The ANC’s reaction to inquiries into the arms deal is not surprising considering its steady centralisation of power
Tony Leon
The decision by South Africa’s Parliament in November last year to launch an investigation into the R43-billion arms deal was seen by some as evidence that Parliament was finally flexing its constitutional muscles.
One prescient political commentator noted that “we always knew it would take a while for day-to-day political behaviour to catch up with the Constitution’s aspirations”.
In the new year, however, the African National Congress leadership acted ruthlessly to limit the scope of the inquiry. President Thabo Mbeki announced that the special investigative unit, headed by Judge Willem Heath, would be excluded from the investigation. Mbeki justified this decision by labelling Heath “ungovernable.”
Last week the head of the ANC component of the public accounts committee, and a prime mover behind the investigation, was demoted. Announcing this decision the party’s chief whip, Tony Yengeni, said the ANC members of the committee would now operate under the guidance of the party leadership: “In our system, no ANC member has a free vote.”
As the party leadership sends in the tanks to crush the inquiry, Parliament’s decision to investigate the arms deal has come to resemble more Prague spring than velvet revolution. The response of much of the press and civil society has been one of bewilderment our Constitution’s noble aspirations have proved to be little more than parchment barriers in the face of such blatant abuses of power.
Yet Mbeki’s intervention should not have been entirely unexpected. Although the consequences are only now becoming visibly apparent, the ANC leadership has been steadily accumulating and centralising power over a number of years.
The origins of this “power creep” can be traced back to 1997, when the ANC passed a resolution at its national conference reaffirming the Leninist doctrine of “democratic centralism” as a guiding principle of the movement. In terms of this doctrine, all state institutions were to be brought under party control and all party organs (including ANC caucuses in the legislatures) were placed under the “supervision and direction” of the central party structure, the national executive committee (NEC).
Although “debate and discussion” was permitted beforehand, once the NEC reached a decision “iron discipline” was to prevail and party members were obliged to “abide by, defend and implement” that decision.
To give practical effect to this doctrine the work of overseeing, promoting and selecting ANC cadres was concentrated in one body, the national deployment committee.
The ANC politburo, the national working committee (NWC), was given the final say over the “deployment” and “redeployment” of ANC members to both party positions (such as in the legislatures) and to state institutions.
Following the 1999 election the NWC decided who would fill the positions of speaker and heads of committees and then sent their decision to Parliament to rubber-stamp.
The effect of this policy was to shift real authority from constitutional structures (such as Parliament) to those of the party.
Thus, although ANC MPs were obliged by the Constitution to ensure that the executive accounted to Parliament, they were, in terms of the ANC constitution, “answerable and accountable” to the party leadership.
James Madison famously wrote that in order for the separation of powers to function effectively “ambition must be made to counteract ambition”. With its iron grip over the careers of ANC cadres, the party leadership ensured that ambition counteracted independence. Not surprisingly, party authority has generally prevailed over constitutional obligation.
The ANC’s fusion of party and state meant that the arms procurement process was conducted without many of the basic checks and balances provided by an independent civil service.
The chief of acquisitions was an ANC cadre, and many of the state institutions that might have provided some oversight such as the intelligence and prosecution services had been placed under party control. Companies partly owned by senior members of Umkonto we Sizwe received a disproportionate share of the sub-contracts, and there are suggestions that other ANC politicians may have improperly benefited.
Thus, because the arms deal resembles, in crucial areas, an all- lllllANC affair, any evidence of wrongdoing would in all likelihood severely embarrass the ruling party.
Perhaps what is most surprising then about Parliament’s probe into the arms deal is that it was allowed to happen in the first place. There are probably a number of reasons for this failure to politically manage the process from the beginning: The Office of the Auditor General, which submitted a report calling for further investigation, is one of the few state institutions outside of party control; the public accounts committee is headed by an opposition (Inkatha Freedom Party) MP and contained some of the last few independent-minded ANC MPs; Deputy President Jacob Zuma was (for some reason) supportive; and the ANC caucus was opposed to corruption in arms deals in a vague kind of way.
The push by the party leadership to effectively reverse Parliament’s decision is a demonstration of the awesome powers Mbeki has accumulated. Once the NWC decided and the NEC directed that Heath should be excluded, iron discipline prevailed and ANC MPs (including Zuma) defended and implemented that decision, even though they had supported his inclusion a few months before.
The NWC control over deployments allowed them to remove Andrew Feinstein as head of the ANC study group on public accounts, and to pack the committee with more “disciplined” party cadres.
Although the ANC has broken the independence of many institutions before, this is the first time it has been challenged by the bulk of the media, and has consequently had to expend serious political capital. By comparison the ANC’s illegal sacking of the registrar and deputy registrar of the Medicines Control Council for refusing to allow the testing of Virodene provoked minimal critical comment.
