board that is progressive but not in the pockets of one political clique or the other. One never knows when the shoe is on the other foot and then one does not want a Snuki Zikalala like character at the SABC who might lie and cheat in order to discredit those factions to whom he does not belong (but to whom one might well belong oneself).

Maybe comrade Nzimande could say a few words on this matter in the coming days to warn his comrades against the selection of SABC Board members who might serve a small clique inside the ANC (the tenderpreneurs, the Heynas, the Youth League, Cosatu?) who happens to be in power or in the ascendancy. While doing so, comrade Nzimande might then also reflect on his previous statement that the print media posed the biggest threat to our democracy in South Africa. He might ponder the fact that no-one in the print media has yet been exposed as the most disgustingly dishonest and double dealing crook in the same manner in which some SABC bosses have been in this judgment and he may then ask whether the print media is really as bad as he had argued.

Is this emperor wearing any clothes?

Nov 25th, 2010
by Pierre De Vos.
57 comments

I have always liked Jeremy Cronin, the South African Communist Party leader and Deputy Minister of something or the other. He is an award winning poet, a scholar who obtained a masters degree at the Sorbonne under Louis Althusser (that French Marxist philosopher who strangled his wife), and a former political prisoner who spent 7 years in an apartheid jail. He seldom stays in the Mount Nelson and drives and old car (unlike his SACP boss Blade Nzimande who is a communist with a taste for the good life). And I am sure if he had ever done woodwork at school he would have obtained fairly decent marks for it.

But his most recent confusing article in which he attacks COSATU for associating with “liberals” (both the “anti-democratic” kind and the kind who believes in social justice and respect for the rights of all citizens) really does him a disservice. As far as I can tell his argument goes like this: yes the ANC is riddled with corruption and some ANC leaders are power hungry and reactionary but anyone who actually takes a stand against this are the really, really, bad people (you know, lovers of apartheid, haters of democracy, opponents of transformation — that kind of thing) — unless they are members of the ANC and the SACP in which case they are merely doing the right thing.

Here is a sample of the article for your enjoyment:

We should, of course, not be in denial about the serious gaps opened up for this line of attack by real weaknesses within the state and the ANC and our alliance formations. In particular, there is a compradorial and parasitic rent-seeking stratum within our movement, often linked to a demagogic populism that has little respect for legality or the constitution.

As we have argued elsewhere, anti-majoritarian liberal forces are happy to provide a media megaphone for this demagogic populism — the better to be able to condemn us all. The existence of this phenomenon (what we have called “the new tendency”) creates space for all manner of anti-ANC forces. This is why it is absolutely imperative that the government, the ANC and its alliance partners together lead the process of dealing firmly, and without fear or favour, with the scourge of corruption and demagogy.

However, using the gap created by this minority “new tendency” within our own ranks (and seeking to present its antics as the “real” ANC), the anti-transformation forces seek to displace the liberation movement’s strategic hegemony with their own anti-majoritarian liberalism. In essence this consists in trying to displace the idea of an ongoing national democratic revolution with a politics of “civil rights claims”. This is done by establishing a false dichotomy between the realisation of civil rights in SA and the NDR, with the latter portrayed as the “enemy” of civil rights and the Constitution.

This seems perilously close to an argument for holding power for power’s sake. As far as I can tell Cronin is saying that because the ANC is stuffing up big time, this has opened the space for people to discredit the ANC and this is really bad because anyone who discredits the ANC is really bad. There is no acknowledgement that anyone might want to point out the really bad things done by some in the ANC because, well, because they are really bad.

This makes no sense and is not to be squared with almost any understanding of democracy.

In a democracy, when a party stuffs up, then one assumes that it is the duty of citizens and organisations to point this out and to fight against the abuse of power, the corruption, the nepotism and the other actions of the governing party that stands in stark contrast to one’s own principles.

If one happens to believe in social justice and fairness and respect for differences (as I do) and oppose social conservatism and oppressive nationalism (as I do) and believes that corruption will fatally undermine the wellbeing of those in society who have been oppressed for centuries (as I do), then one surely has a duty to complain and take action against the ANC? If one does not say anything for fear that Cronin will label you a meeloper (accomplice) of reactionary forces then one is not being a good democratic citizen.

After all, the ANC is becoming an alarmingly reactionary, right wing, organisation and the majority of its leaders seem to believe in very little — apart from holding on to power and making obscene amounts of money and allowing their friends and relatives to make obscene amounts of money. And when ideology comes into play, well, the erstwhile revolutionary movement is not covering itself in glory.

Take South Africa’s stance at the UN: South Africa now votes at the UN to remove a clause on sexual orientation that in effect sanctions the extra-judicial killing of gay men and lesbians. This is not a decision taken by Julius Malema or some rogue elements in the ANC. It is a decision taken by the ANC government itself and as such it is shameful, anti human rights and deeply reactionary. And Cronin wants us to believe the ANC is the progressive voice in our society. Please. This sounds like the pot calling the kettle black.

COSATU may well be progressive and Cronin may still have some progressive bones in his body, but to claim that all the progressive voices out there who are taking on the rightward and ever increasing authoritarian tendencies of the ANC are somehow no better than right wing forces who are opposed to democracy is so ludicrous that one really wonders whether Cronin has any idea of what democracy means. Or is this article an attempt to try and shut up those who criticise the ANC so that voters will not notice that the ANC has strayed very far from the vision for South Africa it upheld between 1990 and 1996 and was instrumental in enshrining in our Constitution?

Reading the Cronin piece, I felt that the emperor was wearing no clothes. Because there is no way to turn back the clock and because there is no way to arrest the corruption and the rightward drift of the ANC, Cronin is using some fancy language (probably learnt at the feet of the Paris Strangler) to try and hide that fact and to try and discredit valid criticism and civil society activism that threatens the ANC’s hold on power.

But sadly, more and more there is hardly any ideological difference between the ANC and the DA (although the DA seems to be less corrupt and some of its leaders are a bit more respectful of the rights of — at least some of — the citizens). Both are right wing, both believe in the right of their followers to make obscene amounts of money, both claim to love and respect the poor and the vulnerable while they mostly only look out for themselves and their immediate supporters.

