What shameful times we live in, buffeted by spin and lies.
When the events of the past two weeks are recorded in history, will they appear as the turning point? When a president failed to rise above his personal ambitions, yank the skeletons from his party’s closet and secure democracy and its constitutionally protected institutions? Democracy in South Africa is a mere 13 years old. Extra care is needed to protect, even mollycoddle, institutions and to show the mighty that they are not above the Constitution.
Overstatement? We shall see. Just as Parliament’s oversight role was neutralised to shield the ruling party from fallout from the arms deal, so another vital, constitutionally established institution, the National Directorate of Public Prosecutions, is being rendered impotent before our eyes. Are we to be silent witnesses to the death of its independence? Searching questions need to be asked.
- Why exactly was the national director of public prosecutions suspended? The presidency initially suggested prosecutions boss Vusi Pikoli was unfit for office because he could not work with Justice Minister Brigitte Mabandla. But the terms of the Ginwala commission tell a different story — that his decision to prosecute police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi is seen as raising questions about his “fitness”.
- What are the constitutional implications of a political appointee reviewing an investigation by the National Prosecuting Authority? Should the commission not be headed by a judge? Frene Ginwala is a member of the ANC’s national executive committee who, during Mbeki’s drive to scotch parliamentary oversight of the arms deal, did not rise above party interests.
- Did President Thabo Mbeki do anything to repair the relationship between Pikoli and Mabandla before it reached “irretrievable breakdown”? It was a relationship born in strife — Mabandla did not want to oversee the directorate in the first place. Was it not Mbeki’s duty to manage it?
- Is the Ginwala commission geared for a predetermined outcome, to justify Pikoli’s axing? The spin from the presidency suggests Mbeki has decided already that Pikoli is unfit and that he became the agent of inchoate apartheid and foreign forces in his investigation of Selebi. Mbeki appears to have accepted Selebi’s version that murder-accused Glenn Agliotti was a super-mole. The Mail & Guardian has established that the charge sheet alleges he received hundreds of thousands of rands in payments from Agliotti.
- Last year Mbeki told the nation “trust me” on the Selebi saga. Does the president deserve our trust?
For the good of the game
The principle of professionals being rewarded for their expertise is Âsacrosanct. It happens in all businesses. And the Premier Soccer League, as a business, is entitled to make decisions in its own commercial interest.
Of course the PSL is no ordinary business — it trades in more than just saleable commodities. And football in South Africa is more than just a sport.
From the earliest clubs, such as the African Wanderers, formed in the early 1900s to give expression to Durban’s urban settlements, to its emergence as the first fully non-racial sport in the 1970s and to the philanthropic pastimes of newly empowered billionaires, such as Mamelodi Sundowns’ Patrice Motsepe, football has been a metaphor for the experiences of black South Africans.
We accept that members of the PSL executive committee who Ânegotiate the growing number of new sponsorships are not Ânecessarily Âacting from motives of self-enrichment. The board of governors, comprising all the club owners, approved the principle of paying commissions for sponsorships, raised as early as 2001, without controversy. We also accept that there is no final decision on who receives the commissions or their size.
Yet, at the same time, football’s special place in the hearts of South Africans requires sensitivity. It would be prudent for the PSL’s officials to look beyond their own narrow financial interests and to demonstrate a generosity of spirit.
We live in a country where corporate executives pay themselves salaries and perks out of all proportion to the earnings of ordinary workers — and where (as revealed this week) babies born in public hospitals must lie in cardboard boxes while government departments spend millions adorning their offices.
The PSL should not send the football-following public the message that it values administrators above players and the development of the sport.
We hope its governing board will make the right decisions when it meets to discuss commissions next month. Football has an opportunity to provide the lead in affirming the values we all want to see entrenched in wider South African society.