The African National Congress’s demand in response to the findings of the Dreyer Commission of Inquiry into the Mpumulanga housing scandal that those who tried to “drag” Minister of Housing Sankie Mthembi- Mahanyele into the scandal should apologise is laughable.
The commission, as the ANC well knows, was precluded from probing into the minister’s role in the scandal.
Instead, the commission spent much time and energy reaching its conclusion that the Motheo contract with the Mpumulanga government was illegal. While uncovering an arrogant carelessness about public money, the commission danced around the core problem that holds great dangers for public life in this country.
The most disturbing aspect, from the beginning, has been not so much the irregularities – how an unknown developer managed to secure a R198-million contract for the construction of 10 500 houses in the middle of nowhere after provincial housing authorities rode roughshod over virtually all the procedures – but the relationships between the key players.
Those in the Motheo corner have parried allegations about the irregularities by pointing out that housing delivery is too urgent a matter to be held back by red tape.
We agree, but that is not the point. Our concern is over the relationships, concerns that have only been deepened by the cavalier manner in which the players themselves and the government have dismissed them.
Is there no pause for thought that Thandi Ndlovu, a close friend of Mthembi-Mahanyele, was awarded the largest contract in the country’s history to build houses, something for which she had no expertise, before her company even existed?
Is no one bothered that her sister, Granny Seape, was in charge of low-cost housing at Nedcor and centrally involved in getting the deal off the ground? Or that Seape’s boss, Kevin Gibb, also a close friend of the minister, was the driving force behind the project?
Or that sacked Mpumalanga Housing Board chairman Saths Moodley who, according to Hugh Dreyer, should shoulder most of the blame for the approval of an illegal project, was connected to all of them?
It resounds to the government’s discredit that it never took the opportunity after the auditor general’s report to ask whether the relationships were in themselves unhealthy and to canvass the entire question of conflict of interest. This was an opportunity to draw a line, to say so far and no further to the rapid decline in standards of public morality, particularly the rise of nepotism, favouritism and cronyism.
Instead, we have been offered the opposite. The commission concluded that the fact that Job Mthombeni sat on the Mpumulanga Housing Board and was later appointed a director of Motheo was not a conflict of interest.
And without even asking the tough questions about the minister, the commission declared there was no evidence that her ministry had influenced the awarding of the scheme.
The public has still been denied an explanation why the minister first agreed with her then director general, Billy Cobbett, that the project should not be approved before funds were available; why, fully briefed about the irregularities, she went ahead and launched it anyway; why she sacked Cobbett when he reported the project to the auditor general; why she later tried to claim responsibility for taking the matter to the auditor general; and why she misinformed the public by claiming that Cobbett resigned.
It is not for her critics to apolgise. It is for her to explain.
Business of knowing
If there was ever an example of failure to recognise that circumstances have changed in the new South Africa, it is the written submission made to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission by the Chamber of Mines. The document might have been a pamphlet designed for gullible tourists. It is not good enough for the nation.
To be charitable, it could be said that the difficulties the chamber and other players in the business establishment are having in dealing with the truth commission can be put down to confusion about the purpose of the inquiry. After all, the enabling legislation provides for investigation into “gross human rights abuses” and corporate South Africa, as represented by the men and women in wood- panelled boardrooms, may understandably protest: “What, us ? We didn’t murder anyone, torture anyone …” But that is to misunderstand the role of the commission.
Desmond Tutu and his team have, quite rightly, interpreted their brief as one of ensuring that “it does not happen again”. To avoid a repetition it is necessary to understand the past. And understanding is not to be discovered in superficialities such as those offered by the Chamber of Mines. Or in the silence which some other sectors of the business community have preferred to maintain.
The country does not want denials; it lived through apartheid and will not be fooled by them. It does not want excuses; they are quickly recognised as such. It does not particularly want apologies, although they are nice when they come. It wants explanations, analysis, understanding.
The former Barclays Bank chief executive, Chris Ball, has shown the way with an incisive portrait of business under apartheid. Afrikaner institutions – perhaps because of their own history of struggle – have also shown a degree of understanding as to what is required by the commission. The rest of corporate South Africa needs to follow suit.