Yesterday Tokyo Sexwale railed against the courts for protecting the rights of “squatters”, sounding just like Helen Zille when she railed against the people of Hangberg. How can Cronin still remain a (deputy) Minister in such a government? Well, it beats me. Maybe he is ashamed and to hide this shame he has to pretend that there is still a progresive agenda hidden somewhere in the entrails of the rotting corpse of the emerging reactionary ANC and that the real progressives are useful idiots being used by “anti-democratic forces.

“Regime change?” – No it’s called democracy

Nov 3rd, 2010
by Pierre De Vos.
65 comments

It sounds like some members of the ANC might be panicking prematurely. For the first time since 1994 the ANC National Working Committee (NWC) has issued a statement that seems to hint that the ANC was not fully committed to democracy and that it may not relinquish power if it lost a free and fair election because it would view that as “regime change”. The panic is rather strange because the ANC received two-thirds of the votes during the last election.

But the stakes are high for the tenderpreneurial wing in the governing party. After all, if the ANC loses an election, its leaders will lose access to all those government cars and all the free stays at the Mount Nelson. They will not be able to go on the many government-sponsored overseas trips and their bodyguards and blue light convoys will be taken away from them. And for the increasing number of ANC cadres who believe ANC stands for “ANother Contract”, the thought of losing the ability to dish out tenders to friends, family and business partners, must really be troubling.

But still, the statement issued by the NWC in the wake of the Civil Society Conference, organised by Cosatu, is difficult to explain. Sure the ANC was not invited, but neither was any opposition party. And it is not as if Cosatu and civil society organisations had decided to form their own political party to challenge the ANC at the next election. Why then this rather over the top and and anti-democratic rant?

It suggests both a deep suspicion and a rather sad insecurity on the part of a some ANC leaders, who might have forgotten that the overwhelming majority of voters still put their trust in the ANC at the last general election. Who is in charge of the ANC, one might ask. This statement sounds more like it was drafted by Julius Malema and Simphiwe Nyanda than by Gwede Mantashe and Kgalema Motlanthe.

The assertion and suggestion made by Civil Society formations and some unions and unions leaders, can be clearly interpreted by any logical thinking person as an attempt on the side of the organizers to put a wedge between civil society formations, some Unions, the ANC and its Government.

We should all learn from history of what happened in some parts of the continent, when some labour leaders working together with civil society formations, came up with alternative political parties to unset the ruling parties and governments in those parts of the continent.

We believe the leadership of COSATU is fully aware of what we are talking about here, and we believe the majority of the COSATU leadership have no intention of implementing regime change in South Africa, but we non-the-less caution, that an action like the one of leading a charge for the formation and for the mobilisation of a mass civic movement outside of the Alliance partners and the ANC might indeed be interpreted as initial steps for regime change in South Africa. This is further reinforced by the attacks on all black political parties by the Secretary General of COSATU and the notable omission of the main opposition in such attacks.

An organized and mobilized civil society is good for democracy. Equally an organised and mobilised civil society that has positioned itself as an opposition to other forces of change is having the potential of derailing the revolution and the programme for change.

Regime change? What are these people smoking? We live in a democracy, not in a one party state. Anyone – including any labour movement and any civil society organisations – have the right to convene a summit without inviting the ANC. If this is bad alliance politics, then say so. But talking about regime change and suggesting that Zimbabwe is in the mess it is in because trade unions and civil society groups formed the MDC is rather scary. (A more alarmist interpretation of the NWC statement would be that it was a warning to Cosatu and civil society leaders to toe the line – or else. After all in Zimbabwe many MDC leaders were arrested, tortured and sometimes murdered by the Zanu-PF police thugs.)

In fact, in a democracy, trade unions and civil society groups have a right to form a political party and contest elections and if they won such an election this could not possibly be called “regime change” as “regime change” happens when the government of the day is overthrown illegally. The ANC statement suggests that in its world any organisation that wished to oust the ANC at the ballot box was acting illegally and unconstitutionally – a notion that is patently absurd. (This reminds me of the saying passed around amongst white progressives who refused to vote in whites only elections during apartheid: “If voting could change anything, it would have been illegal.”)

If Cosatu and civil society groups formed a political party and contested elections – something that they have made clear they are not planning to do – and if they win an election, that will not constitute regime change but a democratic change of the government. That is what democracy is all about – the voters get to decide who rule the country – so the ANC’s dark mutterings about regime change hints that it sees itself as having the right to rule regardless of what the voters say. Why then is the ANC NWC using such inflammatory phrases and why are some ANC leaders overreacting to the Cosatu summit?

I think there are at least two reasons for this.

First, as the ANC gets dragged down in a cesspit of corruption and nepotism, as some of its leaders pocket millions of Rand through shady deals and corrupt tenders, as they throw lavish parties and live a lifestyle so obscenely opulent that it could only – in the long run – breed resentment and distrust, the party is becoming more paranoid about the threats to its power.

Because it is slowly losing the moral high ground as the party becomes ever more closely associated with corruption and greed (something that is so predictable as it happens to governing parties in almost all one party dominant democracies), the party is terrified that it will suffer the same fate as Zanu-PF in Zimbabwe, who won landslide election victories until the referendum on a new Constitution came around. Then Zanu-PF shockingly lost the referendum after civil society mobilisation against the new draft Constitution. It has not won an election since and had to steal several elections since then to stay in power.

This means that if the same thing happened in South Africa the ANC’s electoral decline will not happen gradually but will come suddenly and brutally fast – as one day the long suffering electorate who has continued to give the ANC the benefit of the doubt wake up from their long daydream and turn their backs on the greedy kleptocrats and incompetents who have infiltrated the ANC.

Second, as it becomes more and more difficult for the ANC to present itself as the party of “revolutionary change” (given that it has been in power for 16 years and is becoming a party whose reasons for ruling has less to do with revolutionary change and more with access to power and the money that flows from power), the threat of losing the support of civil society and elites more generally becomes a more serious concern.

I suspect the ANC has been shocked by the recent successful mobilisation by civil society and Cosatu against the draconian Secrecy Bill. This initiative must have been a wake-up call to the ANC because civil society stood up as one to reject this draconian piece of legislation and easily won the political argument, convincing the majority of South Africans that the Bill will be used to hide corruption, not to protect state security. That is why the ANC has had to backtrack on the Bill. During the hearings of the ad hoc Committee of Parliament on the secrecy Bill, the ANC members were extraordinarily arrogant and vindictive and gave the impression that it would pass the BIll come hell or high-water. Since then the ANC has softened its stance and now claim it was never fully committed to the original version of the Bill.