Yet despite the fact that Mbeki’s intervention is a logical and predictable consequence of democratic centralism, many commentators have persisted with the view that his actions can be ascribed to “poor public relations”, bad luck or inferior advice.
Until people realise that such abuse of power is the direct result of the unfettered accumulation of power they will be continue to be startled by the actions of the ruling party.
Tony Leon is leader of the Democratic Alliance
@Everyone wants the option of being someone else
David Beresford
Another Country
I shaved my beard off over the Christmas holidays after a cover-up lasting more than 30 years. Bearded men would be well advised not to follow the example. At the very least loved ones should plead with them to have intensive counselling beforehand. Amid the jollity of Xmas a dare disastrously capped my own curiosity (perhaps a second youth hid there?). Even now, with the hedgerow largely back in place, the trauma is too great to allow it to be written about. Talk about shouting “fire” in a crowded cinema!
The reason I raise the subject at all is that it ties in, or perhaps contradicts, a line of thought brought to mind by a book I recently received in the post, Corrections and Clarifications. It is what in times gone by would have been considered by any self-respecting journalist a monument to shame an anthology of blunders great and small printed in The Guardian newspaper in London. But the book is published by The Guardian itself and with pride.
The apparent paradox originated in an extraordinarily successful initiative taken by the newspaper in 1997 to create a column composed of mistakes they had made, their corrections and clarifications. The result is to be found in this paperback which has been described by such as Private Eye as “the most riveting read in any national newspaper” while The Times judged it to be “one of the most entertaining and instructive reads in British journalism”. Almost paradoxically, parading its blunders, the newspaper’s reputation has never been higher.
All of this seems to fit in with my celebrated prediction that the future of newspapers lies in recognition of their future role as a faithful and reliable companion. That is to say that moguls would do well to sink their media holdings on a future hybrid made up of HAL, the talking computer of 2001 fame, and a newspaper like The Guardian topped up with doses of the ‘Dear Auntie” columns favoured in some quarters of the magazine market. In other words, an artificial companion which is capable of advising on problems plaguing everyday life what movies to take in, where to buy a second-hand car without getting involved with a Bulgarian drugs gang, how to deal with an ingrowing toenail … That is, of course, in addition to listening to one’s babbling without interruption other than the odd cluck of sympathy.
The key to this brave new gadget, this crowning achievement of the age of information technology, is likely to be old-fashioned honesty and reliability. Not that it should always be right (although that would help), but that it should be dependably on one’s own side. Which is to say not on the side of “them” the huge mob of assorted liars, cheats, financial experts and yogurt-swigging Bulgarian garage proprietors lurking outside the front door in the hopes of taking advantage of one’s innocence. Short of victory, one longs for alliances with the “good guys” against the massed forces of “them”.
But if honesty and reliability are key, what is to be said of the man who rushes around trying to camouflage his true identity as evidenced by whatever-it-is that lies under the bushes sprouting from the lower part of his face?
My guess is that, fundamentally, everyone wants the option of being someone else other than that which objective authority might hold us to be. The true nightmare of 1984 and Big Brother is not so much invasion of privacy (if computers, or their masters want to get their rocks off watching, well … everyone to their taste), but the horror of being recorded, of having it all go down in some implacable and unforgiving database.
Aside from the odd messiahs, people are driven not by what they are, but what they might be even if only in unexpressed fantasy. The attractions of the Internet the chat facilities and the e-mail system in particular have much to do with the opportunities provided to create another persona. Escapism from reality, including the reality of self, is a basic and powerful urge, hence the power of Hollywood.
And why not? Should the right to change not be fundamental to human freedom and therefore entrenched in every people’s constitution? Why should facelifts draw sneers, wigs pitying looks? Why should the happenstance of genetics dictate that the brown-eyed should remain brown-eyed and the blonde should forever be blonde?
As the understanding of the brain develops in the fight against such as depression it is coming home to us that memory, intelligence and even character are chemical contrivances and as such alterable. Witness a recent article in The Observer, which quotes the British neurologist, Susan Greenfield, describing “a patient suffering from a rare degeneration of the outer layer of his cortex. The loss has obliterated his sense of empathy, which has been replaced instead by a previously unnoticed creative urge. Almost overnight, it seems, this previously inartistic individual has been transformed into a painter of large, complex and highly original canvases.”
A small chemical reaction and … hey ho! … one is transformed from an intensely sympathetic social welfare worker into a brilliant anti-social artist. A few swipes of the razor and a figure of bearded authority becomes …
I might know which I would rather be. But that begs the big question of the would-be honest: which is me?