The African National Congress tried to swat away the Mail & Guardian‘s Oilgate revelations last week like some pesky insect. But like the persistent gadflies that we are, we won’t disappear that easily.
Hiding behind a paper-thin set of excuses, the party has argued that there is, firstly, nothing wrong with a private company making donations to a political party and, secondly, that it is under no compulsion to reveal its sources of funding. Both arguments are red herrings.
There is everything wrong with a company like Imvume Management making a “donation” of R11-million to the ruling party when the money was supposed to be paid to its contracting partner, Glencore, and when the parastatal Petro SA (and by extension, the citizenry) ended up paying twice.
A set of inconvenient and related facts — ANC secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe and ANC treasurer Mendi Msimang have advanced Imvume boss Sandi Majali’s business interests on numerous occasions, while Majali is also Motlanthe’s economic adviser — further serve to puncture the ANC’s excuses.
In addition, the judgement in the Institute for Democracy in South Africa’s case against four major political parties did not make a cut-and-dried finding that parties are never obliged to reveal their sources of funding. The judge upheld the principle of transparent funding laws, adding that since legislation was in the pipeline, that process should follow its course. The ANC agreed to expedite the legislation.
Cynics we may be, but we suspect this law is unlikely to be treated with the same urgency as, for example, legislation reining in the judiciary.
As Business Day said this week in a hard-hitting editorial: “What we need to know is whether the ANC has not, in effect, stolen public money. This question depends a lot on who knew what and when they knew it.” The citizenry deserves many explanations; obfuscation and denial will not do. A judicial commission of inquiry is the democratic way to go.
In the end, Majali is a Russian-style oligarch, trading on state contracts and access to power. Businessmen like him will undermine the purpose of black economic empowerment (BEE), which is to generate a thorough and fair transfer of economic wealth. They will undermine a fair and open tender system and turn BEE into a Russian-styled looting of the state. A generation of politically connected businessmen will make it big, while other businesses realise that the only way to get on is to line up your crony in government or the ruling party, and ride the crest of the wave.
BEE is ill-served by this path. State contracts must not become a way of funding the ANC, or it will quickly corrupt both a laudable policy and the ruling party that framed it.
In the light of the Oilgate exposé, it is quite possible that other, similar deals are happening. In the absence of legislation regulating party funding, it is simply too easy for the ANC to ensure that its bigwigs are cut into deals in exchange for feeding party coffers.
System failure
The Mail & Guardian regards the Democratic Alliance as a useful opposition party, but we take issue with its frequent historical myopia. This week, in a spasm of churlishness, the party’s parliamentary chief whip, Douglas Gibson, called the Freedom Charter a “party political pamphlet”.
At the time a manifesto for liberation, the charter was unquestionably taken to the hearts of the mass of ordinary South Africans, becoming a beacon of hope in a time of hopelessness.
The DA regularly antagonises those who experienced the horrors of apartheid with its lack of historical perspective and apparent inability to appreciate South Africa’s liberation symbols. Without a change of tone on such issues, it will remain alien to the black South Africans whose support it so ardently seeks.
By the same token, the Freedom Charter is not the permanent property of the African National Congress. As protests unfold across the towns of the three Capes, the Free State, KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga, we are clearly a long way from the charter’s promise of houses, comfort and security. While the protesters are not linked in a national movement, the underlying causes of their discontent are the same. Communities want houses, toilets, water and better sports facilities.
At issue is not merely a failure of communication, as President Thabo Mbeki suggested in Parliament this week. There is a system failure — and ordinary people know it. Their ire is often directed at Wabenzi councillors who live high on the hog, but are notoriously inept at turning well-meaning policy into action.
South Africa is a middle-income rather than wealthy country, but with an almost zero budget deficit and an expanded public purse, fiscal belt-tightening is no longer the problem. Provincial and local government lack the requisite skills to deliver at the pace required to make the Freedom Charter a living document. And ANC branches are so driven by careerism and power-broking that they are not feeding the message of impatience upwards.
Instead of setting intelligence spooks on the local activists or charging them with sedition, as it did in Harrismith, the government must listen to the people. They know, more than any consultant with a PowerPoint presentation, what their needs are. It is time for another Congress of the People — a genuine listening campaign.