Waking in a cold sweat. Could this be a measure of the impact of the Apartheid Grand Corruption Report released this week? At the very least the majority of South Africans would wish sleepless nights for corrupt politicians and business people who live off the spoils of ill-gotten gains.
After a dozen years of silence on the subject, civil society has rekindled interest in economic crimes under apartheid.
When it called for investigation into the issue at the National Anti-Corruption Summit in March 2006, civil society met with stiff criticism from quarters within the government and business. A compromise was reached: civil society would prepare a report for discussion at the tripartite National Anti-Corruption Forum.
The sensitivity in tackling this issue highlights South Africa’s difficulty with confronting the totality of our past — and perhaps aspects of the present.
Corruption is a useful lens to focus on how the interests of some groups and individuals continue to outweigh calls for justice and exposure of crimes that took place during apartheid. While the truth commission attempted to promote reconciliation through exposing what really happened, it focused on apartheid’s ”middle managers”. Those individuals with real political and economic power under apartheid were let off the hook.
Grand corruption in its pure sense has nothing to do with group benefit — it’s a crime of personal accumulation of capital at the expense of group interests. Therefore, corrupt individuals in societies in transition often seek refuge in the ruses of ”investor confidence”, ”minority interests” or a ”stable handover of power”.
It should not be necessary to emphasise that a hands-off approach to apartheid-era corruption sets a bad precedent for dealing with those corrupt individuals who have stolen billions from the poor since 1994 to finance their ”Tuscan” villas in Florence or Fourways.
The Apartheid Grand Corruption Report helps to debunk the myth that corruption is a crime perpetrated by black South Africans (with the exception, allegedly, of Brett Kebble and company). Rather, it is a general disposition of power.
White South Africans were the masters of a system that, during its terminal phase, was characterised by state and private-sector secrecy, and poor governance. In this environment, the white elite and those blacks co-opted into the system had more to gain than to lose by participating in plunder as the apartheid state breathed its last.
The opportunities were vast, from the hundreds of billions of rands in ”special” defence accounts to the massive and largely unsupervised flows of cash channelled to the Bantustan puppet regimes. The oil and arms embargo contributed to an environment where brown paper bags and secret deals became the rule, and this atmosphere came to permeate corporate governance in South Africa. Organised crime personalities were attracted to our shores while the very rich were illegally secreting away as much as R100-billion in the 1980s.
While the vultures were circling, the economy was in terminal decline and the Reserve Bank stood accused of propping up banks that were technically insolvent. Members of the old South African Defence Force are alleged to have been involved in smuggling ivory from Angola, while diamond giants were accused of tax avoidance in Namibia. Allegations of overseas slush funds were linked to mysterious murders.
The old South African Latin maxim read, Unity is Strength — a motto fitting for those at the top of the pile who chose to benefit from the plunder.
Piecing together this picture should underscore the need to tackle graft with renewed vigour, and to ensure that politics and capital do not become intertwined to such an extent that we are unable to differentiate the one from the other. It also stresses the inter-generational nature of corruption — the ease with which the old privileged classes reinvent themselves in the new South Africa, even as the new elite appropriates the habits of the old.
The report should also help us ask how much we have learnt from past mistakes. Marc Rich was the biggest single supplier of oil to the apartheid state despite the United Nations oil embargo. Glencore, the company that he founded, is alleged to have supplied Imvume with oil in the ”Oilgate” affair reported by the Mail & Guardian in 2005. Does South Africa know who it is dealing with?
A tricky question remains around the challenge of tracking stolen funds and further investigation and prosecution of those allegedly involved in apartheid-era corruption.
Earlier this week business indicated its support for all acts of crime to be investigated and, where necessary, prosecuted. And the government did not close the door on the possibility of further investigations.
It is imperative that anti-corruption agencies such as the Scorpions, Special Investigations Unit and the police tackle the corruption we experience today. However, should we decide not to collect information about apartheid-era corruption and to not pursue investigations with an eye on prosecutions, we will probably have closed the book on this issue for good. Investigating apartheid-era corruption could be costly in financial terms, but it will be a sad reflection on our society if the liberated South Africa places a price tag on justice.
If managed with political sensitivity, such investigations and prosecutions could help bring closure to our society and provide valuable lessons for the future. Until then those involved in apartheid grand corruption may have the odd sleepless night. However, it is likely to be aboard a first-class flight, financed by opportunities stolen from the vast majority of South Africans.
Hennie van Vuuren heads the Corruption & Governance Programme at the Institute for Security Studies in Cape Town. The report can be downloaded at www.ipocafrica.com