The apartheid system bred many vile people. It bred killers, torturers and depraved ideologues. The system also gave succour to corrupt individuals for whom ethics were a distant concept.
Inevitably, given that Bantustan leaders had some experience of government, and in keeping with the policy of reconciliation, many disreputable former servants of apartheid survived into the democratic era, some continuing to hold high office.
One of these individuals was Steve Mabona, who cut his political teeth in the old KwaNdebele homeland.
His lowly portfolio — public works minister — should not blind people to the influence he wields in Mpumalanga. Short-tempered, tough and endlessly active in his own interests, he has amassed great wealth, which he has used to promote family members. He runs his own portfolio as a private fiefdom and his tentacles are said to extend into all branches of the provincial government. It is said that he enjoys a veto over the careers of his Cabinet colleagues, and that the composition of the Cabinet was decided at his home.
In the decade he has been serving hapless Mpumalanga, Mabona has been embroiled in myriad scandals, from the arrangement of a fake driving licence for deputy speaker in the National Assembly Baleka Mbete, to abusing millions in taxpayers’ money. His free-spending style came under the spotlight in 1997, when the auditor general revealed that his taste for chartered plane trips, five-star hotel accommodation and the like had cost Mpumalanga R300 000. Although he works for a government based in Nelspruit, he chooses to live in luxury homes in up-market Johannesburg suburbs. This week we reveal further details of his wheeling and dealing.
Yet despite the findings of the Moldenhauer Commission that he did secure Mbete’s bogus licence, and his temporary removal from the provincial Cabinet, Mabona still plays a prominent role in public life.
Why? Why does Mpumalanga’s ruling party, the African National Congress, seem powerless to rein him in? Why have all the vaunted anti-corruption mechanisms installed since 1994 — the Executive Ethics Act, the Public Finance Management Act, the Scorpions, departmental anti-corruption units and the rest — proved so ineffectual?
This newspaper believes the government has its heart in the right place and, at least as an ideal, supports clean governance. What causes alarm and despondency is its repeated unwillingness to run the political risks inherent in taking on powerful politicians and officials.
We find it particularly worrying that our exposé last week that Mabona received R1-million from a contractor in highly suspicious circumstances has been received by his political superiors with deafening silence. Are we reaching the point where corruption allegations have become so commonplace that South Africans no longer react to them? One of those who must be held to some account for eroding the climate of outrage is none other than our president, who tells us the racist media is “fishing for corrupt men”. The ANC’s openly taking sides in the war between National Prosecuting Authority chief Bulelani Ngcuka and Deputy President Jacob Zuma has also given comfort and political security to the villains of the piece.
Excising this cancer is crucial because corruption diverts public funds from the really needy. Uncurbed, it will also eventually undermine the confidence of the electorate in our new democratic order.
Playing a political game
South Africa’s greatest enemy in bidding for the 2010 Soccer World Cup is what undid us on the last occasion — the naive confidence that it will come to us because we deserve it.
As the Fifa technical team were able to see for themselves this week, the country’s infrastructure outshines anything else on offer on the African continent. In contrast with Morocco, for example, we have the world-class stadiums already in place. Our anti-doping centre in Bloemfontein has the endorsement of the International Olympic Committee, while the Sports Science Institute in Cape Town meets international standards. Our roads, hospitals, airports, hotels and transport systems are up to par. Our passion for the beautiful game was in evidence wherever the Fifa team went. Our Premier Soccer League, arguably the most lucrative and competitive in Africa, has in its ranks a club with one of the oldest and finest traditions on the continent.
We have the further advantage of being the only sub-Saharan African state in the running; of having recently emerged into the sunlight of democracy; and of having in Nelson Mandela, a sponsor who is symbolically important to the whole of humankind.
So we have every reason to expect a positive report from the Fifa team to the organisation’s 24 voting members. But that is where the much less certain political game begins.
In 2000 we naively assumed that the transparent virtues of the new South Africa, combined with developing world solidarity, would automatically do the trick. Our gravest miscalculation was to rely on the loyalty of the Asian bloc, which was essentially won over by Europe with the promise of the Fifa presidency. This time we must be willing to descend into the arena and lobby, haggle and horse-trade for what we want.