Daily Dispatch
Ever avoiding accountability
THE 320 digital pens, costing R14 000 each, sitting snug and unused in their velvet boxes for the past three years while government forked out R3.8-million to service providers for their use, is a symbol of all that is wrong with our executive and the legislatures that are supposed to hold them accountable.
It was transport MEC Weziwe Tikana who – while an official in the department of cooperative governance and traditional affairs (Cogta) – ordered the purchase of the absurdly expensive smartpens.
The pens – with infrared cameras and bluetooth technology that converts handwritten information into digital data – were meant to enable community development workers to instantly relay information on families needing social grants or housing to responsible departments’ databases.
It seems the price tag for the 320 digital pens was R4.5-million or R14 062 per pen. This included an annual subscription fee of R766 080 (R2 394 per pen) that was to be paid for over three years and a monthly bill of R76 000 (R237 per pen) paid over three years to Vodacom for airtime.
There is so much obviously wrong with this entire concept that the R4.5-million purchase almost immediately became the subject of a forensic investigation.
The spending of some R109 000 to print digital forms without following procurement processes triggered the forensic investigations which, we are told, will finally come to its laborious close next month.
The investigation froze the entire process – except for payments to service providers like Vodacom – which had to go ahead.
Three years and R3.8-million later and the pens, gathering dust in Bhisho, have not benefited anyone. The three-year subscription is now at an end, so these little miracles will remain stillborn.
In 2013, Cogta MEC Mlibo Qoboshiyane said the pens would improve accountability and institutional memory. He could not have been more wrong.
The penpusher behind it all, Tikana – who admits the pens were her idea but claims she had nothing to do with the flawed procurement process – won’t fall on her sword and it’s unlikely she will be made to.
After all, our plundering President Jacob Zuma has not fallen on his. And our supine parliament has ensured he won’t have to.
The highest court in our land found our president failed to uphold the constitution, yet he remains president. The courts have ruled that 783 counts of fraud, corruption and racketeering, should be reinstated against him. And still he remains in power.
The public protector’s damning state of capture report – which suggests he allowed the Gupta family to influence the appointment of his cabinet, made no difference.
Today will see a vote of no confidence in Zuma being debated in parliament. Many in the tripartite alliance are speaking out against Zuma and his governance style, including the ANC’s parliamentary chief whip Jackson Mthembu. Parliament has failed us too often. It is time these dissenters voted with their feet. The triumph of accountability over power will prove the pen to be mightier than the sword.