African National Congress MP Vincent Smith’s coronation as leader of Parliament’s public accounts committee, Scopa, brings to a sad end one the most inglorious chapters in South Africa’s new democracy. Smith has been rewarded for shielding the executive during Parliament’s ill-starred efforts to hold it to account over the multibillion-rand arms deal.
Smith spearheaded the emasculation of Scopa, which included the sidelining of one of the ANC’s own independently minded MPs. He frankly admits to serving as a party instrument in the committee — despite the fact that Scopa has no policy brief and exists solely to ensure that the government spends public money in the public interest. The fear must be that while he remains chairperson Scopa’s role will not extend to oversight that might hurt the ANC or its leaders.
Scopa has traditionally been headed by an opposition MP — a custom observed in other African democracies like Kenya and Ghana. Maintaining this tradition would have sent out the important message that the ruling party does not consider itself above external scrutiny, and that it acknowledges the constitutional separation of powers between legislature and executive.
In politics, as in life, less is often more. And with a bigger majority, the ANC needs not be greedy or defensive in power. It has also secured power in all nine provinces; it does not now need to overreach by acquiring the chair of Scopa or by packing the public broadcaster’s board.
In previous terms, the ANC has shown greater democratic maturity: Ken Andrew, a Democratic Alliance veteran and inaugural Scopa chairperson, was widely admired across parties for his professionalism. Oversight and regulatory bodies exist to serve the public, not a political party. ÂÂ
This also raises the question of whether it is now time for the ANC to phase out its policy of “deployment”, a policy measure it adopted after 1994 when it became clear that authority needed to be transferred and policies transformed at key parastatals and state agencies.
After 10 years, it is time, as we have argued several times, to end the transition. Ten years after the 1994 election it should have been possible to find a free-spirited expert in the broadcasting field to chair the SABC, rather than Eddie Funde, who sat on the ANC’s elections list committee.
And although Lawrence Mushwana has resigned from the ANC, it was hardly ideal that he should move directly from the National Council of Provinces to the sensitive watchdog post of public protector.
One of President Thabo Mbeki’s unfulfilled promises is that of an end to the revolving door between senior government posts and related jobs in the private sector. By the same token, there should be no immediate transition between political party service and leadership of key oversight bodies.
So who is the trailer trash?
United States soldier Lynndie England has become the face of the latest tragedy of errors in the occupation of Iraq.ÂÂ
Most of the images of torture and abuse, of the deliberate stripping of dignity, of the realities of occupation laid bare, have carried her face. The subtext, indeed the text, has been: she and the six soldiers charged with dereliction of duty were trailer trash; their misconduct was an aberration. The mission of the occupiers is still benign: to make the world a safer place; to usher in democracy in Iraq; to light the beacon of freedom and of dignity in the Middle East. To use a phrase much loved by Mangosuthu Buthelezi, this is balderdash.
The world does not feel a safer place — indeed, it feels as if we are on the edge of Armageddon. To see American businessman Nicholas Berg manacled and decapitated by hooded hoodlums on the Internet, in revenge for the torture of the prisoners of Abu Ghraib, takes the spiral of violence to dark new heights.
And what of dignity? In his testimony, Saddam Salah al-Rawi, the brave 29-year-old former inmate of Abu Ghraib, this week described his torture in detail that must sicken even the strong-stomached. Despite grave physical injury, he ascribed his loss of dignity as the greatest casualty.
England and her ilk made of Abu Ghraib another of the many US zones in the world where the law of the jungle has come to apply, and where international civilising conventions evolved over decades have been tossed aside.
One is bound to ask: Who exactly is the trailer trash? Is it England or the president and his hard-line inner circle, who created a context for her actions and provided ideological fuel for the torturer’s mind-set?
There is no easy path back for Iraq’s deepening calamity, but one possible beginning may be to give the United Nations real power to keep the peace once executive authority is returned in June, paving the way for national assembly elections in January and the writing of a final Constitution by October next year.
It is also time for the countries of the South — such as India, Brazil, South Africa — to take a more activist role in pushing for an end to the occupation and a passing of the baton to the UN.