Publication: Sunday Times Issued: Date: 2005-11-13 Reporter: Brendan Boyle

Corrupt Or Just A Bit Iffy?

 

Publication 

Sunday Times

Date

2005-11-13

Reporter

 Brendan Boyle

Web Link

www.sundaytimes.co.za

 

The President’s campaign against public graft sorely lacks a clear definition of what sort of self-enrichment is and is not acceptable, writes Brendan Boyle

‘What is missing is the repeatable marketing slogan that would see Mbeki’s anti-corruption message plastered on billboards and T-shirts’

President Thabo Mbeki’s visible management of the Jacob Zuma crisis appears to consist largely of a campaign to punt corruption to the top of the public agenda in the hope that, even without a court conviction, it will overwhelm his party deputy and vindicate his dismissal from state office. Mbeki has shifted from the defensive position that characterised his interventions during the arms deal investigation to an offensive against those who seek to abuse the public trust.

No longer only railing against racists who consider all Africans naturally disposed towards corruption, he has taken to repeated attacks on those within the ranks of the ruling party who cheat their way to power or wealth.

“We 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’,” he said in an Internet letter in May 2003.

But in July this year, after the Cabinet’s mid-year retreat, he echoed the newer theme that corruption is rampant and must be fought.

“The lekgotla ... observed that a mercenary, acquisitive spirit seems to have bewitched some of our people, including members of our movement. This drives these individuals to do everything, with no respect for morality or the law, to acquire material wealth, and gain positions of power that would give them access to public resources, which they would proceed to steal,” he said.

Zuma’s name is never mentioned in the direct context of attacks on corruption, but as mayors, municipal managers, policemen, nurses and even government department heads go down on charges of corruption, there is a momentum building that could deliver the mass public judgment that Zuma is unfit for government office.

So far, however, the campaign is failing in two critical regards — it is being run too much by the executive with its major champion the President, who many accuse of directing a political campaign against the likeable Zuma; and the message is blurred by a lack of consensus on what exactly constitutes corruption *1.

The primary conduit for the anti-corruption message is the President himself, in his weekly letters, his messages to top-level ANC bodies and in his speeches at imbizos.

What is missing is the repeatable marketing slogan that would see Mbeki’s anti-corruption message plastered on billboards and T-shirts. The dutiful echoes that do come from ministers and senior officials are more often confusing than passionately convincing.

No one seems quite clear on where the line should be drawn. In our highly centralised democracy, perhaps they fear to pre-empt the President.

In a society where a nurse is prosecuted for registering for childcare grants to which she is not entitled, but a former premier who is very close to the President is awarded a huge chunk of the world’s biggest diamond company for no obvious good reason, corruption needs to be clearly and consistently defined. The old adage “I know it when I see it” falls short. Though most of us would believe we know what is and is not corrupt, the Imvume case seems to defeat that test.

When a businessman (Sandi Majali) gives his political party R11-million as a gift and leaves himself unable to meet his next commercial commitment, even an ardent ANC supporter might say: “That bears looking into.”

Yet the President remains silent and his government fends off every attempt to investigate the circumstances in any depth.

A rural policeman who resists the blue note proffered by a rich holidaymaker trying to avoid a speeding fine might wonder why it is acceptable for Smuts Ngonyama, who heads the President’s party office, to be made mega-rich just because he mediated a truce between rivals for a monumental black empowerment deal involving Telkom shares.

Former advisers, including the late Parks Mankahlana, have acknowledged that Mbeki actively dislikes the sound-bite culture that reduces political ideals to catchy phrases. But the people he hopes to convince are more likely to collapse in front of a television after a hard day’s work than they are to log onto ANC Today and read the President's latest 2000-word message.

It cannot have escaped Mbeki that the phrases most widely associated with him are “I am an African” and “African Renaissance”. Both of them are memorable and appealing.

Even with a simple slogan, however, the anti-corruption message needs more consistency than it now has.

Mbeki turned to the Oxford dictionary to define corruption in his opening address to an international anti-corruption conference in 1999, focusing on the phrase “to destroy the moral purity or chastity of something”.

That aligns with his focus more on the mind-set of corruption — those who seek public office because they know it will lead them to wealth — than on the act of corruption.

As Colm Allan, director of the Public Service Accountability Monitor in Grahamstown, points out, Mbeki has never spelt out in any detail what Zuma did to deserve his dismissal. He has yet to explain what happened between his vehement condemnation of what he called “the fishers of corrupt men” who would hear no good about the arms deal and the current prosecution of the former deputy president.

What line has been crossed between then and now?

Nor has Mbeki spelt out how those ANC members he abhors turn their access to office into undeserved riches or where the boundary is between enrichment in office and enrichment immediately after leaving office. That leaves a critical gap for those who might seek to justify their actions.

Arnold Heidenheimer, a Washington University political scientist who wrote prolifically about corruption, identified three kinds: white, which most would not consider worthy of prosecution; grey, which some would say should be punished; and black, which all would agree deserving of punishment.

He argued that as societies become more democratic, the white becomes grey and the grey black until, eventually, all corruption is condemned.

David Osterfeld, another US political scientist, identified what he called “expansive” corruption, which oils low-level markets with small exchanges, and “restrictive” corruption, which diverts wealth towards elite individuals or groups.

With the government embarking on an infrastructure spending programme likely to top R200-billion, there is potential for restrictive corruption in an ill-defined business arena.

Australia’s Independent Commission Against Corruption established in a 1994 survey that most people take a relativist view, judging corruption on issues such as circumstantial justification and the status of the person corrupted. It was a finding that underlined the need to define as closely as possible what is and is not acceptable.

One popular defence of Zuma’s acceptance of inappropriate gifts from Schabir Shaik is that he returned from the struggle penniless and needed to catch up with others who had accumulated wealth during a lifetime of internal struggle.

Some who seek to defend former parliamentary defence committee chairman Tony Yengeni’s acceptance of a discount on a car from a potential arms-deal bidder argue that he was not, in fact, in a position to influence the decision and that his behaviour was therefore acceptable.

Ayesha Kajee of Transparency International South Africa believes it is time to refine the parameters of acceptable behaviour in the public and private sectors.

“We need to legislate on what is appropriate behaviour in the public sector and in the private sector around *1 things like empowerment, procurement deals, issues of political party financing. I’d like to see a huge range of accountability measures put into place and, certainly within the public sector, a move towards greater monitoring of performance at higher levels of government,” she said.

If the Zuma crisis has spurred Mbeki into real action against corruption then some good will have come of it. But the message needs to be catchy, it needs to be clear and, above all, it needs to be consistent *2.

With acknowledgements to Brendan Boyle and the Sunday Times.


*1  One need not look much further than the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act of 2004.

Although, of specific concern is the Conflict of Interest.

*2  Including a good look in the mirror.