President Thabo Mbeki’s disingenuous handling of the charges against police commissioner Jackie Selebi provides a perfect illustration of why ordinary ANC members no longer want him as their leader. He does not talk straight and consistently fails to take South Africa into his confidence. In his management of a slew of controversies in the past nine years he has forfeited the nation’s trust, too.
“Trust me,” he assured religious leaders last year about Selebi, implying that he had the true facts about the case but was not at liberty to disclose them. What were these facts and why have they not prevented the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) from bringing corruption charges against the commissioner?
Declining to move against Selebi, Mbeki repeatedly said no information had been brought to him. Yet it now emerges that the NPA gave him a detailed report on its investigation as early as last May. His legal head, lawyer Mojanku Gumbi, explains that what he meant was that he had seen only allegations — a disingenuous excuse if ever there was one as it is only a court of law that determines whether a body of evidence amounts to more than allegation.
The NPA’s dossier was no flimsy body of work.
Selebi’s self-confessed friendship with alleged mob boss Glenn Agliotti became an outright scandal — and clear grounds for his suspension — as soon as Agliotti’s involvement in the Brett Kebble murder emerged in court. The president should surely have explained what was at issue. His decision not to move against the commissioner alarmed South Africans.
A partial explanation for Mbeki’s evasiveness and reluctance to act might lie in his view of media exposés of corruption in government as the work of racist “fishers of corrupt men”.
It should be remembered that it was the Mail & Guardian, in May 2006, that first exposed the relationship between Selebi and the Agliotti/Clinton Nassif axis and which continued to break news on the saga, despite police counterspin and detractors elsewhere in the media.
The M&G was the first to report on Agliotti’s gifts to Selebi and on the latter’s ties with shady security operation Palto, which features in the charges against him.
But our investigation ran parallel to that of the Scorpions; at no stage did we hold a “bosberaad” with them, as Selebi claimed in court papers last week. One would have expected Mbeki to take an inquiry by an official law enforcement agency more seriously.
Clearly, the president’s conduct on this issue is an attempt to shield the police chief from the long arm of the law. Selebi was a close associate from exile and Mbeki’s personal appointee to the leadership of the SAPS, as well as his only significant political ally in the security services in the build-up to the ANC’s Polokwane conference. There is speculation that Selebi might harbour politically sensitive secrets about the arms deal.
Our lead story this week highlights Mbeki’s role in the frantic scramble by the presidency, justice ministry, National Intelligence Agency and SAPS to head off the charges.
Party political and executive interference in law enforcement has become a deeply worrying trend in South Africa, and the lead is coming straight from the top.
Eish-kom!
We cemented our solidarity with that other African giant, Nigeria, this week by officially becoming another blackout nation. The story of the week has been the rolling cuts that have affected most provinces in what Eskom calls “equiÂtable and rational” steps. These are, literally, dark times.
There is nothing equitable or rational about power cuts. Being power-less is how millions of South Africans live every day in rural areas not yet on the grid and in the squatter camps that ring our cities.
But the idea of the post-apartheid democracy was to extend, not curtail, the basic benefits of modern life, of which electricity is one of the most important. This week the economy lost billions of rands as the country ground to a series of staged halts.
The cost in human life has yet to be tallied, as we do not yet know the impact of the cuts on hospitals.
At the heart of the problem is poor planning. While government focused on restructuring the distribution of electricity it failed to realise the larger challenge was one of generation. The ANC turned down requests for investment in generation capacity many years ago, a mistake for which President Thabo Mbeki recently apologised.
The under-investment occurred as part of the belt-tightening of the Gear (growth employment and redistribution) years, suggesting that policy mandarins did not focus sufficiently on the growth elements of the policy and stuck too closely to the cost-cutting script.
The Medupi power station plan is still at least a decade away from fulfilment, while the local contractor is an ANC front company with no known expertise in electricity generation. The best Eskom and municipal distributors can do in the interim is to keep information about impending blackouts and their causes flowing regularly and honestly, so that we can at least plan our lives.
The bright side, if there is one, is that South Africa will be forced to accelerate its efforts to increase the supply of sustainable alternative forms of energy and will become more frugal in its power consumption. And, conceivably, a nation of beer-swilling TV-watchers might get more exercise.