Since 1994 civil society has – broadly speaking – been supportive of the ANC. Even the Treatment Action Campaign was careful to position itself not in opposition to the ANC, but merely in opposition to the health policies of one scarily paranoid President and his alcoholic Minister of Health. This has made it much easier for the ANC to run the country and to retain the legitimacy that it needs to govern and to win elections.

But since Jacob Zuma has been elected as leader of the ANC, and especially because of some really scary moves on the part of the ANC and the government it runs (the abolition of the Scorpions to protect corrupt party elites from prosecution, the Secrecy Bill, proposals for a Media Appeals Tribunal), civil society has become more disenchanted with the ANC. And civil society could become a vehicle to channel disenchantment with the ANC in government. As the official opposition lacks legitimacy amongst the majority of voters, such voters who demand change and demand better government might look towards civil society – instead of toward the increasing number of  inept and corrupt members of the ANC – to deliver such change.

The problem for the ANC is that its electoral dominance is based, in part, on its dominance of the political space. As long as there is a perception that the ANC is the only game in town, it will be easier for the ANC to remain politically dominant. But as soon as that perception is shattered (as happened in Zimbabwe with the constitutional referendum) all bets are off and voters may decide to desert the party in droves and vote for an alternative.

COPE did not make a big impact at the last election at least partly because voters still saw the ANC as the only relevant political party in South Africa; the only party who could possibly win an election; the only party who could deliver access to state resources and the patronage that goes with it (even if it could not deliver services). But if the ANC appears electorally vulnerable because it believes that if it stops being the dominant moral and political voice in our politics, this might open the floodgates and ordinary voters – especially in the metropolitan areas – who are disenchanted with the ANC because of a lack of service delivery (or just because the ANC had “affirmed” somebody else with a nepotistic government job and not themselves) might look elsewhere and might vote for a new party (like voters in Zimbabwe suddenly voted for the MDC in Zimbabwe).

No wonder the NWC got their nickers in such a knot about such a silly and inconsequential matter. But this hysterical statement won’t change anything. If the ANC wanted to regain the political initiative it should actually govern better and more honestly; it should really tackle corruption (instead of merely talking about how it wants to tackle corruption); and it should ditch the draconian proposals for the adoption of a Secrecy Bill and a Media Appeals Tribunal. But whether the people in charge of the ANC (whoever this might be) understands this or whether these people are too far gone on the path of paranoia and suspicion – well that only time will tell.

Don’t rely on courts to save our democracy

Oct 5th, 2010
by Pierre De Vos.
131 comments

The South African Constitution contains many provisions that place a duty on the state to do or not to do things. The drafters of the Constitution, perhaps knowing that rulers often tend to act not in the best interest of society as a whole but in their own interest, wrote these obligations into the Constitution so that they would not be “extra’s” – mere luxuries that the government of the day could choose to pursue (usually a few months before an election) when it felt like it.

The state has a duty to promote the achievement of equality (section 9), to take reasonable measures to provide access to housing (section 26) and health care (section 27), to take reasonable legislative and other measures, within its available resources, to foster conditions which enable citizens to gain access to land on an equitable basis (section 25), and to respect and promote freedom of expression and the media (section 16).

The President has a duty to promote all that will advance the Republic, and oppose all that may harm it; to protect and promote the rights of all South Africans; to discharge his duties with all his strength and talents to the best of his knowledge and ability and true to the dictates of his conscience; to do justice to all; and to devote himself to the well-being of the Republic and all of its people (schedule 2).

Section 237 of the Constitution further states that “all constitutional obligations must be performed diligently and without delay”.

Often these duties are not fulfilled as required by the Constitution – and more often they are not performed “diligently and without delay”.

For example, instead of actively promoting respect for people with disabilities, instead of taking action to address the homophobia, sexism and other kons of prejudice (like racism and xenophobia) in our society, instead of spending money wisely and efficiently to help give people who do not have the ability to do so themselves (because of poverty and the effects of past discrimination) to gain access to houses, decent health care and work, the government of the day often seems to be too scared to address the prejudices, deeply rooted hatred and patriarchal attitudes of the public, and often spends the available money wastefully (on R27 loaves of bread and R1.1 million cars for Ministers, expensive consultants who can tell the government what is wrong when we all know what the problems are).

Section 2 of the Constitution states that the “Constitution is the supreme law of the Republic; law or conduct inconsistent with it is invalid, and the obligations imposed by it must be fulfilled.” In the light of the above a reader asks:

Now I’m going to ask what is probably an abominably stupid question: Why don’t our Constitutional Court judges, in their role of upholders of our supreme law, stand up as one and pronounce on any violation of our constitution as and when it happens? Why is it that some individual or opposition party first has to grovel before the CC when they feel the public’s rights are being violated in order to get a pronouncement?

As a technical matter this is indeed an “abominably stupid question”. In a constitutional democracy courts adjudicate disputes brought before it for adjudication. Courts rely on citizens or other interested groups like NGO’s or social movements (in our case, usually citizens or other organisations with the money to pay for expensive lawyers) to prepare and argue such cases.

Courts do not have research departments that can go out and detect breaches of constitutional duties, that can gather the evidence that would persuade courts that such breaches had indeed occurred and and that can present courts with all the arguments that would allow them to make findings after carefully considering all the evidence and legal issues for and against any finding that a breach of the Constitution had indeed occurred.

Courts are therefore not institutionally equipped to play this role. In any case, even if they did have the institutional capacity to do so, it would be wrong for courts to get involved in the investigation of breaches of the constitution. This is because courts are supposed to be independent and to act without fear, favour or prejudice. This means courts cannot become both investigators of, and then final arbiters on, the issues they have investigated. If they did, they would become embroiled in issues in which they themselves have a vested interest and they would be required to become judges in their own cause. This would undermine the legitimacy and credibility of the courts and erode public trust in the courts.

But in a less technical sense, the question posed by the reader is perhaps quite relevant. Why don’t the courts save us from the flagrant disregard for the Constitution by the legislature the executive and private actors by pronouncing on breaches of the Constitution “as and when they happen”?

