There were fears within the African National Congress that big business could take over the ANC, Finance Minister Trevor Manuel told the Mail & Guardian this week. Manuel said this was a key reason for the ANC’s national executive committee (NEC) pushing for a code of conduct on wealth acquisition binding ANC members.
The aim was to regulate the relationship between ANC officials and business, ensuring ”that certain standards are put in place to prevent any member of the ANC owning the party”.
Manuel said the code of conduct was ”part of an organic development to ensure the ANC maintains its spirit”. Concerns that certain members were making fast money on the strength of party connections was not a new development, nor had it been triggered by any recent or upcoming event.
Manuel is part of a task team, along with ANC deputy secretary general Sankie Mthembi-Mahanyele, director general in the Presidency Frank Chikane, and tycoon Saki Macozoma, which is working on a document to address the issue of enrichment ahead of the party’s national policy conference next year.
The task team, which began its work in November last year, is completing the draft after a presentation to the NEC three weeks ago. It will be canvassed in the branches ahead of the policy conference, where it will be tabled.
The ANC has become increasingly alarmed by the marriage of the ruling party and business. There are fears that the redistributive aims of black economic empowerment (BEE) are being perverted by government officials, politicians and party officials wanting to get rich quickly.
Manuel said the task team would also look at party political funding, so that benefactors did not expect favours in return. ”We run into difficulties when the intent of the donor is not the same as the recipient,” he said.
Particularly since 1999, many senior ANC politicians and top public servants have relocated to the private sector. Recently, government officials still in state employment have been cut into multimillion-rand empowerment deals.
Branches of the ANC say the rush into business has reached disturbing proportions.
”You can’t discuss building a road without someone looking at how it can make them rich,” said a Gauteng regional secretary.
Manuel said there was debate about whether full-time ANC officials should be bound by the same standards as those contained in the Executive Ethics Members’ Act. ”We need to ensure that at no time do ANC members [in business] trade on their political capital.”
This Act and Code of Ethics require Cabinet ministers and deputy ministers to disclose to the Presidency all financial interests when assuming office. They also ban ministers and their deputies from pursuing business interests while in office.
Why the sudden decision to regulate the nexus between party, business and state?
Manuel said the debate had been initiated as far back as the ANC’s 2002 Stellenbosch conference and had intensified at last year’s national general council, when branches discussed the matter at length.
A key driving force had been the need to revive the oath of loyalty taken on joining the ANC, which stipulates members must join ”voluntarily and without motives of material advantage or personal gain”.
The revised Strategy and Tactics Document adopted in Stellenbosch warned that ”without vigilance, elements of these new capitalist classes can become witting or unwitting tools of monopoly interests, or parasites who thrive on corruption in public office”.
At the Nelson Mandela Memorial Lecture two weeks ago, President Thabo Mbeki attacked the creeping values of self-enrichment. Ironically, when Archbishop Desmond Tutu used the same forum to make the same point in 2004, Mbeki lambasted him for misunderstanding empowerment.
”There are some in our country who regularly communicate the entirely false message that BEE benefits exclusively a small elite composed of members of the ANC,” Mbeki said.
In his recent speech, Mbeki said the ”intangible gift of liberty” was being replaced by ”the designer labels on the clothes we wear, the cars we drive, the spaciousness of our houses”.
However, a former senior ANC official now in business said this week that he was sceptical about whether a code of conduct to regulate the business interests of ANC members and promote broad-based empowerment would work.
”When people enter the business world they will always use primitive methods of accumulation,” he said. ”The market will not do a deal with anybody, it will do a deal with the top five black entrepreneurs ‒ Tokyo [Sexwale], Cyril [Ramaphosa], Patrice [Motsepe], Saki [Macozoma] and Moss [Ngoasheng].”
”The question we’ve pondered is how to get ethical standards for ANC members not bound by government rules,” said Manuel. ”I’m not sure if you can stop ANC officials seeking remuneration [outside the party], but if you go around trading on your full-time position as an ANC member, that’s what we’re trying to stop.”
Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi remarked that the union was pleased that ”the noises that we’ve been making have finally been heard”.
He said values were slowly shifting from a society built on solidarity to one built on survival of the fittest. ”That is when an injury to one is an opportunity for another. The law of the jungle takes hold.”