Sarafina II
Minister of Housing Sankie Mthembi- Mahanyele blithely claimed this week that the auditor generals report on the Motheo housing project scam cleared both her and her department of any wrongdoing. Her interpretation suggests that either she didnt actually read the report or she chose to overlook its salient features.
The auditor general found gross procedural irregularities and recommended a commission of inquiry into the ministers relationships with the key players in the project. Mthembi-Mahanyele was close to both the director of the company that was to profit from the contract and the banker who set it up. These links establish at least the perception that there was a conflict of interest and should have been enough to dissuade the minister from claiming she was in the clear.
Her defence, apart from attacking the auditor general, is that it was all Mpumalangas fault that the province failed to apply the rules properly. Yet Mthembi-Mahanyele was warned beforehand of the irregularities and problems surrounding the project by her former director general Billy Cobbett. She chose to ignore his warnings and go ahead with a lavish launch of the scheme, leaving Cobbett with no option but to approach the auditor general to investigate the irregularities. Cobbetts reward for exercising his constitutional duty as a public servant was to be fired.
Mthembi-Mahanyeles earlier claims that Cobbett resigned and that she should take credit for approaching the auditor general were refuted this week, further raising doubts about her credibility.
Despite all this the minister had the gall to tell a press conference that the only reason the auditor general recommended an inquiry was because of pressure from the media. This is an extraordinary slur on the integrity of one of the constitutions most important watchdogs.
Sadly, it seems many of Mthembi-Mahanyeles ministerial colleagues agree. No one in Cabinet or Parliament has seen fit to hear Cobbetts side of the story. They have doggedly refused to understand what the report is saying about one of the darkest deals to go down in the new South Africa, that could have involved R200-million of public money. Its most cynical aspect is that if the ministers friends were going to benefit improperly from the deal it would have been on the back of housing for the poor.
What is even more astonishing is that it should be Mthembi-Mahanyele, with the help of Minister of Justice Dullah Omar, who is advising President Nelson Mandela about whether he should follow the auditor generals advice. It is a task for which she is entirely unqualified.
At this stage, it seems likely that Mthembi-Mahanyele will wriggle free when she should, of course, be sacked.
Mandela said last year that his governments biggest mistake so far was the handling of the Sarafina II scandal. Watching the Motheo saga being played out, it is questionable whether this is a government that can learn from its mistakes.
Spooks still haunt our newsrooms
In his testimony to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission this week the newspaper spy, John Horak, noted he had been forgiven by everyone including the president with the singular exception of the press. The lack of forgiveness on the part of our industry is understandable, because Horaks activities strike at the foundations of our craft. In the spirit of national reconciliation we might have made a gesture in his direction, but for the suspicion that he along with some among his more recent employers seemingly fail to recognise the damage his ilk does to the media as an institution.
Horak informed the commission that there were more government spies in the countrys newspapers today than there were in the days of apartheid. He hurried to give assurances that they were not there to spy on their colleagues (an assurance we treat with considerable scepticism), but as cover for their spying activities elsewhere.
The former police spy also said there was more telephone-tapping going on today than formerly and appeared to suggest that whatever controls may exist were being abused. If you go to the establishments farm in the Pretoria district … they have got apparatus today that you can listen in to any phone call anywhere in the world without going near a phone, without going near a post office.
Horak was presumably speaking with an insiders knowledge: he boasted to the commission that, at the African National Congresss invitation, he had been a founder member of our new National Intelligence Agency (NIA) and that last year he had only been prevented by ill- health from taking up the position of deputy ambassador to Russia, presumably to oversee intelligence operations in that part of the globe.
If he accurately reflected both the facts and attitudes within the NIA hierarchy, Horaks observations are cause for considerable alarm. The use of newspapers as cover for spies clearly endangers the lives of bona fide journalists as well as striking at the free flow of information.
We would strongly urge the truth commission to investigate Horaks evidence further by calling the heads of the NIA and the secret service to appear before it. The commissions brief is, after all, to ensure the mistakes of the past are not repeated in the new South Africa.