Well, my answer would be that this is the wrong question to ask. Courts cannot save our democracy as it is by far the weakest branch of government. As Justice Johan Kriegler wrote in S v Mamabolo in a slightly different context:

The answer is both simple and subtle. It is, simply, because the constitutional position of the judiciary is different, really fundamentally different. In our constitutional order the judiciary is an independent pillar of state, constitutionally mandated to exercise the judicial authority of the state fearlessly and impartially. Under the doctrine of separation of powers it stands on an equal footing with the executive and the legislative pillars of state; but in terms of political, financial or military power it cannot hope to compete. It is in these terms by far the weakest of the three pillars; yet its manifest independence and authority are essential. Having no constituency, no purse and no sword, the judiciary must rely on moral authority. Without such authority it cannot perform its vital function as the interpreter of the Constitution, the arbiter in disputes between organs of state and, ultimately, as the watchdog over the Constitution and its Bill of Rights — even against the state.

The fact is that – in the absence of disputes brought to the courts by litigants - citizens (not the courts) are the one’s who are best placed to hold the legislature and the executive to account and to force them to comply with their constitutional duties. As citizens in a democracy (a democracy with both representative and participatory aspects), we are the ultimate and most powerful guardians of the Constitutions.

Yes, courts can (and should) hold the legislature and executive to account in individual cases brought to it by citizens, NGO’s and social movements and should declare such acts or omissions unconstitutional when these do not conform to the dictates of the Constitution. If they do not do so and instead choose on a regular basis to decide cases in favour of the other branches of government in a vain attempt to keep these branches happy, the judges would not be fulfilling their constitutional duty to uphold the Constitution. This will erode public trust in the judiciary.

But very few cases of constitutional breaches actually reach the courts. Citizens and citizen organisations are therefore potentially far more powerful and can be far more efficient and effective in holding the other branches of government to account than our judiciary. Of course, citizens can only do so if they do not fear repercussions for daring to do so. If citizens and organisations fear state repression, community ostracism or ridicule and ad hominem attacks from the predatory conservative forces who might have captured the state, then they will not take action to protect and advance the Constitution.

If citizens have a misplaced respect for their rulers – for highly emotional but irrational reasons or out of a fear of embarrassing their leaders with whom they have an emotional affinity born out of a shared history of struggle – and therefore do not wish to criticise the members of the legislature or the executive who are not doing what they are obliged to do by the Constitution, then the courts on their own will not be able to ensure that the Constitution remains a living document that is respected and protected by most if not all in society.

One of the greatest dangers to our democracy is not a compliant or timid judiciary, but a compliant and timid citizenry who might either be too scared of losing their status, influence or access to power and money-making opportunities to hold the rulers to account, or might have a misplaced loyalty to the governing party – instead of a loyalty to the Constitution and to the achievement of a more just and fair society based on respect for the Rule of Law.

I would therefore argue that a passive citizenry poses probably the gravest danger to our democracy. As we know all too well from a myriad of examples around the world, passive citizens who are either too scared, too worried about protecting their own short term interests, or too infused with a misplaced emotional loyalty to their rulers will destroy their own future.

Where citizens willingly hand over the power (which in a democracy ought to belong to the voters) to a ruling clique who WILL abuse this power and trust and WILL – eventually – act in ways that are detrimental to the interest of all citizens (except those who are members of the ruling clique or have strong connections with that clique), those passive citizens will help to destroy the democracy and with it their own prospects for a better life.

In a society where the majority of citizens give a carte blanche to the ruling clique to do what they want, life will become nasty, brutish and – perhaps – even short for a majority of citizens. Courts will not be able to stop this. Hoping that they would or relying on them to do so, would be irresponsible and naive.

Only where citizens are prepared to act in the interest of society as a whole and in their own long term (as opposed to short term) interest, will a constitutional democracy stand a good chance of surviving the inevitable machinations of a predatory ruling elite. In South Africa, many members of social movements, labour organisations such as Cosatu and some NGO’s have realised this, but because of the understandable emotional identification of the majority of citizens with the current governing party, this is still a small minority of the population.

Of course, active citizens should use constitutional litigation strategically to mobilise fellow citizens and should approach courts when appropriate to try and win legal victories for individual litigants or for groups whose rights have been infringed. They can also make use of other organisations – such as the Human Rights Commission (HRC) – to place pressure on the government to do the right thing (as has happened in the Western Cape – to the great consternation of Helen Zille who is now doing everything she can to discredit the HRC).

But if we all sit back and fold our arms in the hope that an unelected and relatively powerless judiciary will fight our battles for us, we will only have ourselves to blame if the country ends up as a truly predatory state in which the rulers look out only for themselves and for those with the money to bribe them.

More thoughts on Blade and the cabinet

Sep 1st, 2010
by Pierre De Vos.
107 comments

When Minister Blade Nzimande was appointed to the Cabinet by President Jacob Zuma, some voices in the South African Communist Party (SACP) questioned the wisdom of him continuing to serve as the general secretary of the SACP. Given the experience of the SACP with some of its members who served in Thabo Mbeki’s cabinet and who often seemed to follow cabinet decisions instead of SACP policy (Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi being the most obvious example), some SACP members were worried that Nzimande’s membership of the cabinet would make his position as leader of SACP untenable.

They warned that he would be required to serve two masters at the same time. Although both masters were members of an alliance, these masters did not always take the same position on a particular issue. Nzimande would then be forced either to defy the cabinet in breach of the Constitution when, as its leader, he would be required to put forward the official SACP position, or he would be forced to abide by cabinet decisions and thus would become incapable of diligently performing his function as leader of the SACP.

As I pointed out earlier this week, South Africa has adopted a system of political party government in which strict party discipline is enforced in the legislature and individual and collective cabinet responsibility for the executive is mandated by sections 92 and 96 of the Constitution. 

This means that ordinary MPs may debate an issue vigorously within the ANC until the caucus has made a decision on it, after which they were obliged to toe the party line or face the consequences (the most severe of which would be to be redeployed out of a job, as happened with Andrew Feinstein when he refused to follow instructions from the ANC - and especially Essop Pahad a.k.a Essops Fables – to stop his vigorous pursuit of arms deal corruption as a member of SCOPA). 

If ANC MP’s in Parliament also happened to be SACP leaders or COSATU leaders they would find themselves in a difficult position as they would be required to vote in favour of measures which their parties did not support. Other MP’s would also face such difficulties – as was the case with the adoption of the Termination of Pregnancy Act and the Civil Union Act.

