The African National Congress has finally acted against conflict of interest and potential corruption in its ranks by adopting a policy that bars public officials from working for the private sector in an area where they had been active in government.
At the national general council (NGC) in Pretoria last week, the party adopted a ”cooling-off period” resolution, which it says ”should apply to comrades who have been employed in a particular government sector and make sure that after leaving that employment they must not be active in that sector for a period of time’’.
Since it came to power in 1994, the ANC has been under pressure to regulate the behaviour of its politicians and public servants who were seen to be abusing their positions by preparing the ground in the private sector before resigning from the government.
The issue came to a head at the end of last year when former Department of Communications director general Andile Ngcaba resigned from the department and epitomised the situation by buying a stake in Telkom.
During his tenure at the communications department Ngcaba was the chief architect of Telkom’s privatisation and critics said he now stood to accrue personal wealth as a result of policies he had designed.
But long before the Ngcaba move, Minister of Public Service and Administration Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi had complained about skilled public servants who took lucrative retirement packages and then set themselves up as consultants to government.
Since the mid 1990s senior politicians and civil servants have moved in droves to the private sector. The first post-apartheid director general of transport, Dipak Patel, for example, stepped straight into a job as head of Stannic.
Both Jay and Jayendra Naidoo left government to immediately form the J&J group .
This year former North West premier Popo Molefe and former environmental affairs minister Valli Moosa raised eyebrows when their company, Lereko Investments, bought a 7,25% stake in the Imperial Group. The empowerment deal was worth about R1,4-billion. Talk in the industry was that Imperial was buying influence in government circles but Imperial insisted that the politicians were entrepreneurs on their own.
Former minister of justice Penuell Maduna also moved straight into the legal fraternity by joining Bowman Gilfillan as a director as soon as he quit from the government in April last year.
Parliament has, for several years, been considering legislation on post-employment restrictions for senior politicians and civil servants.
Such restrictions would serve as a public sector restraint of trade.