Graft and uncertainty have been playing havoc since Rhodes’s era
• Despite its long and inglorious history, the country has somehow survived and staggered on
Ask any armchair analyst what the greatest obstacle to economic growth in SA is and he or she will invariably respond with some variation on the theme of uncertainty and corruption. Over the past year, there is no question that uncertainty around the ANC’s national elective conference and the increasingly unpredictable behaviour of President Jacob Zuma have been the primary causes of a dearth of investment and economic growth in SA.
Corruption within stateowned enterprises has also reached untenable levels — the national power utility appears to be functionally bankrupt.
This unprecedented mix of corruption and uncertainty has done untold damage to the economy, but SA has a long and inglorious history of being an uncertain place to do business and an environment beset by corruption, yet somehow the country has survived and staggered on, and I suspect we will continue to do so.
If for any reason you are under the impression that corruption is the sole preserve of the ANC government or even the apartheid state before them, I’d like to reassure you that corruption has been alive and well for as long as there has been any form of government in SA.
Looking a little further back in history, corruption and uncertainty were enduring themes in SA long before it had the Guptas and a rogue president. Perhaps not on the grand scale that has been seen with the Guptas and their beneficiary in chief, Zuma, but on a significant enough scale to have an impact on the economy’s true potential.
One of my favourite examples of past corruption and uncertainty took place in the tiny Karoo town of Matjiesfontein, where the actions of an intrepid Scot by the name of James Douglas Logan, and his friend and associate Sir James Sivewright resulted in a scandal that ultimately caused the downfall of then Prime Minister Cecil Rhodes’s government.
In 1879, a young Logan arrived in the Cape Colony to seek his fortune. He quickly found work on the railways and within a few years, had been promoted to station master in Cape Town, and then district superintendent of Touwsrivier.
As his wealth and political connections grew to match his ambition, Logan decided to expand his empire by resigning from the railways and buying a small farm adjacent to the railway siding at Matjiesfontein.
According to Dean Allen’s history of Matjiesfontein, Empire, War and Cricket, much of this wealth was acquired through “insider trading and shady diamond deals” — and that was before he was even thought to be corrupt.
From there, he and his friend Sivewright, who at the time was the colony’s minister of railways and a close ally of Rhodes, exploited their connections to secure various questionable deals arising from the country’s rapidly expanding rail network and burgeoning mining sector.
Logan established his own private (and illegal) railway station next to his farm Tweedside, from which he would sell fruit and other refreshments to the railways using his connections from his superintendent days.
Sivewright secured an agreement for the Cape Government Railways that gave them a two-year monopoly on traffic to and from the new goldfields of the Transvaal. Despite accusations from the political opposition of the time that Sivewright and Logan were corrupt, nothing was done until 1892 when Sivewright awarded a contract to Logan that would give him the monopoly to supply catering services to the railways for the next 15 years. As so often happens nowadays, it was found that the contract was awarded without following the proper procurement processes.
A political crisis ensued in which several prominent and powerful liberal politicians attacked the deal and demanded that it be revoked.
After much uproar, the Rhodes government agreed to cancel the deal with Logan, although he was still awarded £5,000 in damages.
For the opposition politicians, this was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
In the ensuing furore, two senior liberal members of the cabinet refused to be part of any government associated with Sivewright and resigned from their positions, as eventually did Sivewright. In hindsight, this may seem trivial, but at the time it was a scandal that created great uncertainty in the colony and ultimately led to the fall of the first Rhodes government.
This snapshot of SA’s political history is not unique. Corruption and uncertainty go hand-inhand and always have, it’s just that we tend not to remember the past as vividly as we experience the present.
Long before the Guptas, there was Nkandla, Mbeki’s undignified removal, Sarafina (I and II), Jackie Selebi and Brett Kebble, the murder of Chris Hani, the handover of power and the 1994 elections. Before that there was the terrifying 1985 state of emergency and the Rubicon speech, both of which were preceded by decades of uncertainty, fear, and (often forgotten) corruption.
Anyone who lived through the pass laws, the border war, the Sharpeville massacre, the Alexandra bus boycott, the 1948 elections and the Second World War will remember them and the effect they had on the nation’s outlook vividly.
Earlier still, there was the Rand Rebellion of 1922, the 1913 mine workers strike, the establishment of the Union in 1910, and the Anglo-Boer War.
I am not drawing comparisons between any of these events, but rather want to highlight that in SA uncertainty is perhaps the one thing that we can be certain of. Similarly, I believe that when it comes to uncertainty and corruption, we often lose perspective. As awful as the last year has been, SA is still a better place than it was in 1899, 1910, 1948, 1960, 1985, 1994, and even 2017.
IT’S JUST THAT WE TEND NOT TO REMEMBER THE PAST AS VIVIDLY AS WE EXPERIENCE THE PRESENT