He was laughing, he told me recently, because otherwise he would cry. A member of the government, his sense of the chaotic disorganisation that is the defining feature of so many national departments is driving him to hysteria.
And it starts at the top. The presidency appears to be in a mess.
The failure to comply with the law and to make a timely disclosure of his outside financial interests is symptomatic of this institutional malaise; it exposed the lack of capacity and strategic wit within his office. Probity is Jacob Zuma’s Achilles heel. You could be forgiven for thinking that the newly elected president would have instructed his office last May to ensure that he would be punctilious in meeting his legal obligations after his inauguration.
Instead, the presidency missed its legal deadline by more than eight months. It took more than a week to respond to a simple question from the press: has the president disclosed or not? And then, rather than an answer from the secretary for Cabinet or the legal adviser to the president, Zuma’s personal lawyer, Michael Hulley, issued a classically elliptical, not to say obscurantist, response which sought to have its cake and eat it: on the one hand, the president does not have any real outside financial interests, such as directorships or shareholdings; on the other, the disclosure needed several months of “engagement” with the Cabinet office.
Why was Hulley involved at all? The president’s declaration is made as the office-bearer and so, therefore, it should be the presidential legal adviser who handles the matter, not the attorney who made a name for himself representing Zuma through his long and tortuous journey though the criminal justice process.
And, who is paying his fees — Zuma himself, or the taxpayer? If Zuma chooses to use his private attorney to perform a presidential function rather than the person employed to do so, then he should pay the bill himself.
To some, these will seem like trifling concerns. What matters, they say, is “service delivery” — that ghastly, over-used expression that has become almost completely meaningless in its banality. But, as Cosatu secretary general Zwelinzima Vavi pointed out in his superb and timely op-ed article a month ago in the Sunday Independent, it is the conflict of private financial interests that undermines the public interest.
Vavi’s call for a lifestyle audit was a welcome contribution to the public debate. It came in a piece that was bristling with common sense and contained as pithy an analysis of the range of governance problems that now beset the political establishment as any I have seen. It is rare for Kader Asmal and Vavi to agree on anything, but they have both identified the issue that now needs urgent attention: reform of the array of anti-corruption mechanisms introduced during the 1990s, many of which stem from Asmal’s far-sighted leadership of the special ethics committee during the first democratic Parliament that created the system of financial disclosures (although see below too).
A part of the financial disclosure that both MPs and members of the executive make is private. That was for a particular reason: in the mid-1990s, with Inkathagate and other fifth-column perils still fresh in the mind, there was concern about making public anything that might endanger the security of public figures, such as their private property or their spouses.
Now a greater public interest trumps this anachronism — to dig deeper towards the causes of corrupt behaviour that are curdling the constitutional fabric of South Africa’s democratic governance.
Last month and this, two pieces of critical legislation — the Protected Disclosures Act that provides protection to whistle-blowers and the Promotion of Access to Information Act which gives effect to the constitutional right to access information — “celebrated” their 10-year mark. But, as the review commissioned by the Open Democracy Advice Centre showed two weeks ago, while there have been victories for individual whistle-blowers and some communities seeking information to enable them to hold government to account, there is a huge mountain still to climb.
If you ask for information from government you are still more likely to be ignored than answered. If you are a whistle-blower, you may well be either assassinated or blacklisted from government employment.
Things have to change. And Zuma has to lead by example, to set the highest standard from the top. Instead of spending his time listening in to calls to his beloved hotline — a massive gimmick — he should take some concrete steps to strengthen and extend the existing system.
First, the system of financial disclosure needs to be reformed so that more is disclosed by a greater number of public office-bearers. Those who fail to disclose should be disciplined. And then open a radical debate on whether public office-bearers should be entitled to second jobs and outside interests at all– the nettle that Asmal declined to grasp back in 1995.
Second, whistle-blowers should receive a presidential award for bravery and public-spirited conduct. Zuma can help shift attitudes away from a culture that, in the words of one government official, treats “whistle-blowers as impimpis who must be killed”.
Third, section 32 of the Constitution must be a priority, not a luxury: government departments must comply with both the spirit and letter of the law and proactively disclose as much information as possible. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
Fourth, Zuma must step in where the ANC treasurer, Mathews Phosa, apparently fears to tread despite his promises upon taking his position on the organisation’s national executive committee, and introduce a Bill to open up to public scrutiny the private funding of political parties — the root of so much of the grand corruption since 1994.
Otherwise, yes, Cosatu and civil society must conduct lifestyle audits. If the parliamentary system of oversight is obstructed or dysfunctional, or stuck in a rut, an extra-parliamentary one should be mobilised. An open democracy charter will be an important initiative to stimulate progress. We need to impose a new standard of public integrity. And fast.