Similarly, a cabinet minister could forcefully argue his or her position inside and outside cabinet until the cabinet had taken a position on that issue, after which the cabinet minister had to abide by that decision or had to resign. What the cabinet minister cannot do is stay in the cabinet but criticise a decision of that cabinet in his or her capacity as leader of Cosatu or the SACP because this would undermine cohesive government and collective cabinet responsibility.

It also undertmines the authority of the President, who is the  leader of the cabinet. In some jurisdictions the Prime Minister or the President fires Ministers who show too much dissent – often when the President or the Prime Minister is insecure and paranoid about his or her future or has a vindictive streak beyond that which politicians are known for.

This suggests that those in the SACP who expresssed disquiet with Nzimande’s duel role might have had a point: being the leader of the SACP or COSATU is probably incompatible with membership of the Cabinet or the National Assembly. Blade Nzimande sees things differently, of course. If all cabinet Ministers followed his example the cabinet would become even more dysfunctional and cabinet government would run the risk of breaking down completely, in which case service delivery would suffer a further blow. Policy would be made and amended on the trot (something former cabinet Minister Kader Asmal warned against earlier this year) and the system of individual and collective accountability of cabinet ministers provided for in the Constitution would break down.

Are there ways to deal with this and to save Minister Nzimande from having to choose which master he is serving? Could he hold on to his R1.1 million BMW and the perks associated with being a Minister (including occasional two week stays at the Mount Nelson Hotel) while also holding on to his job as general secretary of the SACP?

Murray and Stacey, in their Chapter in Constitutional Law of South Africa, suggest a few options. One would be for a Minister to use the “unattributable leak”. A Minister could leak his opposition to a specific cabinet decision to the media on condition that he or she not be named. Cabinet Ministers in the United Kingdom are masters of this ploy. It allows one to have one’s views known to those sections of the public whose support one wishes to retain (always a good thing when one has to stand for a leadership position), without officially breaking the rules of collective cabinet responsibility. Given the fact that such unattributable leaks are one of the reasons advanced by Nzimande and others for the establishment of a Media Appeals Tribunal, Minister Nzimande might not find this option appealing.

Another option would be to release carefully crafted statements that hint at dissent without actually defying the President and cabinet colleagues. Those who support Nzimande’s statement on behalf of the SACP about the strike argue that this is exactly what he did. I am far from convinced that they are correct, but judge for yourself. According to its spokesperson, Themba Maseko, cabinet had agreed as follows on the strike:

Cabinet is disappointed with the public sector unions’ rejection of the state’s offer of a 7% annual increase and the R700.00 a month housing allowance for public servants. The offer is already way above the inflation rate of 4.5 %. The state’s final offer represented a move from the original offer of 5.2 % and a R500.00 a month housing allowance. This is a clear demonstration that Government was negotiating in good faith in an attempt to meet the demands of our employees.  While Government fully understands and appreciates the plight of all the public servants regarding low wages, it has to be mindful of its responsibilities to all South Africans as the final offer already places a huge burden on the fiscus. We had to make a choice between increasing the salary bill to unaffordable levels by meeting the union demands and cutting other urgently needed services.It’s a choice between improving the wages of state employees and continuing to address the service delivery needs of poor communities and the unemployed.

Nzimande’s statement on behalf of the SACP reads partly as follows:

The CC calls on government and the unions to ensure that there is a very speedy resolution to the strike. It is about to enter its third week now and the longer it is prolonged the more everyone suffers and the danger of unbridgeable positions becoming entrenched increases. The SACP once more reiterates its conviction that the demands of the public service workers are legitimate and we support them in their struggle for just remuneration. In particular, we note that the wage gap in the public sector between the highest paid echelons and the lowest is 91 to 1. Although the gap in the private sector is even wider, we cannot deny that the public sector wage gap is shameful, and every effort must be made to progressively close this unacceptable gap. In this regard, the CC calls on government to set an example by ensuring that there is a collective moratorium on salary increases in the upper echelons of government.

I guess if one parses words one could argue that the two underlined sections are not in direct opposition to one another, but it would take some nifty verbal gymnastics and would stretch the meaning of words a bit further than any ordinary person would be able to do – at least while keeping a straight face. Can one at the same time be disappointed with the actions of strikers who rejected an offer of government and decided to strike and support their strike? I guess its a matter of interpretation (as is almost everything else in life) but my head feels like bursting just trying to reconcile those two statements.

And what about the poor ordinary MP’s who are far more vulnerable as they are not in leadership positions and have not been directly elected so can lose their seats in parliament at the whim of the leadership? What must they do when their party takes a position with which they vehemently disagrees, but which they cannot defy by voting against it for fear of losing their seats in Parliament?

One option would be to take a leaf out of the book of Schabir Shaik and to develop a serious illness on the day that a vote is to take place. But this will not signal to one’s constituents that one really did not like what the party did. Another would be to leak news of one’s opposition to a specific decision to the media on condition that one’s name is not mentioned and then to vote for the bloody measure (or against it – if that is what one’s party had decreed) in any case. Political party leaders and whips hate this kind of thing, but it does happen all the time. Andrew Feinstein did it in protest against President Thabo Mbeki’s speech to the caucus in which he argued that HIV and Aids was part of a CIA plot. It builds some flexibility into the system while retaining a semblance of discipline.

Where a political party leader is at the top of his or her game and wields power confidently or, in some cases, ruthlessly, there is less of this kind of ill discipline. With the exception of Pregs Govender and Andrew Feinstein, for example, few ANC MP’s ever dared to go against the party line once Thabo Mbeki had spoken and had indicated what the official line was going to be (sometime after vigorous “debate”). Of course, because of this in the end the seething resentment against King Thabo built up to such a degree that he was thrown out of office at Polokwane.

The fact that Ministers are leaking stuff left right and centre, that Blade Nzimande issues statements that seem to contradict the official cabinet position and that ordinary ANC MP’s are gossiping and leaking to the media like over-excited school boys and girls, suggests that President Jacob Zuma does not nearly have the same stranglehold on his Parliamentary party as Thabo Mbeki did.

But ironically, it might save Zuma’s bacon – at least for now – because all the factions in the party feel that they have a chance to have their side of the story heard and even to have their view prevail because the King is so weak and not nearly as ruthless – at least not on the surface – as that other guy whats-is-name who used to strike terror into the hearts of MPs and cabinet ministers to such a degree that they were all too scared even to admit to journalists that they believed that HIV was a virus that caused Aids.

