legitimate [sleazy] behaviour’
Want to make a quick buck, squash a fine, get ahead in your career or get away with murder? The Mail & Guardian offers some tips from past and present pros
Ivor Powell, Jubie Matlou, Mungo Soggot, Paul Kirk and Evidence wa ka Ngobeni
The reaction to Mail & Guardian revelations last week that Minister of Home Affairs Mangosuthu Buthelezi is being investigated for quietly receiving millions of rands in pay-offs from KwaZulu-Natal’s illegal casino operators confirmed that South Africa’s capacity for tolerating corruption has scaled new heights.
On Friday the M&G’s phone lines burned with the opprobrium of irate callers, all of whom were white, and middle-aged. “That poster …” they stammered. But they were not referring to the poster about Buthelezi’s casino millions. It was the other one, the one that said, “F*** You, Hansie Cronje”, which inspired such hatred.
Not a murmur about an article revealing documentary evidence that a minister of state may have been salting away in his personal bank account a fortune in illicit, corrupt payments.
We venture that whole governments would have been brought down in other parts of the world by only half of that. Worse than that, the story followed up on a March report to the effect that Buthelezi had personally banked R1-million in Ulundi in 1998 – money he had counted out, in R50 notes, in full view of the bank manager, from a stash of notes stuffed in plastic bags.
Responding to last week’s story, Mario Ambrosini, the long-serving adviser to the Inkatha Freedom Party strongman, said Buthelezi saw no reason to respond to these new revelations as the M&G had already demonstrated its “malfeasance” by, in March, portraying “perfectly legitimate behaviour” as being improper.
OK, Mr Ambrosini, you win. Let us say, for argument’s sake, that a Cabinet minister riffling through six-figure money … in R50 notes … in Checkers packets … in Ulundi’s First National Bank is “perfectly legitimate behaviour [PLB]”. We should perhaps use this opportunity to compile a guide to other forms of “PLB” that have taken root or have persisted in the new South Africa.
Herewith, the beginner’s guide to PLB.
High road solutions to traffic offences: A R50 note discreetly inserted into an identity document and handed over to a traffic officer could rescue an offender from far heavier fines and/or the inconvenience of court appearances. This simple expedient is known to be especially effective in the festive season when traffic officers, like the rest of us, are looking for that extra bit of cheer.
Alternatively, one may choose to pay half of any fine actually imposed, directly to a connection in the traffic department, who will then delete any record of the offence from the system.
Like the R50 pay-out, this method has the advantage of eliminating unwanted middlemen like the traffic department and the state from the transaction.
You seem to need the status of a deputy speaker of Parliament to actually pass a driver’s test in absentia, but R400 will secure the legal document as long as you are prepared to undergo the test – no matter how dramatically you fail to come up to the supposedly required standard. Remember, driving school instructors can play an “important” role as middlemen in securing the co-operation of the licensing officer.
If all else fails and you really cannot hack it on the roads, you could always secure a diplomatic posting. They come with chauffeurs.
The mysterious case of the disappearing docket: Pioneered by police investigators of the old regime, where it was put to best use in political cases where the police had to account for deaths in detention, the disappearing docket has nevertheless been enthusiastically adopted by the new South African order, where it tends to have a rather more commercial flavour.
The price for dockets from police officers and court officials varies of course according to the seriousness of the charges, but can often be surprisingly reasonable, with even murder dockets sometimes costing as little as R1E000.
A variation on the disappearing docket has recently come strongly to the fore in the awarding of the third cellular licence, where scores of company records disappeared from the central registry in Pretoria before they could be scrutinised by the office of the auditor general (see “Behind the front companies”).
Crediting credit cards: The most common way of “milking” parastatals and other state agencies, where senior managers have in recent years used company credit cards creatively. Available to the creative executive are buying groceries, paying school fees, visiting massage parlours and brothels, and even erecting perimeter walls around private homes.
Creative credit card usage is not, however, always to be confused with corruption, as a top academic, unable to account for R160E000 on his magic plastic, pointed out. He insisted that in being found guilty of credit card fraud, he had been cleared of corruption charges.
Sporting bets: Not to be confused with match-fixing, “match-forecasting” is a time-honoured PLB, and our disgraced South African cricket captain is in good company. Australians Mark Waugh and nnnnShane Warne nnnblazed the way nnyears ago, but never nnhas a match been nnquite as precisely ndiscussed as between nCronje and London nbookie Sanjeev Chawla, where definite scores, not only totals but also those of individual players, were discussed. Pity about Lance Klusener’s reluctance nnnto play ball.
