Presidency wants even more power

On a day when Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa launched a stinging attack on a pervasive atmosphere of rampant corruption and narrow personal enrichment, calling for an independent judicial commission to thoroughly investigate state capture, the ANC launched an initiative to hand even greater powers to the presidency.

The potential clashes inherent in these sentiments points directly to the ANC’s elective conference in December and the battle for control of the ruling party.

But there are other elements in the discussion document released by the chair of the ANC’s national subcommittee on legislature and communication, Ayanda Dlodlo, which could be construed as handing too much power – across national, provincial and municipal levels.

This amounts to a single set of hands and not just a formula for tighter centralised control, but a potential recipe for a new level of the bungling and dissipation of public funds which has typified state-owned enterprises.

While it could be argued that there are compelling reasons for greater oversight of governance at provincial level, there is little doubt that this will be seen as a direct confrontation with the DA-controlled Western Cape and a device to take the province back from the opposition party.

State-owned enterprises might also be shielded from investigation under direct control from the top. Eskom had a debt of R333 billion at the end of last year, according to a written parliamentary reply by Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown. She envisaged that this debt would exceed R350 billion over the next five years. Municipalities alone owed the power utility about R10 billion.

The micromanagement of Soviet-style government has patently failed. Why would we reinvent it here?