Nyanda: Maybe immoral AND illegal after all

Jul 20th, 2010
by Pierre De Vos.
38 comments

It is rather difficult to get hold of a copy of the Ministerial Handbook (also known as A Handbook for Members of the Executive and Presiding Officers). I searched the Internet for more than an hour yesterday (which included a search on the government’s own website as well as several legal databases) – all to no avail.

Those Ministers sure do not want us ordinary folk to know what is in this mysterious Handbook of theirs. Finally, after contacting DA MP, Dene Smuts, an efficient DA researcher provided me with a copy of the Handbook (and as any good PR person would, also included DA proposals for changes to the handbook).

After studying the Handbook I understand why its content is being kept half-secret. 

This is the thing: It is far from clear that claims by a spokesperson of Communications Minister, Siphiwe Nyanda, that the Ministerial Handbook had entitled the Minister to stay in the most luxurious 5 Star Hotels for 6 months at a cost of more than R500 000 could be squared with the actual provisions of the Handbook.

Why did Nyanda not stay in the house allocated to him after he became the Minister of Communications? Why was the poor man made to suffer for six months by having to stay at the most expensive Hotels in Cape Town? Personally I would not be seen dead at these terrible, inhumane, dumps and would rather sleep in the boot of my car.

Who could possible live in a ”spacious, grand and elegant suit” with “spectacular views of Table Mountain”, have access to “two heated swimming pools”, ”magnificent flood-lit tennis courts”, a yoga centre “complete with feature inspiring music, fresh flowers, candlelight, therapeutic scents and post-yoga refreshments”, an ”on-site golf practice net”, “on-site hair salon” and a ”world class holistic spa experience, where the trilogy of mind, body and spirit is nurtured”?

Sounds awful, doesn’t it? Who would not rather stay in a lovely state owned house in Upper Claremont?

(By the way, it’s a good thing Minister Nyanda was not allocated a house in lower Claremont because he would surely then have been entitled not to occupy a house in such a bad neighbourhood and would have been forced to stay at the Mount Nelson for another few years, poor man.)

Well, the Mail & Guardian reported as follows on the poor Minister’s woes:

A Cabinet colleague of Nyanda told the Mail & Guardian that the reason Nyanda had apparently given for refusing to move into his Hooggelegen residence in sought-after Upper Claremont was because the public works department had not bought him a bed. A senior communications department source confirmed this explanation was also doing the rounds in the department, but added that Nyanda was allegedly also unhappy that his house did not have a view.

Although Nyanda’s spokesperson strongly denied this, the department of public works confirmed on Thursday that Nyanda hadn’t moved in because of a delay with the delivery of furniture “to accommodate him”. Public works spokesperson Thamsanqa Mchunu confirmed that Nyanda’s furniture finally arrived on February 5 and February 26.

So, one explanation for his splurge was that while the house was furnished and he could have stayed in it (sleeping on one of the other beds in the house, one presumes) or could have bought his own bed (I am told one can buy a very nice bed for about R10 000 – a bit less than the R500 000 us tax payers eventually spent on the Hotel Bills), the house needed a bed for the General to sleep on. We all need a good night’s rest, after all, and national security, the national interest and the public good required the Minister to be alert at all times in case he had to deal with yet more reports of the SABC banning an old leader of the party from its airwaves.

Another, unconfirmed, explanation was that he was not happy with the view (even though the house was in upper Claremont). The official version was that new furniture (obviously replacing existing furniture) had to be provided “to accommodate” the General. One assumes this means the General was not happy with the original furniture (which was obviously not up to the standard of the Mount Nelson) and he thus ordered new furniture which would “accommodate” him and would ensure he would stay in the style and comfort that he had become accustomed to.

This kind of thing is covered by the Ministerial Handbook, which states in chapter 2:

If, owing to exceptional circumstances, a State-owned residence is not immediately available for Members upon assumption of duty of office, expenses in connection with alternative accommodation may be debited to the State until an official residence becomes available.

The first question would be whether the absence of one bed or unhappiness with the existing furniture would constitute “exceptional circumstances” as required by the Handbook. The second question would be whether a house is “not available” if some of the furnishings in the house are not to the liking of the new resident.

Now, maybe I am just not used to the millionaire’s lifestyle, but I find it rather difficult to believe that the absence of one bed or unhappiness with the state of the existing furniture could possibly have legally constituted “exceptional circumstances” as required by the Handbook. In a country where many people live in shacks, one could hardly argue with a straight face that unhappiness with the quality of furniture constituted “exceptional circumstances” that mandated an extended stay at tax payers expense in some of South Africa’s most expensive Hotels. 

This conclusion seems irresistible if one reads the clause in conjunction with the provisions in Chapter 4 of the Handbook which stipulates what the Department of Public Works is required to provide to an official accommodated in official state housing:

The furnishing of State-owned residences is limited to the provision, and maintenance, of ordinary household furniture, mattresses, pillows, carpets, curtains, beds, stoves, refrigerators, freezers, washing machines, tumble dryers and heaters, micro-wave ovens and dishwashers on request….. If a piece of furniture becomes redundant in a State-owned residence, the Office of the Member concerned should make the necessary arrangements in consultation with the Office of the Minister of Public Works to have the article/s removed and the inventories amended accordingly.

These provisions confirm that the Department would only provide the bare minimum of furniture for a house and would also – as a matter of course - replace “redundant” furniture. Such replacements are not treated as “exceptional circumstances” but are treated as ordinary day-to-day arrangements that should be made between the official and the Department. The sections in chapter 4 do not provide for a Minister to vacate his or her residence while the furniture are being replaced and it is thus not viewed as exceptional circumstances when any piece of state owned furniture is not up to the exacting standards of the relevant Minister.

More damning perhaps is that the residence was obviously “immediately available”. There it was standing – in upper Claremont nogal -  a shiny house, shimmering in the morning light, furnished and ready to be used by any good servant of the masses of our people. Although the furniture were not to the Minister’s liking, that did not make the house “not available”. It just made the house not to the taste of the Minister (whom it turned out, had rather more expensive tastes than the previous owners).

All this suggests that the Minister was not allowed by the Ministerial Handbook to stay in 5 Star Hotels for six months at a cost of  more than R500 000 and that he is legally required to pay back the money he had wasted. Maybe the Public Protector – who seems to be taking her job rather seriously and is acting without fear, favour or prejudice - should be asked to investigate this matter?

