Yawning contradiction between Tambo and current leadership
SOUTH Africans are correctly throwing up a stink over the now delayed swearing-in of Brian Molefe as a Member of Parliament.
The reputation of the former Eskom CEO is so seriously muddied by the revelations of impropriety contained in the State Capture report that his appointment is completely inopportune.
In his exit speech from Eskom, Molefe committed to providing a version of the “truth” that would contradict the findings of the public protector, advocate Thuli Madonsela.
Hopefully, if he finally does get to showing and telling, he will do a better job than he did with his flimsy attempt to explain away the cellphone records that placed him in the vicinity of the Gupta-owned compound 19 times within a two-month period.
Molefe’s excuse – the presence of a non-existent Saxonwold shebeen – spurred social media users into overdrive with memes and ridicule.
But it also pointed to a troubling trend of leading figures telling brazen lies without so much as blinking an eye. Remember how President Jacob Zuma claimed to have a bond for his Nkandla property.
Yet it is such people that the ANC continually chooses to impose upon South Africans.
This is shocking, especially considering the resolution by 5000 delegates at the ANC’s 53rd national conference in Mangaung in 2012 to bar tainted individuals from serving in public office. These delegates agreed that “urgent action [be] taken to deal with public officials, leaders and members of the ANC who face damaging allegations of improper conduct”.
In addition “measures should be put in place to prevent abuse of power or office for private gain or factional interests”.
Good words, sadly with very little evidence of their being backed up by conviction.
Rather, this resolution seems to have been taken for no reason but to placate corruption-weary South Africans.
And what we see, in the place of corrective consequences for wrongs – including the not so small matter of failing to uphold the constitution – is more fawning and rewarding.
How else does one explain the proposed Molefe appointment to parliament? Or the one by North West premier Supra Mahumapelo to erect a six-metre bronze statue of President Jacob Zuma at a cost of R6-million in Groot Marico, a poverty-stricken area where rates of unemployment are sky high and government services are intermittent?
There is a term for this kind of patron-client corruption where elected officials and those in government feel entitled to a share of state revenue and the use if its machinery to generate material benefits for themselves. It is “prebendalism”.
The fundamental contradictions of such a system and the efficient provision of public services were clearly set out in 1977 in a groundbreaking study by the internationally renowned political scientist, Professor Richard Joseph, who looked at why a country like Nigeria, with so much potential, remained mired in poverty.
The findings in his study Affluence and Underdevelopment: The Nigerian Experience are underscored by Michela Wrong’s political exposé, It’s Our Time to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistle-Blower.
As South Africans we are not short of examples that show how political “loyalty pyramids” hinder the development of our state.
Just look at the mess that has happened at the SABC under Hlaudi Motsoeneng.
As the parliamentary committee probing the SABC board’s fitness to hold office conducted its hearings, I began to wonder about our strange propensity to live so comfortably with all these contradictions.
Presently the ruling party is using 2017 to shine a spotlight onto the life of its longest-serving president, the widely revered Oliver Tambo.
Yet the leadership long ago discarded Tambo’s values of personal sacrifice and servant leadership.
At least the ANC’s former treasurer-general Mathews Phosa has had enough of living with the contradictions. He arrived at what he terms his “Damascus moment” during the fiasco of the 2017 State of the Nation Address (Sona). The result was his missive describing the Sona as “The Shame of the Nation” and denouncing the current crop of ANC leaders.
Parliament is a key national institution. Its members bear the responsibility of setting an example of good and ethical governance. It should never be occupied by individuals who resort to heavy-handed tactics or use expletives to try to have their way.
Nor should it ever lay out the welcome mat to deeply compromised individuals like Brian Molefe.