Recently-appointed Tourism Minister Patricia de Lille says she took on the role to “clean up” the department, in the wake of the recent R1 billion Tottenham Hotspur sponsorship scandal.
This week, Paddy Harper broke news that Tourism Minister Patricia de Lille’s first major act since taking her post has been the dissolution of the South African Tourism board in its entirety, something many would applaud because they were entertaining a ludicrous billion rand deal to sponsor English Premier League’s Tottenham Hotspur.
Given the Spurs deal, whose merits remain as clear as mud, and the fact that De Lille has more political capital than her predecessor, Lindiwe Sisulu, because of her anti-graft credentials, the removal of the board is seen in a positive light. It is so, because of the individual. But this is not how we ought to run our democracy — there’s a clear vulnerability in its governance.
The vulnerability is that we are at the mercy of the “good intentions” of a minister or an MEC whenever they decide to remove boards and chief executives of agencies or companies that the public owns — not the political parties — which they are more answerable to. No matter the evidence of its dysfunction, was the SA Tourism board removed in an open and transparent manner where the public was consulted. Political principals will quickly defend their actions by pointing to the laws of the land and the powers that they are granted to act, but I’d argue that those are too much, too disruptive to the entities in their portfolios.
In the case of a publicly listed company, when unhappy shareholders want to push for a removal of the board or a chief executive, they have to put it to a vote in an annual general meeting or a special general meeting. In an open and transparent forum, they raise their objections and it would be put to vote. It doesn’t always work as well as I have suggested, but what is critical is that there are checks and balances. And this applies to the election of the board in the first place and the appointment of the executive. In our publicly owned companies, these appointments and sackings may as well be happening in Cubana, leafy estates across the length and breadth of the country or in the president’s office. We, the public, just don’t know, yet we are the ultimate shareholders and the politicians are merely custodians.
Now De Lille may be in our good graces, but her powers as a minister are simply too great and we need to review governance processes urgently. Pravin Gordhan, a minister considered one of our better angels and a man who put up a damn good fight against in the most desperate years of the Zuma presidency, wields the same power in the pursuit of turning around the fortunes of Eskom, Transnet and SAA. He’d argue, I’m sure, that he simply has to because of the damage wrought by state capture. I hear that, but it doesn’t escape from the fact that the “activist” shareholder role played by our motley crew of politicians is one where an ethical board member runs the risk of being burned by their use of their powers.
How many board members are proud of their tenure of any of the state-owned enterprises? There have been good people who have served there, understanding that their fiduciary duty is to the wellness of the company and not themselves or the governing ANC. Yet because of the corruption busting cape that politicians wear now in the wake of the Zuma presidency, they run the real risk of being scarred for life, their careers ruined by the factional battles of the party.
Let’s be honest with ourselves, President Cyril Ramaphosa’s administration is proving to be just as disruptive in the functioning of state agencies as that of his predecessor, Jacob Zuma, and his close friends in the Gupta family. Their drive was simply the accumulation of wealth and power; the Thuma Mina era comes with a cloak of cleaning up, ensuring good governance yet the governance hasn’t improved.
Was there any difference in the manner in which Ramaphosa and his predecessor went about appointing the SABC board?
I thought about this as the Mail & Guardian covers the story of the collapse of the boards of two critically important agencies in the Gauteng economy — the Gauteng Gambling Board and the Gauteng Growth and Development Agency — over the past few months. The MEC doing the damage — or, as she might want us to believe, the “good work”— is Tasneem Motara. In just under six months since heading up economic development in South Africa’s biggest economy, she has found that both boards aren’t fit for purpose and a new broom is needed. She’s already cherry picked an acting chief executive for one of the hotseats — it’s her legal right after all.
What are we to do? Simply believe it’s all in our best interests? Maybe there is validity in her actions — we won’t know. But the ANC, or a faction of the party in the province, will know the true rationale behind her moves.
If anything, it tells me the uncertainty, the disruption of important state agencies and companies critical to rebuilding the South African economy will never perform to any degree that will get us out of the low growth trap we’ve been in over the past decade.
We need a new governance model. After the 2024 elections — whatever the outcomes — we are only going to see further disruption in these institutions that are critical to the political and economic stability of the country if we don’t get one.
As we might applaud De Lille for her steps over what was an outrageous deal, we better also be hoping she and other more ethical leaders in government live another 100 years to keep watch over all these institutions. If we don’t change the relationship between the shareholder (government) and its institutions, it’s the only thing we can rely on to avoid becoming a failed state.
But we can’t put our faith solely on finding new heroes to fight corruption because our systems are built in a manner that enables it to continue simply by the removal of that hero through death or a political misstep in their faction-ridden come election time in their political party.
We need functioning and fit for purpose institutions and governance. We don’t need heroes.