First oil. Now manganese. This week we reveal the second major funding front set up by the ruling ANC. The party is clearly behind Chancellor House, an empowerment holding company that has won a stake in manganese mining rights with a potential value of R1-billion. It is part of a consortium chasing a R26-billion power station tender, and has lesser stakes in many other businesses.
The Oilgate investigation showed how the party’s linked company, Imvume Management, had paid more than R11-million to the ruling party. The manganese has not yet been mined and the project will take some years to come on stream but the party could benefit in amounts that will make the Oilgate millions seem tiny.
No doubt the ANC will attempt to swat the investigation away as it did when we first revealed its oil trades in 2004. The rest of us should not do the same. The ANC’s corporate bent is very worrying. It is corrosive of democracy and of the party itself.
Why? There are many people who will ask what’s wrong with the ANC being in business, maintaining that it is a legitimate political party with a huge and expensive infrastructure.
There is everything wrong with ANC Inc. For one, the party cannot be both player and referee. The ANC, as government, has a huge hand in the economy.
Government spends up to R200-billion on procurement of goods and services. In addition, it controls mineral rights and the granting of mining licences and plays a regulatory or empowering role in vital sectors including broadcasting, telecommunications, infrastructure and the like. For the party to have corporate interests skews the playing field and distorts fair game. Think about it. What chance would other mining companies have if the come up against Chancellor House, a company linked umbilically to the ruling party? It distorts BEE because benefits flow to the politically connected or directly to the party and not to the broad base of beneficiaries envisaged in the laws.
Ultimately, it is market distorting and can cut competition. Take Imvume. It was not necessarily the best company to win oil allocations: it lacked the expertise required in a complex industry. Imvume messed up empowerment in the oil industry, leaving a red-faced Petro SA to pursue the matter through the courts.
The larger corrosion, though, is of democracy. Companies which ally with the ruling party in business enjoy influence over policy. The manganese and oil deals show how foreign policy was used to buttress the ANC’s business forays. This is a key reason why the country needs a party-funding law. With such transparency we would be able to see the links between funding, procurement and policy.
As Judith February and Richard Calland write: “The one time citizens experience true equality is when they cast their vote at the ballot box. Where there is no control over the private funding given to political parties a situation of unfairness and distortion of electoral competition may arise — ultimately undermining the equal value of each person’s vote.”
Selebi must account for actions
The holders of high public office, the Supreme Court of Appeal once remarked, must be, like Caesar’s wife, above even suspicion. What then, are we to make of the saga of Police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi, of his dodgy friendships, of his links to alleged crime lords, and of the rogue police unit that seems to have operated right under his nose? And what are we to make of Cabinet’s affirmation this week of “confidence” in the country’s top policeman, even in the face of irrefutable evidence that he is under investigation by the Scorpions?
As reports in the Mail & Guardian over the past six months have suggested, and the O’Sullivan dossier released this week confirms, the elite unit is conducting a wide-ranging investigation that takes in not only the misdeeds and murder of Brett Kebble, but a sprawling crime syndicate with interests in just about every sector of the underworld economy. Selebi figures prominently in that investigation.
Certain things are not in dispute. As a result of this investigation, the Scorpions made a R200-million drug bust. Selebi’s friend, Glenn Agliotti, has been raided in connection with the bust. Agliotti’s associate, Clinton Nassif, is out on bail for a R500 000 insurance fraud, also uncovered in the course of the Scorpions investigation.
Hard evidence of serious crimes is being uncovered; this is not simply a smear campaign launched by a rival agency.
Other evidence is less clear cut. Nassif arranged for Kebble’s car to be removed from police custody, compromising forensic evidence in the process. A witness who is cooperating with the Scorpions says he was involved in making a payment of R50 000 from Nassif to Selebi, and that Nassif boasted he had the national commissioner in his pocket.
That has not been proven. But the allegation alone is deeply disturbing when viewed against the backdrop of Selebi’s relationship with Agliotti, the involvement of police reservists close to Selebi in operations that brought them into contact with Agliotti under suspicious circumstances, and the broader role that Nassif played as Kebble’s security chief.
Selebi has so far offered nothing in explanation but bluster and threats. We deserve a full accounting. Until Selebi, or the National Prosecuting Authority, provides it, he should be suspended.
This article formed part of a larger report on the ANC’s funding front, Chancellor House. Click here to read more.