The revelation that National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi appears to have been drawn into the orbit of the late Brett Kebble is deeply disturbing.
Kebble moved through South Africa’s political and business system like a dark star, radiating a cloying but toxic miasma of gifts and favours, while gobbling up resources and capturing agents of influence, be they in business, politics or the security sector.
He destroyed value and values as he went.
His Rolodex is a who’s who of the country’s elite. Even Minister in the Presidency Essop Pahad was prepared to accept a donation of R3-million (though it was never paid) for President Thabo Mbeki’s pet African renaissance project in Mali. And this from the man whose insulting comments about Mbeki were still circulating on a video promoted by the Zuma camp. Perhaps Kebble was in the process of changing sides?
It must be noted that nothing has been proven against Selebi. The fact that he is being investigated does not mean he is guilty of anything.
But his relationship with Kebble’s security lieutenants — direct in the one case, indirect in the other — throws up critical questions: about the seeming lack of progress on the murder investigation; about the commissioner’s desire to take control of the Scorpions and disband the Independent Complaints Directorate; about his recent attempts to demonstrate his loyalty around the hoax e-mail saga.
The disclosure by the Mail & Guardian of the Scorpions’ interest in Selebi, be it peripheral or not, will be seized on by critics of the unit to claim it is further evidence of its abuse as a tool in the faction fights within the African National Congress. It will be dismissed as a propaganda tactic ahead of the release of the Khampepe commission report into the future of the Scorpions.
It is not. It is a by-product of months of investigation by this newspaper into Kebble and the people around him.
The evidence of how Kebble’s companies were used as a tainted well to poison our political economy is too extensive and too important to be drowned out by the mostly foolish noise around the ANC’s succession battles.
How we handle this as a nation that aspires to a genuine democracy, to a rule of law that cannot be bought and bent, is crucial to our future.
The tools must be found to lay bare the networks of undue influence constructed by Kebble and those around him, wherever they may lead.
The culture of influence peddling has become a national cancer, creating cynicism about our politics, undermining good business practice and tarnishing the objectives of black economic empowerment.
We need to kill this cancer now, before it takes over the national body politic.
The treatment — unrelenting exposure — might be painful, might lead to some political embarrassment, but we dare not sweep the rot from view.
If we continue with business as usual — merely sacrificing a few fall-guys — the ones laughing to their Swiss bank accounts will be the barons of influence, of whom Kebble was only one of many.
Dangerous quackery
The Mail & Guardian respects and sympathises with the family’s grief over the Aids-related death last week of Nozipho Bhengu, daughter of former African National Congress MP Ruth Bhengu. But there is inescapable truth in the Treatment Action Campaign’s (TAC) charge that the tragedy can be laid at the doorstep of Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang and her Aids muse, the dangerous Dutch crank Tine van der Maas.
The TAC is not, as family members claim, making political capital out of the death. It is merely pointing out that if Nozipho had continued her anti-retroviral drug treatment, rather than placing her trust in Van der Maas’s vegetarian quackery, she would probably still be alive.
Individuals like Van der Maas, Matthias Rath and their associated network of denialist loonies are not the real problem. In most societies, they would simply be ignored, and would continue feeding each other’s sad delusions in small cult groups like the Flat Earth Society. The problem in South Africa is that they have the ear of the president and the health minister — indeed, through Tshabalala-Msimang, Van der Maas has reportedly been introduced to other Cabinet members and to senior politicians in neighbouring states.
According to the TAC, it was Tshabalala-Msimang who referred Nozipho Bhengu to the Dutchwoman. It has also been reported that Van der Maas has been given access to Aids patients in South Africa’s public health facilities.
Wide coverage was given to Bhengu’s tragic claim last year to be living proof of the efficacy of Van der Maas’s “treatment programme”. Yet, as we report in this edition, this is not the first time denialism has been implicated in an Aids-related death. When will our government wake up to the fact that while diet plays a role in maintaining the health of HIV/Aids -sufferers, it is not a substitute for drug treatment?