The appointment of Ramesh Vassen as consul general to Delhi could well be a turning point in the way our government handles corruption. Here we have a man with a criminal conviction – confirmed by the highest court in the land – a man who stole money, a man who was expelled from his own profession. And yet a man judged good enough to represent South Africa in the world’s most populous democracy.
Vassen’s appointment is, of course, little short of grotesque, even without taking into account the fact that he was once a senior partner in our justice minister’s law firm. But what makes his selection particularly chilling is that it comes just days after two Mpumalanga MECs, suspended by the premier of that province for corruption, were reinstated by an African National Congress committee.
We have also seen, this week, the former Independent Broadcasting Authority councillor Lyndall Shope-Mafole given a top government posting in Geneva – despite having been caught with her snout in the public purse, for which she was sacked.
Until now the government and the ANC have at least gone through the motions of professing a commitment to clean government. Minister of Justice Dullah Omar has himself said that the two central values of the party were “honesty and integrity”, and that “people who engaged in corrupt practices should not be allowed to stand for election”.
A few years back President Nelson Mandela cancelled Allan Boesak’s appointment as ambassador to the United Nations, because fraud charges were pending against the cleric. No conviction, just allegations.
So what has changed? What lies behind the crooked lawyer’s appointment? Could it be naivety, stupidity or perhaps complete ignorance on the part of the government as to what diplomatic postings are about?
These would be forgivable, understandable errors of judgment for a government with only five years’ experience. But the Boesak case and others offer a more worrying explanation – that the government has grown too arrogant and too intoxicated by power to bother.
It is an explanation which is encouraged by the performance of Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Aziz Pahad, when he was grilled about Vassen on SAfm last week. During a masterful cross-examination, Pahad was asked why his department had failed to pick up Vassen’s criminal conviction in 1996 while the lawyer was employed in Parliament. His reply: “South Africa is a sick society. Corruption is endemic. We were busy on so many other issues it might not have come to our attention.”
Pahad’s main argument was that it was unfair to pick on Vassen when so many whites had committed crimes or supported apartheid. “I don’t think that any white person would be in any position of power [if we took that position],” the deputy minister spluttered.
Hopefully Pahad was stampeded by stage fright into making such a nonsensical statement. But it and the circumstances surrounding the Vassen affair demand, at the very least, a clear statement of policy from the ANC at the highest level. Either that, or we are left with the inescapable conclusion that the liberation movement has abandoned principle in favour of thievery.
The Broederbank?
The extent of the manipulations pervading this country’s financial system in the apartheid years has never been examined in any depth. It is an area of our history about which we know nearly nothing.
No story makes this blind spot in our understanding of the past more patent than the Absa lifeboat scandal. It is a corporate saga which often appears bewilderingly complicated, mainly as a result of obfuscation on the part of the players themselves.
It is, in fact, remarkably simple: the governor of the Reserve Bank, Chris Stals, gave the Broederbond bank a R1,5-billion gift, which was made to look like a loan. Stals and the bank have consistently claimed that this “lifeboat” was in line with international banking practices. Until now they have got away with it.
As reported last week in the Mail & Guardian, a former British intelligence agent is meanwhile accusing Absa’s predecessor, Volkskas, in the British courts of having facilitated South Africa’s dirty tricks operations – entirely plausible allegations that are consistent with the notion that, as the bankers for the Broederbond, Absa enjoyed the cosiest relationships with the government. How else did Absa manage to bag a R1,5-billion gift courtesy of the taxpayer? What happened in the secret dealing rooms where these, and all our sanctions busting deals, were negotiated?
These are the probing questions that must be answered soon. It is not only Stals who has remained silent on the matter. The bulk of the financial press is also to blame, having consistently refused to challenge the Broederbond orthodoxy as to how apartheid’s darkest endeavours were financed.
Absa has not replied to last week’s M&G article, wishing the story would just go away. But it cannot be allowed to do so. The truth commission got nowhere in its hearings on business under apartheid. It is now up to Judge Willem Heath and the British courts to go where others have been too afraid to tread.