In May we revealed that 27 members (42%) of President Jacob Zuma’s executive had private business interests. We called on them to relinquish their shares and resign from directorships in the interest of clean, open governance.
A number of ministers and deputies heeded our call. Others ignored us or argued that their private interests didn’t affect their official duties.
This week we sing from the same hymn sheet and call on all civil servants, including well-paid directors general, to sever all ties with the Âbusiness world.
As we report this week, a substantial number of directors general have private interests outside their official duties as chief executives of our not-so-healthy state departments. They can barely afford not to spend all their time on giving effect to Zuma’s promises of improved service delivery and the eradication of poverty.
Newly appointed presidency director general Vusi Mavimbela, argues that it is enough for him to resign from the boards of industrial giants such as Mvelaphanda Holdings and Group Five. He will keep his shares in these companies.
We think he is wrong.
The nature of his new job exposes Mavimbela to decision-making at the highest levels of government. Those decisions, and associated information, are worth gold to big companies, particularly those involved in the construction and energy sectors.
We are not suggesting that Mavimbela will act in an improper way. But the mere fact that he is surrounded by exclusive information that could benefit financially the companies he partly owns creates, at the very least, a possibility for conflicts of interest.
He should sell his shares or place them in a blind trust and make ends meet with his sturdy government salary of not less than R1-million a year.
So should the 49 civil servants who were fingered by the auditor general in a report on government officials doing business with their own or other state departments, which was tabled in Parliament earlier this year.
This week we name and shame a number of them, including an education department director whose company benefited from a R30-million contract — from her own department! The mind boggles.
It’s a shame that these officials don’t realise they are literally taking bread from the mouths of other deserving private contractors, especially in a time of economic downturn.
The message from Zuma must be clear: accept your government salary and do the job we pay you to do, or quit and start your own corner shop.
We have a visitor for you
Since Tuesday this week, those have been the words public servants dread to hear. Because, for Douwlina Pretorius, secretary to Balfour Executive Mayor Lefty Tsotetsi, the visitor was President Jacob Zuma.
As we now know, this was no courtesy call. Zuma came to get answers from the mayor on why protesters were lining the streets to complain about shoddy public services. And he got a pretty crisp idea: it was mid-afternoon and the mayor had long since knocked off.
Zuma must be applauded for his decision to arrive unannounced and without the normal hullabaloo that goes with a presidential visit. Last week this newspaper reported that Zuma’s diary was too tight to allow him to go out and see the protesters, but this week he forfeited the white marquee and lavish catering that normally accompanies a presidential visit, and the Potemkin clean-up that so often precedes it, to send a clear message to his party’s deployed cadres.
He got a clear demonstration too, of why people feel they have to take their protest to the streets: an absent mayor, who stayed home while the township boiled and residents demanded answers.
Zuma also got a clear demonstration of the kind of official buck-passing that frustrates rich and poor South Africans alike. Tsotetsi complained to Zuma that the problems of service delivery had nothing to do with him or his council and blamed the national and provincial governments instead. He could show no convincing evidence of his own efforts, however. One is tempted ask Mr Tsotsetsi exactly why we have mayors if they simply shrug at their most basic responsibilities.
Of course Zuma’s tea-time surprise cannot be the end of it. He needs to keep officials on their toes, but also to provide political and technical support to those who are trying to do their jobs in the face of weak structures and demands for patronage.
The incompetent and corrupt must be fired, irrespective of efforts to ensure unity with the party and the protection of local fiefdoms. And the disciplined must be promoted, even when they are a source of discomfort to more powerful figures. If Zuma lacks the courage to do that, places like Balfour will be a lot harder to visit in future.