And then there is soccer. The difference between a score of 1-0 and 1-1 in a professional soccer match can sometimes mean the difference between surviving in the league and ignominious relegation.
One Professional Soccer League referee apparently felt the vicarious pang of disappointment so strongly he allowed a game to go on for 20 minutes after its scheduled close – then ended it the moment an equaliser was scored.
More generally, the outcomes of games are often discussed by the managers of the competing teams beforehand – and subtle adjustments have been known to be agreed, to both the likely outcomes of games and to various bank balances.
Work permits, and so forth: Though widespread at every level of government, this particular species of PLB is most fruitfully exploited by senior officials in the Department of Home Affairs, who, by facilitating the issuing of work permits to foreign nationals of, say, Sudanese and West African origin, are able to put together basketball teams that literally tower over the opposition.
Of course if you are not lucky enough to work for home affairs, a little ingenuity still goes a long way. For instance a sinecure in the Department of Correctional Services can be put to excellent use by making playing fields and other facilities available to your private football team. And the prisoners? Ah, just throw them down a mineshaft if they get in the way.
Jobs for pals: A typical example was the appointment of a foreigner to advise the restructuring of a public asset, the Central Energy Fund, to the tune of R3- million, despite his shadowy credentials – that, while finance minister in his own country, he attempted to privatise his country’s state oil company to himself and to use his position in government to line his pockets from the pubic purse.
Behind the front companies: Here is the nitty gritty of PLB in the new South Africa, as indeed it is throughout the globalising world. Of course the front company is nothing new, and it was used to some effect by the agents of the old security forces in their efforts to privatise their own core business of murder and mayhem.
But in the new dispensation, the obstacle that needs to be surmounted is this: that as a fiduciary public official you are often in a position to award lucrative contracts, but are barred by irritating legislation from also accepting them. Never fear. Family members can be roped in to set up shell companies (no experience in the relevant business needed).
Friends or employees can be entrusted with directorships. But, with no meaningful legislation yet in place to ensure the identification of the occult beneficiaries behind nominees, the preferred method these days is to hire an accountant to sign for your shares in companies tendering for contracts which you will be awarding.
Oh, and by the way, in the PLB guide, there appears to be no particular pressure to even consider awarding the contract to the bidder who comes in with the lowest estimates. Quite the contrary. It is a rule of thumb in the world of PLB: the higher the estimate, the better your chances of winning (see “Commissioning procedures”).
Bear in mind here that having secured the contract – and established yourself in the position of an occult beneficiary – you don’t actually have to do the work specified in the contract. The fact that you set up a housing company for instance, and thereby promoted the cause of black empowerment, doesn’t mean you know anything about building houses, does it?
What you do in this eventuality is make a nod-and-a-wink kind of deal with people who do know how to build houses – but have been excluded from the contract because of their connections to the old political and economic order. They build the houses, you split the proceeds. This is where the practice of giving the job to the highest bidder makes particularly good sense in a PLB kind of way.
Commissioning procedures: In the arcane world of PLB opportunity, commissioning of programming on the national public airwaves can be turned into a variation of the public tender.
The step here is to bypass fixed commissioning procedures where far too many cooks can spoil the broth. You can always get the required authorisation later. You then buy or commission programmes that never get used – at double the market price. If you are caught, you can claim, perfectly legitimately, that you lacked proper leadership, there was no corruption involved, you cannot be held responsible. Meanwhile, your million-rand mansion just grows and grows.
Securing your pension and keeping your job: Why should the deceased stop being paid their state pensions? If you think this payment suspension is unreasonable and unnecessary, you could follow the lead of enterprising entrepreneurs in the Eastern Cape and the Northern Province. You need help inside the Department of Welfare and Population Development, but if you can get it, you replace the authorised fingerprint of the recently departed with your own or that of one of your accomplices. By matching fingerprints at pay-out points every month, you can then continue to collect a contribution by the state to your continued well-being.
Of course another way of living better is to continue to receive a salary from the state while running your own business on the side, or simply retiring to enjoy your leisure. You need to invest in at least two jackets to hang over the chair in your office to establish your continued presence in rotation. But otherwise this very popular species of PLB is a cinch.
Pass one, pass all: Proffer a R50 note to an underpaid teacher to get a fake yet colourful school report for a pupil who has failed an end-of-year examination. Come the new school term, the pupil has been promoted.
Punish the whistle-blowers: Above all, never try to blow the whistle on corruption – particularly not if you work for the Department of Correctional Services or anywhere in Mpumalanga. Chances are you will be charged with corruption.