/ 31 May 2002

The DA’s Harksen morass

With each passing day that Jurgen Harksen gives evidence in a packed chamber of the Western Cape provincial administration building in Cape Town it becomes clearer that the Democratic Alliance is in dreadful trouble.

No amount of bluster by DA leaders, no quantity of attacks on the alleged African National Congress leanings of the Desai commission judge, no attempts to shift responsibility to the New National Party make much difference. The sheer weight of the German millionaire’s evidence is overwhelming.

Harksen may be the ultimate wide boy, facing extradition to face charges in Germany and with a R60-million fraud case in South Africa hanging over his head. He may, in part, be actuated by a vengeful belief that his former DA associates have abandoned him. With nothing left to lose, he may harbour ideas that he can curry favour with the authorities.

But one’s instinct is that his many and detailed claims of dubious contacts with the DA’s Western Cape leader, Gerald Morkel; former DA finance MEC Leon Markovitz; and DA leader Tony Leon cannot all be fabricated.

This week’s resignation of Morkel’s deputy and one of the DA’s brightest stars, Hennie Bester, underlines how much the Harksen affair has sapped party morale.

In particular, Morkel’s loud insistence that he took no money from the German for either his personal expenses or the party is looking threadbare.

Sources close to Morkel say that before the Desai commission started, he showed signs of panic when Absa announced it was investigating a senior employee, Eric Marais, in connection with a possibly irregular foreign exchange transfer.

Now Marais himself has told the commission he drip-fed DM99 000 into the Western Cape DA account over a five-month period, with Morkel’s knowledge. Harksen earlier said he gave the party DM105 000.

The DA’s worsening tactical position has been reflected in its growing belligerence.

Its initial response to news reports was low-key, acknowledging that Morkel’s relationship with Harksen was ”inappropriate” and promising an internal inquiry.

If there were sighs of relief at the inquiry’s inability to pin anything on Morkel or Markovitz — despite its caveat that it lacked real forensic powers — they were to be short-lived.

The inquiry said it was ”99% certain” Morkel had not taken rent or legal fees. But evidence at the commission now suggests such transfers may have taken place circuitously, through third-party fronts — Harksen’s favoured method.

Also of little significance was the inquiry’s provisional finding that there was no trace of the alleged deposits in DA bank accounts. It now appears more than likely that transfers were made piecemeal under the guise of anonymous donations.

The DA’s strategy since the commission started has been to draw a cordon sanitaire around its national leadership and try to punch its way out of a shrinking corner. It has served merely to deepen suspicion. Worse, it has inflicted collateral damage on the party’s core project — to present itself as fundamentally different from the ANC.

It has set out to present itself as ”the people’s party” fighting ANC fat-cat elitism. This has hardly been furthered by Harksen’s claims to have paid R20 000 in rent for Morkel’s Higgovale home and R240 000 to Markovitz for an official trip to the United States — an amount the German claims was never repaid.

Besides the criminal suspicions hanging over him for years, Harksen moved among the conspicuous consumers of Cape Town’s idle rich. Given the city’s vast and impoverished coloured and African townships, this was hardly the right milieu for the people’s tribunes.

The DA has spun itself as the party of openness, in contrast with a secretive and Byzantine ruling party. Its failure to at least suspend Morkel as Cape Town mayor and provincial party chief, when evidence is mounting that he lied, does this claim no credit.

It will be remembered that the DA howled for Tony Yengeni’s suspension as ANC chief whip on the strength of media reports.

Its insistence that no law can have been broken, because no law on party funding exists, is formally true but looks like special pleading against a backdrop where it has attacked ANC funding practices.

In like manner, its blustering defence of Leon merely leaves the impression that the DA leader knew more than he is letting on. Can he really have been unaware that Harksen’s lawyer, Paul Katzeff, represented Morkel in a key party-related court case last year? Did he not know that Bester attended a meeting with Morkel and Markovitz where funding from Harksen was discussed?

If a quarter of the shady millionaire’s claims are true, Leon failed as party chief by not being alive to them.

Finally, the DA presents itself as the champion of the judiciary and the rule of law, yet has been ready to impugn the integrity of a well- regarded high court judge.

This is an official commission, which the Western Cape government has the power to call. Is the DA seriously suggesting there is nothing to investigate? And even if the ANC took money from Harksen — a matter it accuses the commission of ignoring — it would merely reinforce the point that both parties are alike.

In short, the DA has behaved like any other political party in a tight spot.

In one sense, it is a relief that Leon and company have climbed off their moral high horses to slug it out in the political ring. An unremitting diet of sanctimony is hard on the stomach.

But the question remains: what will the party offer the black electorate it is wooing if its behaviour, when the chips are down, is indistinguishable from that of its opponents? The message is that if the DA ever takes national power, it will do exactly as it says others should not.

The Harksen fiasco again raises fundamental questions about Leon’s judgement as a leader. It is not just that a particular set of events has been mishandled. It is further evidence of the morally corrosive effect on his party of his grand plan: form an alliance with the NNP and then quickly digest it.

Morkel, Markovitz, Peter Marais and the rest — indeed the traditional pork-barrel politics of the NNP in the Western Cape — were a tainted cargo he should never have taken on board.

It would have been far better, as some party insiders in Gauteng advocated, to continue decimating the Nats through the ballot box.

The DA will no doubt take a short-term hit if it dumps Morkel and other members implicated in the Harksen affair. It may lose its majority in the Cape Town unicity, where the mayor is the glue holding NNP and former Democratic Party elements together.

But a thorough cleaning of the stables will look like a reaffirmation of the party’s core values. Rebuilding could then take place with a much reduced threat of new and unforeseen embarrassments.