At last — leadership from President Thabo Mbeki on a crisis that, by his own admission, has gripped the ruling African National Congress for two years.
Mbeki provided important pointers. He told his party’s warring factions to stop putting petty turf battles before the real work of development. He asked what ANC branches were doing to ensure the provision of decent sanitation and adequate water supplies — in other words, the ANC’s vaunted promise of a better life. Sweet bugger all is the likely answer.
If a forthcoming class action lawsuit against water policy for the poor comes before the courts, it will tell a sorry tale of a Freedom Charter betrayed. In communities across the country, people (many of them ANC members) get an allotment enough only for six baths per household a month. In some areas, the bucket sanitation system still operates.
Among the key reasons for these continuing abominations in a middle-income country is that ANC branches are embroiled in the party’s internecine battles. They answer to party bosses instead of their own constituencies, and view current political life as a greedy scramble for the next deal.
Delivering the Nelson Mandela lecture in Johannesburg last week, Mbeki also railed against the national acquisitive spirit and bemoaned the failure of Nelson Mandela’s quest for “the RDP of the soul”. The “personal pursuit of material gain, as the beginning and end of our life purpose, is already beginning to corrode our social and national cohesion”, he said.
All this comes not a moment too soon. But, remember, this is also the president who famously remarked “Just call me [Maggie] Thatcher”, when the impact of his conservative economic policies was questioned in the mid-Nineties. Water, sanitation and welfare have been bedevilled by technocratic systems he put in place; his party is in rebellion against him because of his move to centralise authority and his distaste for dissension and debate.
Now he is reborn as Karl Marx, decrying market fundamentalism and the notion that people are defined by what they drive, wear and possess.
Remember, too, that he maligned media exposers of corruption in the arms deal as “fishers of corrupt men” bent on tripping up a black government.
Bear in mind that it was Mbeki’s deputy, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, who said that the country should create a zillion millionaires, and that his representative in the ANC, Smuts Ngonyama, said last week that the party agreed there was nothing wrong with ANC members becoming super-rich.
This week we report that the party is worried about the widespread perception of “ANC Inc” — a movement dedicated to personal enrichment. Which view will prevail?
Mbeki’s new call to arms must be more than a tactical response, aimed at contrasting himself with his rival. It must engender a national refocusing of our value system. Most vitally, if he is to be taken seriously as an anti-corruption crusader, he must finally open the vexed and corrosive arms deal to an independent judicial commission. He needs to speak out on Travelgate and end the abuse of the state tender system to fund the party, highlighted by Oilgate.
If he walks his talk, and shows true leadership by example, then congratulations will be due.
Long-term cancer
Politicians who claim environmental impact assessments (EIAs) are prejudicing economic development are spreading a dangerous, contagious message. After last weekend’s lekgotla, it appears even the president has caught the virus.
When Thabo Mbeki said EIAs were causing development delays he missed the point. The problem lies not with EIAs — regulations that aim to achieve a balance in the development imperative. The problem, which the president acknowledged, is the lack of capacity among government officials to process EIAs. This has led to huge backlogs in EIA applications and bully tactics from wealthy developers who are taking advantage of the situation.
Populist statements from politicians about EIAs being anti-development filter down to levels of officialdom, where they are misinterpreted. They result in knee-jerk reactions to valid claims about environmental damage. Objections raised to developments are rejected out of hand as being motivated by a desire to deprive the poor of jobs, water, livelihoods, rights.
Hardly a day goes by that the Mail & Guardian does not receive calls from ordinary citizens and NGOs worried about the impact of concrete on the environment. There are two common threads in these calls. The first is that the natural world is being irreversibly damaged. The second is that the developers — usually private sector, but often in cooperation with the public sector — are the only ones who will profit from destroying the environment.
What is the real cost of fast-tracking development with a short-term vision? In the case of the proposed De Hoop Dam in Limpopo, starving the Kruger National Park of water. In the case of Boksburg’s Libradene wetland, poisoning Gauteng’s major water source and flooding several huge townships.
The residents of Durban’s south basin are paying the price of unfettered industrial development at a time when EIAs were not necessary. Respiratory problems and various cancers are commonplace in a neighbourhood ravaged by environmental destruction. Politicians who mouth off about EIAs holding up our future should note that these cancers are long-term and fatal.