The Skweyiya Commission, which examined corruption and political destabilisation in the former Bophuthatswana homeland, should set an example for other provincial governments, argues Dr John Seiler
BOPHUTHATSWANA’S only president, Lucas Mangope, has taken to the political hustings with the cynical, self-serving argument that only he, of all former homeland leaders, has been subjected to an intensive legal inquiry about his seventeen-year governance of the corrupt, repressive, and authoritarian homeland.
He is half right. There are others, of course, but he is altogether wrong in implying his innocence. The lesson of the Skweyiya Commission is not that Mangope was singled out, but that other former homeland leaders and their administrations should be similarly examined.
What are the positive lessons of the Skweyiya Commission? Any replica commission would need to be truly independent of the provincial government involved. It would need to be composed of men and women of integrity and ability, preferably not associated with the province under examination. It would need shrewd and relentless staff to persist in rooting through the stinking labyrinths of our former homelands, with their heady melange of authoritarian secrecy and just plain lying; the overall incompetence of the administrations; and the pervasive corruption in which so many (both in the homelands and in the old South Africa) had a hand. It would need time. The Skweyiya Commission was recommended in March 1994 by the joint administrators of Bophuthatswana, Job Mokgoro and Dr Tjart van der Walt; began work in September 1994 intending to finishi by the new year, and now expects to complete its report to Premier Popo Molefe by the end of this month. It would be expensive. (The Skweyiya Commission may cost a total of
Most of all, it would require political courage to initiate it. Sadly, Mangope may be right when he tacitly suggests the African National Congress, in particular, lacks the political will to launch such free-wheeling investigations. But the underlying lesson from the Skweyiya Commission may be that any examination of the recent past must be coupled with rigorous attention to potential lapses in the new provincial administrations.
The Skweyiya Commission, with four commissioners, three investigating advocates, and two investigators, began its full-time work last September. Its brief was to focus on misuse of government funds for personal ends by Bophuthatswana leaders and officials, and it seems likely that its recommendations to Premier Molefe will concentrate on the formal request for the return to the present government of such misused funds and on indictments against Mangope and a number of senior advisers, cabinet members and officials.
The Commission started with a period of laborious investigation, in which there were only a few fragmentary bits of promising evidence. Few “culprits” were willing to talk. On the contrary, most were pursuaded that their collective silence would make the commission’s efforts fruitless.
A substantial break came in April this year when the former Bophuthatswana secretary for information, Jerry Reid, was caught out in a palpable lie. He had earlier presented evidence to the Commission about a contract, ostensibly given by the previous government in February 1994 to a private company, Q Projects, to follow up its voter education activities in 1992 and 1993, against a prospective reincorporation referendum or Mangope’s acceptance of Bophuthatswana participation in the 1994 South African election. (Q Projects’ directors were Gary Dixon and Alan Soule, originally journalists, but associated in the 1980s with a series of covert information activities funded by the South African government’s secret defence account.)
The joint administrators felt compelled by law to honour this contract. Evidence subsequently emerged that the contract in fact had been signed on March 16 (two days after Mokgoro and Van der Walt took office), but fraudulently backdated to February 10 1994. Reid had no authority to sign when he actually did. He received almost R200 000 from Q Projects for his effort.
When Reid was confronted with the hard choice — belated honesty about the broader context of corruption permeating the Mangope government, or indictment for perjury — he became a useful source for the commission’s investigations. After that, the commission’s investigators were able to tap other witnesses, whose candour in deposition and testimony these past weeks suggests either an implausible rebirth of integrity or a tacit agreement that their honesty would be rewarded by immunity from prosecution.
Although many details remain unexamined and may never be thoroughly investigated, what emerges is a vivid picture of attempted political manipulation using covert channels to spend South African and Bophuthatswana government money to weaken the ANC and bolster the regime’s Bophuthatswana Christian Democratic Party, in which Mangope’s personal corruption and that of most of his cabinet colleagues and senior officials, while more than enough to justify the pro forma claims for refund of those monies and for indictments, become no more than modest elements.
Molefe himself (AM Live August 24 1995) alluded to the efforts at “political destabilisation” which the commission had discovered. His publicly stated concern argues for a close analysis of this intricate episode in very recent political history in a way that squelches claims of partisan politics. This means facing up to a hard question: how much of this recent manipulation, bribery and corruption has been carried over to the new provincial government?
This question is prompted by the March 1995 award to Q Projects of a large contract to work on local government voter registration and education. That contract was cancelled in June, some two months after Reid’s admission of fraud to the Skweyiya Commission. After that cancellation, Q Projects metamorphosed into a new organisation, Multi Media Communications. Rumour has it that Multi Media was offered a sub-contract by a prominent advertising agency to do much the same work that Q Projects had started.
How could the officials and political leadership involved have approved the award, knowing of Q Projects’ association with the Mangope regime? Did these men share the view of one who spoke to me in March that this very recent political history did not matter, given Q Projects’ “technical” competence? Why did the provincial government ignore the strange coincidence of Dixon’s office providing the organisational and publicity direction for the relaunch of Mangope’s BCDP earlier this year? Was the network of front organisations and money laundering processes into which Q Projects fitted as recently as 1994 perhaps still at work, refocused to challenge ANC prospects in local government elections? Perhaps most difficult for the Molefe administration to confront, why should an organisation that had succeeded in bribing at least one official in March 1994 hesitate to offer bribes to men and women in the new provincial government? And, finally, were any offers
Dealing with the recent past will be relatively easy. Confronting the questions about his own government poses a much harder challenge for Molefe. If he does so, he and his provincial government will contribute to democratisation in the North West and serve as a model for other premiers with similar awkward problems.