Meanwhile, the President might take up the suggestion of Cosatu’s Zwelenzima Vavi (is he finally regretting  the fact that he gunned for the abolition of the Scorpions?) to have the serious allegations of corruption levelled against Minister Nyanda investigated. Just because General Nyanda has displayed a taste for the good life and seems to have flouted the Ministerial Handbook does not, of course, mean that he is a corrupt businessman too.  But it does make one wonder.

On corruption in South Africa

Jul 5th, 2010
by Pierre De Vos.
123 comments

As the Marx Brothers might have put it, ‘this man may look like a corrupt idiot and act like a corrupt idiot, but don’t let that deceive you – he is a corrupt idiot.’ – Slavoj Žižek

On 30 May 2003 then President Thabo Mbeki published one of his politically and analytically most brilliant internet letters. The missive, which became one of his most famous, attempted to challenge the widespread perception that had taken hold (and remains to this day) that the government arms deal had been riddled with corruption.

The letter laid bare some of the deeply problematic ideological assumptions underlying the discourse on corruption in post apartheid South Africa. It then used this insight – which was not only spot on, but also tapped into a widespread resentment amongst members of the newly emerging post-apartheid elite – to defend what seemed to be indefensible.

(This was a tactic often used by Mbeki in his letters: correctly expose and analyze widespread racist or Afro-pessimistic assumptions, then use the insight to deny the existence of obvious problems or to discredit the valid criticism of progressive voices in our society. He used the same tactic against the so-called “ultra left” in Cosatu and the SACP and against those who pointed out the folly of his HIV stance.)

In the letter Mbeki wrote (and I am quoting at length):

In the Biblical Gospel according to St Matthew, it is said that Jesus Christ saw Simon Peter and his brother Andrew fishing in the Sea of Galilee. And He said to them: “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Perhaps taking a cue from this, some in our country have appointed themselves as “fishers of corrupt men”. Our governance system is the sea in which they have chosen to exercise their craft. From everything they say, it is clear that they know it as a matter of fact that they are bound to return from their fishing expeditions with huge catches of corrupt men (and women)….

[W]e should not, and will not abandon the offensive to defeat the insulting campaigns further to entrench a stereotype that has, for centuries, sought to portray Africans as a people that is corrupt, given to telling lies, prone to theft and self-enrichment by immoral means, a people that is otherwise contemptible in the eyes of the “civilised”. We must expect that, as usual, our opponents will accuse us of “playing the race card”, to stop us confronting the challenge of racism.

The fishers of corrupt men are determined to prove everything in the anti-African stereotype. They rely on their capacity to produce long shadows and innumerable allegations around the effort of our government to supply the South African National Defence Force with the means to discharge its constitutional and continental obligations. They are confident that these long shadows and allegations without number will engulf and suffocate the forces that fought for and lead our process of democratisation, reconstruction and development. However, what our country needs is substance and not shadows, facts instead of allegations, and the eradication of racism. The struggle continues.

Re-reading this letter, it seems almost inevitable that Mbeki would have attempted at first to protect  former Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi. It also explains (better than anything anyone else may have written) why he refused to believe the evidence of Selebi’s corruption provided to him by the Prosecuting Authority and even continued to claim that nobody had provided him with any information that Selebi did anything wrong – even after Vusi Pikolu had briefed him on ten different occasions on the evidence against Selebi.

For Mbeki, his (often perceptive and accurate) ideological insights often trumped the proven facts. His tragedy (if you are sympathetic to the former President) or his evil genius (if you are not) was that these general ideological insights were often brilliant and perceptive, but blinded him to the specific facts and the valid criticism of individuals and about particular problems facing the government and the country and its people.

Which brings me to the set of questions I want to try and address in this post: why did an obviously brilliant, courageous and seemingly deeply principled struggle hero like Jackie Selebi became corrupt? Why are we confronted almost every day by news of crooked cops, Home Affairs officials and tenderpreneurs? Why does it sometime feel as if we are being engulfed in a tidal wave (or is it a Tsunami) of sleaze and corruption in South Africa?

The easy answer would be to blame everything on the racist stereotypes that Mbeki rightly warned against and to deny the very facts before our eyes. But this approach would not help us to understand the root causes of the problem and neither would it help to eradicate them. Although the Afro-pessimistic master narrative which Mbeki warned us against may well have helped to exaggerate the perception of corruption in our society, it cannot explain away the problem, which is very real and very dangerous for the long term well-being of our country.

For the same reason we should reject with contempt the racist and offensive claim that there is something in the DNA of the ANC and the government it leads that predisposes it and its members to corruption.

I would like to suggest that the problem can at least partly be attributed to the nature of our transition to democracy. South Africa did not experience a true revolution, but a managed transition. The state remained in tact and the private sector was largely left untouched. During the transition period the crony capitalists and the opportunists, who had exploited the conditions created by apartheid to make vast amounts of money, went to work to capture the new elite in order to protect their own financial interests.

Thus some of the big mining houses and other big business institutions who had resolutely supported apartheid, jumped ship and went to work to woo the members of the incoming government in order to protect their profits and their vested interests. They donated money to the ANC, forged close personal ties with some ANC leaders by wining and dining them and by providing them with all kinds of material “assistance”. They claimed they were doing this out of altruism or out of a deep sense of shock about the horrors of apartheid which – so they laughably claimed – they had only belatedly become aware of.

In essence, what large sections of the big business community did, was to offer legal bribes to the ANC as a movement as well as to individual ANC members to ensure that their own financial interests would be secured. They would offer fantastic riches to a few lucky well-connected individuals through BEE deals and directorships with the understanding that there would not be any fundamental transformation of the economic system in South Africa. Workers would still work and die for a pittance, while bosses would be allowed to continue to draw huge salaries and bonuses and subvent profits to London and New York.

Was it then not all too human and understandable that some (but not all) members of the new elite – who had not benefited from these legalized bribes – began to feel hard done by and tried to do something about it? Thus the mutually beneficial relationship between crony capitalism and some members of the new elite became firmly enrenched. In the feeding frenzy that followed, the lines between the legalized bribes paid by the apartheid capitalists and the criminal bribes paid by people like Schabir Shaik and Glen Agliotti became somewhat blurred.

