SOME OF THEM NEED TO GO TO JAIL

Corruption is the norm in the ANC. It is those who are not corrupt who are laughed at, who are mocked and disparaged

What is it like to run a meeting of the ANC’S national executive committee (NEC)? Can you do it with a straight face?

Say the issue of corruption with regard to the revelations at the Zondo commission of inquiry into state capture comes up.

The party’s national chair, Gwede Mantashe, we now know, will have to recuse himself. He has to if he has any conscience left, because last week we heard Richard le Roux, Bosasa’s former head of special operations, testifying in excruciating detail how the company installed state-of-the-art security features at the homes of Mantashe and others.

ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa would have to recuse himself from the meeting because, well, either he or his son received R500,000 from Bosasa in what was a murky contribution to his election campaign.

If these two men recused themselves, who else in the room is not tainted?

We know that NEC member Nomvula Mokonyane demanded (and got), over and above security installations at her house, frozen chicken, braai packs and expensive whisky for her family Christmas parties.

Trawling through the corruption revelations of the past few years makes for depressing reading. At least half the NEC are tainted, and I am being optimistic here.

There is virtually no one in the party’s top six — except for Ramaphosa himself — who is not implicated in some very serious corruption allegations. To be fair to him, Ramaphosa’s troubles with the R500,000 donation actually makes him look like an angel when you consider what Ace Magashule is accused of doing in the Free State.

The situation gets worse at the provincial and regional levels of the party. Corruption is now the norm in the ANC. It is those who are not corrupt who are laughed at, who are mocked and disparaged.

The ANC operates as though it will have no leaders if it kicks the corrupt out. It is as though there isn’t a sea of eager, capable, younger people able to jump into positions and make them work. It recycles its people.

Jacob Zuma, instead of enjoying his retirement, is wafting about and intervening in policy discussions. Where is the future? Where are the young ones while the likes of Zuma take up essential space in the NEC?

In the global space, sadly, we are increasingly being classed among the corrupt countries of the world. Last week, in the 2018 corruption perceptions index, SA was ranked at ninth place in sub-saharan Africa, suggesting that perceptions of corruption in the country remained high.

Seychelles, with a score of 66, was ranked 28th worldwide and the highest (cleanest) in the region, followed by Botswana, Cape Verde, Rwanda, Namibia, Mauritius, São Tomé and Principe, and Senegal. Tellingly, SA had a score of 43 in 2018, down from 45 in 2017.

Once again, this tells you that SA is hanging out in a bad neighbourhood. No one speaks of us the way they speak about Rwanda or Botswana or Singapore.

They are beginning to speak about us the way they speak about failing countries.

It all has to do with impunity. Take Mokonyane, for example. She ruined the ministry of water & sanitation. She was useless at communications. She is ineffectual at environmental affairs. She is alleged to have taken bribes from Bosasa. Yet she remains in the cabinet, earning a lovely salary.

It is because of people like her that businesspeople across the globe switched on their Bloomberg feed on Friday and read the headline: “How deep does the rabbit hole of South Africa corruption go?”

The story read: “The [corruption] scandals, which have embroiled international companies, threaten to deter investment in a country already battling perceptions of a skills shortage, comparatively high costs and violent crime.”

The story went on to quote David Lewis, the executive director of Corruption Watch: “It’s systemic in that entire systems have been subverted to promote corruption. We’re down there right now with the worst.”

He is right on the money. Some powerful people need to go to jail. It’s the only way.

SA is being spoken about in the way that people speak about failing countries