Justin Pearce
SOUTH AFRICA’S non-govermental organisation (NGO) community is reeling from the shockwaves of the allegations of theft and fraud made against Dr Allan Boesak’s Foundation for Peace and Justice (FPJ).
Last week’s revelations of the scale on which money disappeared undetected from the FPJ have prompted NGO trustees to re-examine their roles and duties seriously
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Trustees of various organisations who spoke to the Weekly Mail & Guardian agreed that they had failed to keep an adequate watch on the books of their various organisations.
“We need people who are there because of their financial skills, and such people need to share their skills,” said Mary Burton, who announced her resignation from all trusteeships after R423 000 disappeared from the Children’s Trust of which she was a trustee.
Burton said accounting skills were not the first priority for donors when selecting trustees: “There is a desire for people who are known to the donors and can give them confidence.”
In the case of Boesak, many observers have remarked that this blind confidence in someone with the right political credentials was what enabled the disappearance of FPJ money.
Former Pan Africanist Congress vice-president Dikgang Moseneke said there was a limited number of “pet names” — figures who were approached again and again to give credibility to charitable projects. These people were already overloaded with work and could never do justice to their duties as trustees. Moseneke, who is now chairman of the board of Telkom, said he received one or two requests each month to serve on the board of a business or charity.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu is one person who is much in demand as a trustee. His secretary, John Allen, said it was important to distinguish between the roles of a trustee and a patron: if Tutu does not have time to play an active role as an organisational trustee, he will allow his name to be associated with the trust as a patron if he endorses the aims of the organisation.
Others criticised the separation between organisational trustees, who are ultimately responsible for the organisational funds, and the management which takes the day-to-day decisions.
One NGO trustee said there is very little trustees can do “unless you go in with a pen and do the ticks and crosses yourself”.
On the other hand, the fact that many of the FPJ trustees were friends of Boesak was cited as a problem by one former trustee: “If you have a cordial relationship with someone, how do you blow the whistle on them.”
The necessary culture of secrecy in apartheid days was another problem: “There was an unwritten agreement not to share more information than was absolutely necessary,” the former trustee said.
DanChurch Aid director Christian Balslev-Olesen has confirmed that the FPJ was used to channel money into South Africa for anti-apartheid political activities — but donors requested that this practice stop after 1990.
Since the foreign funding of political bodies was illegal in the 1980s, the practice of “struggle bookkeeping” was implemented as a means of hiding this money from the South African authorities.
Balslev-Olesen said DanChurch Aid had always been able to keep track of this money through a network of personal contacts and that a formal system of accounting was not necessary in the circumstances. After 1990, there was no longer a need for secrecy, and DanChurch Aid had asked FPJ to implement a proper system of accounting.
“We do not accept the excuse from FPJ that because these practices were necessary in apartheid days they should continue,” Balslev-Olesen said. However, DanChurch Aid had refrained from demanding an inquiry until after the 1994 elections for fear of harming the image of the ANC.