And as more and more people seem to get fabulously rich (perhaps not as rich as those who exploited the apartheid system) and the culture of accumulation and consumption firmly took hold, it was perhaps inevitable that somebody like poor Jackie Selebi would begin to think that there was not really anything wrong with a gangster buying your very own child a nice pair of shoes. Ironically, it is exactly against this new kind of colonization that Mbeki himself warned in his Nelson Mandela Lecture when he said:

Thus, everyday, and during every hour of our time beyond sleep, the demons embedded in our society, that stalk us at every minute, seem always to beckon each one of us towards a realizable dream and nightmare. With every passing second, they advise, with rhythmic and hypnotic regularity – get rich! get rich! get rich! And thus has it come about that many of us accept that our common natural instinct to escape from poverty is but the other side of the same coin on whose reverse side are written the words – at all costs, get rich!

Is it too late to turn around this ship? Well, extraordinary political and moral leadership is required to address the capturing of our hearts and minds by the crony capitalists. We have the perfect Constitution and the perfect laws to fight the good fight and to stop the rot, but without the political leadership there will be no success. That is why the fight raging currently inside the ANC between the tenderpreneurs and those who believe in the creation of a more fair and just society is pivotal for the long-term well-being of our society.

Sadly, because he is himself compromised and implicated in the culture of greed through his association with the fraudster Schabir Shaik, President Jacob Zuma is probably not the best leader to lead the fight. Time for a change in ANC leadership perhaps?

“I told you so”

Jun 2nd, 2010
by Pierre De Vos.
37 comments

Time will say nothing but I told you so,
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

If we should weep when clowns put on their show,
If we should stumble when musicians play,
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

I don’t often say I told you so, although I would lie if I denied that I am often tempted to do so. But in the wake of reports that the ANC National Working Committee (NWC) on Monday discussed the possibility of charging Cosatu leader, Zwelenzima Vavi, (or may have already decided to charge him), for insulting ANC leaders in public, I have to say: “Well I told you so”.

The Times reports that the ANC wants to charge Vavi as he is a card carrying member of the ANC. They argue that ANC Youth League president Julius Malema was also charged as an ANC member. They are very, very, cross with Vavi because last Thursday, he accused President Jacob Zuma of not taking action against corrupt ministers, specifically mentioning Minister of Cooperative Governance Sicelo Shiceka and Communications Minister Siphiwe Nyanda. Vavi said reports that Shiceka had lied in his CV and the conduct of Nyanda, who spent R500 000 on hotels in Cape Town, should be probed.

The tenderpreneurs in the ANC obviously did not like this talk of probing Ministers for corruption. What will be next? Charging President Zuma for taking money(“taking a bribe”, our courts called it) from a crook and then doing favours for that crook? Exposing the various business dealings of ANC leaders making a fast buck while service delivery flounders? I mean really, who does Vavi think he is? How can one effectively loot rule a country when one’s allies want to have corruption probed and exposed? Have you ever heard of such an absurd idea?

There are no fortunes to be told, although,
Because I love you more than I can say,
If I could tell you I would let you know.

The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,
There must be reasons why the leaves decay;
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

Vavi is, of course, an ANC member and according to the ANC Constitution he is subject to the discipline of the ANC like any other member. It would therefore be perfectly legal to charge Vavi. I am sure if the right disciplinary committee is selected Vavi could also be found guilty of contravening section 25.5 of the ANC Constitution which prohibits any member from, inter alia: 

  • Behaviour which brings the organisation into disrepute or which manifests a flagrant violation of the moral integrity expected of members and public representatives or conduct unbecoming that of a member or public representative;
  • Behaving in such a way as to provoke serious divisions or a break-down of unity in the organisation;
  • Undermining the respect for or impeding the functioning of the structures of the organisation;
  • Prejudicing the integrity or repute of the organisation, its personnel or its operational capacity by: Impeding the activities of the organisation; Creating division within its ranks or membership; Doing any other act, which undermines its effectiveness as an organisation; or Acting on behalf of or in collaboration with: Counter-revolutionary forces.

    • That is exactly why I warned after the conviction of Julius Malema that it was a bad idea to find him guilty of criticising the President of the ANC. At the time I wrote:

    Surely, if this approach were to be strictly applied, it would stifle democratic debate within the ANC and would severely limit the freedom of expression enjoyed by ANC members. If an ANC member criticized one of his comrades because that comrade had been found guilty of corruption, say, disciplinary charges could be instituted against him or her for sowing division within the ANC. This would leave good members in the ANC who spoke out against the wrongdoing of comrades vulnerable and would make it rather difficult to raise questions about the conduct of fellow ANC members – even if this criticism is based on proven facts.

    And that is exactly what Vavi is now facing. Those who want to stop Vavi from speaking out about corruption in the ANC (so much the better to loot govern the country) are even using the Malema saga as an excuse to do so. This is the problem with curtailing freedom of expression and endorsing censorship: today it is being used against your enemies, but tomorrow it is being used against yourself – even when you speak the truth and are one of the good guys.

    The fact that the NWC even discussed the possibility of charging Vavi clearly means that the tenderpreneurs in the ANC are more stupid and vengeful than they are greedy (and that takes some doing). Charging Vavi would be a calamity for President Zuma and the ANC. Unlike Malema, who has no real power base, is being manipulated by a few rich benefactors to do their bidding, and could easily be dropped when he passes his sell-by date, Vavi is the leader of Cosatu. Without the organisational skills of Cosatu and the active support of its members, the ANC will find it difficult to get more than 50% of the vote at the next election.

    One assumes President Zuma and Mr Gwede Mantashe will outflank the tenderpreneurs on the NWC and will make sure that charges against Vavi never see the light of day. If they do not, the ANC would probably be done for as the governing party.  But what President Zuma will not do is to order an investigation into the credible allegations of corruption against Siphiwe Nyanda. If one lives in a glass house one is surely not going to throw the first stone.

    Meanwhile, all I can say to Zwelenzima Vavi is: “I told you so”. When Vavi supported President Zuma as the alternative to Thabo Mbeki and said Zuma was an unstoppable tsunami I warned that President Zuma was an African traditionalist and deeply conservative man who did not share the values held so dearly by Cosatu. Now Vavi is realising that this is indeed the case and that he had helped to elect a man that is ethically weak and holds reactionary views.

    Perhaps the roses really want to grow,
    The vision seriously intends to stay;
    If I could tell you I would let you know.

    Suppose all the lions get up and go,
    And all the brooks and soldiers run away;
    Will Time say nothing but I told you so?
    If I could tell you I would let you know. – - WH Auden “If I could Tell you”

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