The role of the South African government in the covert “rendition” of Khalid Mehmood Rashid is an affront to the foundational values of our democracy.
The Constitution was written with the ghosts of those who had suffered arbitrary detention, torture or disappearance watching over its drafters with the expectation that never again would such abuses be allowed.
Now evidence leaching out around the case of Rashid suggests strongly that South African officials — led by members of home affairs and the police Crime Intelligence Service — succumbed to the international pressure to be “on side” in the war on terror and facilitated the abduction and disappearance of Rashid. At best, local and international law were bent out of all recognition; more likely both were broken.
Whether Rashid is linked to al-Qaeda — up to now no evidence of this has been produced — is beside the point. As the United States is gradually discovering, anti-terror tactics that flout domestic and international statutes are counter-productive in the long run — and undermine the moral legitimacy of the campaign against al-Qaeda.
We would have expected the South African authorities to be particularly sensitive to the proposition that labelling someone a “terrorist” is a shaky basis for abusing his rights.
Instead we have been treated to the spectacle of the Department of Home Affairs participating in a sustained attempt to cover up the circumstances of Rashid’s arrest and deportation. The police, central to this affair, have said nothing.
It has taken some impressive investigative journalism from Carte Blanche and an epic court battle to reveal what we now know. Rashid was snatched by crime intelligence officers in Estcourt, KwaZulu-Natal, on October 31 last year and transported, hooded and restrained, to Gauteng. He was held for seven days at Cullinan police station, before being flown out of Waterkloof airforce base on a private jet that did not file a flight plan or other statutory information.
When the minister of home affairs was forced by a court order this week to disclose the registration of the aircraft, it emerged that it was owned by a charter company frequently linked to one of the world’s most notorious international arms traffickers.
Many questions remain. What was the role of foreign intelligence agencies in this saga? Witnesses spoke of men with British accents present both at the abduction and the deportation. How high up did awareness of the operation go among South African officials? Did the department lie to the court about the manner of and reasons for Rashid’s deportation?
Realpolitik can be ugly, but it is sad, and embarrassing, that just as the Council of Europe publishes its list of countries that have colluded in covert rendition operations, South Africa makes its pitch for inclusion in this club of shame.
Pass the salt
Icasa asleep at the switch. The country running out of electricity. Steel prices destroying the mining and manufacturing industries. The financial services industry paying billions in fines.
Sustained growth, yet few jobs. Another multimillion-rand fine to be paid by SAA. Bank fees that have no relationship to costs.
It’s a great time to be an ideologue. Any amount of evidence can be garnered to show that the government cannot run the economy.
This view, which originates pre-1994 in the notion that the African National Congress could not run a bath, let alone an economy, resurrects itself now with the idea that the state cannot even pass the salt, never mind keep Capetonians cosy this winter. If only electricity provision had been privatised an eon ago.
But the interventionists have been vocal too. Left to itself the life industry, the alleged custodian of the nation’s savings, would never have reformed itself.
Its executives could have continued to bemoan the country’s appalling savings rate, even while their actions were a major disincentive to save.
Just one regulator, Vuyani Ngalwana, has changed all that. The industry has even seen an exodus of top executives who have cashed in their share stash and quit rather than run businesses that have to meet quaint new standards of transparency and disclosure.
The banks are next. The Competition Commission will inquire into bank fees, a pretty R30-billion last year. Already there is new energy in banking, with better-priced options emerging from bottom drawers and campaigns to tell customers that, well, er, yes, you have been paying far too much for far too long.
It can appear that business does pass the salt, but only after it has kept a disproportionate share for itself. In M&G Business this week we report on a survey of the Big Four. Customers could pay anywhere between R93 and R209 a month, a 124% difference for the same package of services. These are called bundled options. Banks have preferred to charge on a per transaction basis. The bundled options are between 48% and 86% cheaper. What savings will flow from the Competition Commission probe: R10-billion? R15-billion?
Some see regulation in sinister terms. A Finance Week cover showed President Thabo Mbeki with Lenin looming large behind. The headline: “When state intervention becomes ominous …”
But then there is the unhappy fact that at least one regulator, Icasa, appears unable even to regulate itself, never mind its 800-pound gorilla, Telkom.
Our own take is that first prize is real competition. Where there is unequal access to or distribution of the salt, bring in a regulator. Just make sure he keeps his shoes on and is not asleep at the switch.