Robert Kirby: LOOSE CANNON
At our peril we are all ignoring another fine example Dr Nkosazana Zuma has given us of audacious democratic management skills. Especially when it comes to applying discipline to insolent apartheid-residual control bodies, Nkosazana leads the way.
As they say in the good book: if thine hand offends thee, cut it off. Exactly the same applies to offensive extensions of the medical corpus, like the Medicines Control Council (MCC). “Okay, fellows, let’s see how much Virodene you can ban when your right arm’s come to a sudden end at the wrist.”
In shafting the MCC, Dr Z was really saying it’s far better to have regulatory bodies which are prepared to do exactly as they’re told. In which happy light, I suggest the following.
What South Africa needs urgently is to do away with its endless array of judicial commissions of inquiry, misuse of public funds probe committees, special police fraud divisions, offices for serious economic offences, public protectors and all the other slavering watchdogs which are deemed to be desperately necessary when an immaculate African National Congress-led democracy takes over a country from the obscenely criminal fascists who plundered it previously.
The watchdogs simply aren’t necessary. We must again follow Dr Z’s lead. Fire them all and set up a brand-new regulatory body, its remit to put government corruption on a sound footing. When an MEC decides he wants to rip off R85-million or R90-million from the low-cost housing budget, that MEC must first meet the requisite standards of the Corruption Control Commission (CCC).
Example. Let’s say you are a director in the Ministry of Defence department responsible for the acquisition of, for argument’s sake, a fleet of state-of-the-art corvettes which you need to keep some crumbling North Korean fishing boats in check. (Please don’t go all moist under the arms, Ronnie. I’m only using your crowd as an example. It was also the first to spring to mind.)
Along come bidders from England, Spain, Rwanda and others, all eager for the contract. It’s worth R50-billion. Money which, if you don’t get your hands on it quickly, might otherwise be squandered on ambulances, poverty relief, nurses’ salaries, petrol for police vehicles, arithmetic teachers, prefab schools, soup kitchens, clinics and so on.
As the director in charge of corvette acquisitions you get offered various sweeteners. These range from straight cash in Cayman Island banks to castles in Spain, Rembrandt originals, pre-paid high-colonic sessions performed by Jani Allen look-alikes and so on.
Naturally you go for the cash and this is where the CCC swings into action. Before you award the corvette contract to the bidder offering you the most megabucks, you have to make a formal Bribery Acceptance application. The CCC will consider your case, awarding you the right to receive all or only a portion of the bribe, according to your status in the gravy-chain and subject to many other factors. How much you, personally, have misappropriated since you’ve had the job, how quickly you stole it, how shrewdly you lied about it, what percentage of the entire ministry corruption budget your measly R40-million bribe represents.
Within a day of receiving your official CCC clearance form, you receive a copy of the Cayman Islands deposit, minus the Pay-As -You-Steal deduction Trevor Manuel now insists on having at source. The whole arrangement, and all the others, are published weekly in the Government Gazette.
Think of the savings to the country such a system would yield. The valuable time saved by Cabinet ministers, their wives, their staff, their legal advisers, their spokesfolk. Not having to spend half the working day making up elaborate excuses for the press. Last year alone, the Mail & Guardian’s Mungo Soggot totally wasted no less than 2 067 Cabinet minister hours with his ghastly racist prying. And that was just in Penuell Maduna’s office.
Ministerial time is, in fact, far more practically valuable than the billions embezzled. Time which could be spent in much more amiable pursuits, like being out at the airport to hug Allan Boesak. Allan’s a case in point. The amount of money and time spent in, so far unsuccessfully, trying to hound Pastor Boesak into a court of common law is quite absurd. In suggesting that they just rap Allan’s devout fingers and send him off to Geneva, Mr Mandela was applying good common sense. Put him somewhere where he can steal someone else’s rainbow for a change.
Someone up there’s going to steal ours anyway. Let’s save all the grief and energy of having to find out.