Corruption is a Lernaean Hydra – but even scarier
In its multiple dimensions, it is serious and must be treated as such
THE LERNAEAN Hydra, according to Greek mythology, was a massive nine-headed water-serpent monster living in a swamp around the city of Argos and ravaging the surroundings. The mythical hero Hercules attempted to cut her head with his sword and while he decapitated the first three heads, six more sprung forth.
He applied burnt brands to the stumps, cauterised the wounds and prevented the regeneration. The monster was destroyed.
State capture and corruption in South Africa is like a Lernaean Hydra, only this time it is not a mythical monster. It is a frightening reality.
It permeates society, and the public and private sectors at all levels. Yet the reality is that the media has mostly focused on what can be described as the big, “sexy” cases dominated by two families.
Corruption in its multiple dimensions is more serious than that and needs to be treated as such as this article hopes to demonstrate.
A lot has been written about it by, among others, journalists, senior academics, researchers, political and economic analysts, NGOs, community-based organisations (CBOs), and the national and international press.
Last year, a group of respected researchers and academics published the State Capacity Research Project Report, “Betrayal of the Promise: How South Africa is Being Stolen”, considered one of the most detailed exposés of state capture. It even prompted an immediate response by Rhodes University lecturer Wesley Seale, who criticised the attempt on academic and ideological grounds.
Even before the “Guptaleaks”, there have been calls and creations of “popular fronts, mobilisations of genuine Umkhonto we Sizwe veterans, NGOs and CBOs against state capture that has led to low economic growth and high levels of inequality. They have been determined and they fought against state capture in a variety of forms, including marches.
Interestingly all the groups and efforts, supplemented by relentless legal actions, have been concentrating their actions primarily and exclusively on two families and their collaborators, proxies and those in the middle. The latest mainly electronic media exposés regarding the international connections perpetrate the existing trend.
The reality, however, is that despite the daily exposés in print and electronic media, the whole spectrum of state machinery and state power has been seriously compromised and appropriated for the self-enrichment of a multiplicity of individual and group actors throughout the country and every segment of society. The Steinhoff case is just a drop in the ocean in the private sector.
This means that the comprehensive anti-corruption legislation, rules and regulations and international agreements signed, as well as the multiplicity of anti-corruption agencies ravaged by internal and external problems, have been either unable or incapable of stopping the greed, avarice and perpetual corruption of what has been (unfairly) referred as the “new elite”, the representatives of the more 2.3 million upper-middle and middle-class public servants.
This is a highly stratified and diversified social sector of which a fairly substantial minority has been involved, over the years, with a wide variety of politicians, “middlemen and women”, business people and an eponymous range of service providers, relatives and acquaintances in pursuit of billions upon billions of rand.
This is a multilayered and multifaceted reality throughout the whole spectrum of the three levels of government, fuelled and perpetuated by power relations, organisational inadequacies, and the exchange value of the private/public/political partnership/s at work.
Over the years, some provincial and municipal leaders have put in place solid anti-corruption policies, but the realities of implementing them show that such measures are not enough.
Every year, the Department of Public Service and Administration, the auditor-general, Special Investigating Unit and Public Service Commission as well as private sector audit and commissioned reports point to concrete evidence that municipal councillors operate companies that relentlessly conduct business with their own municipality, in direct contravention of the code of conduct for councillors and the Municipal Systems Act; mayors or chief financial officers illegally influence tenders amounting to millions, or husbands of senior politicians receive major contracts contravening the municipal acts and the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act.
A few years ago the auditor-general’s report showed that half of all the Free State government tenders were issued to government employees or families of politicians, and that municipal officials and their families had pocketed more than R800 million of taxpayers’ money through the awarding of tenders at various municipalities across the country. Most of the culprits remain unpunished. While many of these realities are unrecorded in the press, they are known to honest employees. They remember murdered North West anti-corruption activist and whistle-blower Moss Phakoe and Mbombela Speaker Jimmy Mohlala and provincial official Samuel Mpatlanyane, who were both gunned down in 2009 after they sought to expose collusion between political leaders and construction industry players in the building of the Mbombela Stadium.
Karl Marx wrote in his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 that money and its pursuit “distorts men and women”.
He examined how material wealth possesses humans and ironically turns their strengths into weaknesses and assets into liabilities as money constitutes a profound form or instrument of untruth, while in the case of corruption, money is the great instrument of truth, at least potentially. It is the most tangible sign of some ill-gotten gain, of some illicit or criminal activity.
That is why its possessor must go to such lengths to hide it by hoarding or laundering it.
While the long-awaited catharsis has begun at some levels, the evident materialism of the new middle class takes advantage of the ideal conditions for corruption leading to a never-ending cycle of capital accumulation and opulence instrumental in the widening of social inequality, exclusion and poverty.
Two important questions remain: Are there possibilities to emulate Hercules in his fight against the Lernaean Hydra of the corrupt? Will the National Democratic Revolution be transformed into a permanent revolution?
Only time will tell.
WHILE THE CATHARSIS HAS BEGUN AT SOME LEVELS, THE MATERIALISM OF THE NEW MIDDLE CLASS IS LEADING TO A NEVER-ENDING CYCLE