It was former president
Thabo Mbeki who once lamented what he perceived as the swelling of the governing ANC's ranks with “imigodoyi”. (Photo by ALEXANDER JOE / AFP)
Former President Thabo Mbeki once lamented what he perceived as the swelling of the governing ANC’s ranks with “imigodoyi”. Most in the audience laughed and applauded him — more amazed and in awe of the man’s inventive mind than the substance and implications of what he had just said.
Conceptually, imigodoyi refers to people who are essentially criminals and always act in ways intended to advance an agenda rather than for the greater good of society. In the context of the ANC, and specifically in relation to Mbeki’s thesis on imigodoyi, these are people who join or affiliate with the party not because they are passionate about championing its historical mission of social and economic transformation and progress but because they want to use its proximity to, or control of, state power and resources to pursue the selfish end of gathering riches.
Obviously this does not augur well for the state and, in fact, has resulted in a gradual, yet systemic, failure of the public service to execute its role as envisioned in the Constitution.
It would be disingenuous to attach the problems of corruption and the failure of the public service solely to the government, albeit most of them emanate from it. The private sector is also to blame. Indeed, agents of government and private companies frequently interface to determine how they will fleece the state.
For example, during my interactions with a contractor who does road maintenance for the Greater Giyani Municipality in Limpopo, he lamented that he was considering no longer bidding for tenders because he cannot make the profit that he would like to make.
Upon my inquisition on why he was unable to turn as much profit as he would like, the man said politicians within the municipality demand a percentage of the value of the contract be given to them as a precondition for awarding the contract. He said that this compelled him to use cheap or inadequate materials resulting in shoddy work being done. In addition, he still had to pay his workers and meet other input costs.
Clearly, this indicates that corruption escalates the cost of doing business. The above example explains why the South African government is no longer able to deliver durable infrastructure projects, complete them on time or even deliver them at all. Sadly, this is not just confined to the abovementioned municipality but extends to many others across the country and certainly to other levels of government.
Moreover, the graft that afflicts Eskom is an important example of how the problem of corruption is not limited to the state and its institutions. There are tales that some of the contractors that do work for the power utility deliberately cause damage to its infrastructure so as to perpetually remain at work.
When it assumed political power in 1994, the ANC professed its intention of planning and leading socioeconomic transformation. However, the only instruments for pursuing transformation were the public service and parastatals, since it could not rely on the white-dominated private sector. Over the years, the problem of imigodoyi has emasculated these instruments, meaning the social transformation imperative cannot be achieved using the public service and parastatals. It is a sad state of affairs.
The imigodoyi also use ruthless methods to remove obstacles in their way. The stories of whistleblowers who have been murdered because they were believed to be in possession of damaging information on the dealings of imigodoyi within the state indicate the lengths to which they are prepared to go to eliminate threats to their corrupt and criminal activities.
The highly publicised story of the murder of Babita Deokaran, an official working for the Gauteng government’s department of health, who was killed because she was a key witness in an Special Investigating Unit probe of the abuse of funds intended to combat the Covid 19 pandemic, is one example of how ruthless the imigodoyi can be.
What was interesting was that some of the people who were irregularly awarded tenders to supply personal protective equipment to the department, as part of its efforts to counter the pandemic, were either leaders of the governing ANC or people closely linked to them. This case makes clear the scary nexus between the governing party and imigodoyi and it is the same with many others. The murder of whistleblowers by imigodoyi strikes fear into the hearts of others who would otherwise be keen to reveal corrupt dealings in their organisations.
In the final analysis, South Africans need to reflect on whether the problem of imigodoyi is confined to the ANC or has spread across society as a whole. I fear that the latter is the case.
The political dominance of the ANC since the dawn of democracy, occasioned mainly by its electoral preponderance, has meant that some of its toxic culture would spread beyond the institutional remit of the party and into society. As such, a moral cleansing that extends beyond politics, and encompasses society, is needed for South Africa’s rebirth.
Rich Mashimbye is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation, University of Johannesburg.