Grants ruling more evidence of Zuma rot
As a rule of thumb, it’s always unwise for laymen to comment on the merits or otherwise of rulings by the judiciary. But the judiciary, which is part of the architecture of democracy-supporting institutions, has become such a fundamental part of our body politic that it’s hard to resist the temptation to decipher the implications of last week’s remarks by the Constitutional Court on the social grants crisis.
After another progress report by the Department of Social Development, including its South African Social Security Agency (Sassa), the country’s highest court ordered that the department present a contingency plan and a programme to communicate with the 17-million recipients of social assistance every month.
In essence the court, which has in effect been forced to monitor what should be an administrative function of the government, now believes we could be teetering perilously close to the brink we were at earlier in 2017.
To refresh readers’ minds, at the beginning of 2017, the same court ruled that the invalid contract awarded to Cash Paymaster Services (CPS), the grants disbursement outfit, should continue for another year while the department prepared for the transfer of the function. This came after the department had failed to run a proper tender process for three successive years.
As part of its progress report to Parliament, the department has told MPs that migrating this function in-house would take five years. For almost a year now, the department has been in talks with the South African Post Office which, if successfully concluded, would see the Post Office replace CPS in paying out the grants.
Last week the Treasury, which is the custodian of the government’s procurement function, found that the Post Office, which is building a banking capability, had been unfairly disqualified by the department as a potential provider of some of the services required to execute the grants payment mandate.
All MPs are irritated by the crisis, including the conduct of the minister, Bathabile Dlamini, who is facing a legal challenge seeking to make her personally liable for the costs awarded to the nongovernmental organisations that hauled the department to court.
On the surface, the problem is ideological: Dlamini wants the state, via Sassa, to take over this function, a move that would increase the ranks of the public service. This would result in the thousands of CPS employees moving into Sassa, as they did a few years ago when CPS “won” the right to distribute grants across all provinces. Not only would this look good for annual reports, it would also be used to illustrate radical economic transformation in action.
Dlamini’s supporters say the Post Office will frustrate her statist ambition as it will have to subcontract some aspects of the tender, such as the printing of the cards used by beneficiaries. This could see a commercial bank being granted a lucrative contract to supply such cards without the onerous process of tendering. Such a move could lead to costly litigation by other banks.
Her opponents argue that CPS subcontracts aspects of this tender in any case. Some say this will give the Post Office, which has just been given a bail-out, another fillip.
This is a misguided argument. Even if the Post Office were to be used to seed the much-touted state bank, its problems cannot be resolved by handing out services to it. The problems run much deeper — they have to do with its business model, as well as the business it lost (forever) during an employee strike more than a year ago. This new business, so to speak, should not be used to subsidise the unprofitable parts of the Post Office.
Indeed, none of us could say for sure that the protagonists’ conflict is driven solely by these seemingly altruistic motivations. For months MPs, who are loath to interfere in the procurement affairs of departments and agencies they oversee, have been frustrated by delays, jargon, obfuscation and clearly misleading information from officials.
Thankfully, judging by its recent pronouncements, the court has seen through all these machinations. What we are learning, yet again, is that nothing is unthinkable in these strange times. If we have to drive our country to bankruptcy to save one faction of the governing elite from being ousted, it will happen.
Reports that a twentysomething student with links to the president has come up with a plan for SA to be able to provide free tertiary education show the extent to which some will go to save themselves.
If Jacques Pauw’s muchcelebrated tome, The President’s Keepers, sheds light on what’s been going on in the last eight years, please read Ronnie Kasrils’s newly released A Simple Man, the definitive portrait of the president, as a telling guide of what to expect between now and when (or if) the president leaves.
IF WE HAVE TO DRIVE OUR COUNTRY TO BANKRUPTCY TO SAVE ONE FACTION OF THE GOVERNING ELITE FROM BEING OUSTED, IT WILL HAPPEN