If only more ministers fell on their swords

THANK you for the opportunity you give your loyal readers to express their views. I’ll be brief. I think one of the main stumbling blocks in South African politics is how we are so economical with the truth.

South Africa has benefited greatly from colonisation. In fact, it is the most industrialised country in Africa because it was the most settled country by people of European descent. That is how new ideas or technology spreads around the world from ancient times to the present.

Settlers brought new ideas on how to farm and get the best yield from the land, ideas passed down generation after generation. It is also true that, after apartheid, South Africa took the path of forgive and forget for the past exploitation of its native countrymen. FORMER AWB leader Eugene Terre’Blanche

And there was never any Truth and Reconciliation on the part of farmers who were the most racist element in apartheid. One only has to observe songs like “kill the boer, kill the farmer” to know that farmers had a bad reputation with black communities.

Post-apartheid, besides a change of attitude among some farmers, most continued to see their black uneducated workers as beasts of burden and treated them as such, which in my view is the source of farm killings.

It is an inside job, meaning farmers are killed by their own workers. AfriForum’s truth/version is that these farmers are being killed by strangers, unprovoked, supposedly black people over apartheid as if a black person cannot murder a white person in a suburb and has to go to some remote farm to do it.

The case of Eugene Terre’Blanche comes to mind. Terre’Blanche was a South African white supremacist, Afrikaner nationalist and farmer who was hacked to death not by his black political opponents for destabilising peace talks but by a 29-year-old farmworker with an 18-year-old accomplice in 2010 on his Ventersdorp farm. I WOULD like to share the upsetting truth about theft by an Uber driver.

My dad took an Uber on Saturday to Gateway mall to sort out some stuff and when he was done he requested another Uber. On his way home, he was rushing to a meeting and paid for the Uber, jumped out and forgot to take his cellphone, which he left on the car’s dashboard.

My dad tried to call his phone and it rang, but the person kept turning it off. He then sent the Uber driver a message to return the phone, but he said he didn’t have it. My dad has been advised to charge the driver with theft. The crime, kidnapping of children, theft and violence… when will it stop? THE recent tendering by the former Finance minister Nhlanhla Nene of his resignation and its acceptance by President Cyril Ramaphosa is a manifest illustration of how our Constitution, premised on the fundamental principle of executive accountability, should work in both theory and practice.

According to section 91(2) of the Constitution, the president appoints, inter alia, Cabinet ministers, assigns their powers and functions and may dismiss them. Furthermore, as set out in section 92(2), Members of the Cabinet are accountable collectively and individually to Parliament for the exercise of their powers and performance of their functions. They are obliged to ensure that their conduct is compatible with the Constitution, and must provide Parliament with complete and regular reports concerning all matters under their control, as elaborated in section 92(3). This gives rise to a system of responsible government, which is one of the definitive features of Parliament government, involving both ministerial and collective cabinet responsibility, which our Constitution provides for and which has its origin in the Westminster system of parliamentary government.

According to Prof Albert Venter in his book The Birth of a Nation individual ministerial responsibility embodies, inter alia, an obligation to resign. This requires that a minister if the situation is sufficiently serious, is obliged to resign. Venter explains further that a minister is required to resign from his office, inter alia, where the minister has personal moral responsibility for conduct perceived to be unacceptable to the community.

Whether under the circumstances a minister does actually resign, as set out above, depends on realpolitik in South Africa and other parliamentary systems.

We know that among the startling revelations made before the (Zondo) State of Capture Commission of Inquiry is that Nene met the Gupta family at their family residence at least on 11 occasions between 2009 and 2014, when he was deputy minister of Finance. The precise nature and details of the meetings are not known at present. Nevertheless, as a result, a penitent, contrite and apologetic Nene asked Ramaphosa to relieve him of his duties.

Subsequently, the president, in the interest of good and ethical government, accepted his resignation. This is exactly how the Constitution should work. Regrettably, far too frequently, as in the Sassa debacle and the Life Esidimeni tragedy, politicians and senior civil servant have shamefully denied their ethical and political accountability and stubbornly clung to office.

It is submitted that the Nene episode has established an important precedent and indeed metaphorically a line has been drawn in the sand.

It, however, creates a quandary for the country and the president in relation to other ministers who appear in some way or other, like Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba, Minister in the Presidency Bathabile Dlamini and the Minister of Communications Nomvula Mokonyane, to be implicated in the Gupta debacle or some other dubious political or unethical conduct.

Opposition parties, such as the DA and EFF are also cogently calling for such ministers to be dismissed. Should such persons be induced to resign, or should the president in the interest of promoting ethical and good governance require them to resign or dismiss them, as he has the power to do in terms of section 91 (2) of the Constitution, this would be a triumph for accountable and ethical governance.

In this regard, however, the president is constrained by realpolitik, taking into account his problematic position in the ANC with its two opposing factions.

Only after the 2019 elections, should he obtain an unequivocal mandate from the electorate, which is not entirely certain, will he be more able to make a clean sweep, and not be inhibited by opposition from within the ANC.

A positive development that has flowed from this is that the president has appointed Tito Mboweni, as the new Minister of Finance.

Devenish is Emeritus Professor at UKZN and one of the scholars who assisted in drafting the Interim Constitution.