Big power in our feet
INSTITUTE of Race Relations director Frans Cronje showed how out-of-touch the reactionary leadership of that organisation has become when he tweeted on Wednesday about the anti-corruption marches taking place around the country: “Corruption march is largely a waste of time. If (South Africans) are outraged at government corruption they should vote the government out of power.”
Of course, Cronje is right up to a point. We are a democracy and, for as long as we are committed to democracy, the only way we can change the regime is through the ballot box. But to suggest marching against fraud and corruption is a waste of time is to exaggerate.
Fraud and corruption potentially represent the biggest challenges to our society as we have come to know it since 1994. It is endemic to every aspect of our national life. It affects everyone. It is practiced, if not by all, then a fair number of people in positions of authority in every sphere.
The perpetration of corruption must always involve more than one individual – the corruptor and the corruptee (who might be a willing or a reluctant participant) – and there is always a victim (or victims, given the grand scale of corruption we are seeing).
It includes the seemingly obligatory “can of Coke” for the traffic officer at a speed checkpoint, the extra money to grease the palm of one or another official who must issue an important official document, and the percentage of bidding fees allocated by multi-national corporations to secure mega tenders.
In all cases of fraud and corruption highlighted in the media such as the Daily Dispatch, almost daily, there is a cost to the country. Either it is real financial loss, and/or lost opportunity, the cost of having to move resources in from elsewhere to cover the losses, the continued degradation of local communities and concomitant social and economic disadvantages experienced by poor South Africans.
Fraud and corruption linked to government tenders is particularly pernicious because with sums of money willfully lost by paying tenderpreneurs for critical work that will never be done to uplift impoverished communities. Then somehow, government must find additional funds and appoint another service provider to begin the work.
Cynics will say corrupt officials who put out corrupt tenders simply rub their hands in glee at the prospect of another chance to corrupt the process and gather more loot for themselves and their associates. But imagine a situation where the high point of our democratic endeavour – the moment of going into a voting booth to place a tick against the politicians or parties who should represent us – is rendered meaningless because the entire process has been corrupted by a bunch of crooks.
It is also abundantly clear that fraud and corruption in South Africa reinforce inequality and especially historical inequality between black and white communities.
Coincidentally, on the same day of the United Against Corruption marches, French economist Thomas Piketty was due to speak at the University of Cape Town in the first of a series of Nelson Mandela Foundation lectures on his thesis that capitalism leads to inequality.
The lecture spluttered along via a video linkup because Piketty missed his flight to Cape Town the previous night, but the author of Capital in the 21st Century emphasised that South Africa should have done more by now to address inequality through state intervention.
He also called for a tax on the wealthy and renewed efforts to effect land reform and redistribution.
Piketty has lamented the paucity of good data coming out of our research institutions to assess the impact of, for example, black economic empowerment policies. The same can be said of critical fraud and corruption indicators to assess their impact on rising inequality.
But neither corruption nor inequality are simply problems of government or state crime and policy which can be addressed at the next elections or through pressurising the ANC to change its deployment and related policies.
These realities are equally driven by the private sector. The global banking scandal, Fifa (and, perhaps, Safa) bribery payoffs and the gross deceit perpetrated by Volkswagen in crooking diesel emissions tests are just some examples of crime by the private sector.
Typically in South Africa, both public and private sector players are involved in pulling off the multimillion rand scams to which we are now accustomed. South Africa faces the same problem as other countries – huge corporate profits end up in the pockets of a very small minority of business executives and or politicians.
Most of us, individually, do not have the capacity to challenge what happens in private companies. Collectively, of course, through marches and protests, through boycotts and strikes, through active citizenship reflected in our careful attention to which policy and governance regimes should be set in place to keep business honest, we can do much.
Cronje ignores the galvanising effects of protest marches generally and this series of marches in particular, to draw in ardent activists, middle-of-the-road progressives and even the totally complacent in a shared campaign.
But it is also critical for citizens to begin to show what we will tolerate or stand for. In the 1980s, progressive South Africans came out in numbers to stand and walk against apartheid, in the streets, on factory floors, at university campuses, at church services. We had a common enemy, apartheid in all its forms.
We need a galvanising movement to begin to set right the wrongs of our country. An anti-corruption campaign is a better way of starting the process than most other issues.
The demographics of Wednesday’s march in Cape Town showed the groundswell of concern across every community in the city, with class, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation and even nationality put aside in a show of utter disgust at the scourge of fraud and corruption.
For any campaign directed at the ballot box, these mobilising moments are crucial.
Right now, in the wake of Volkswagen’s abominable fraud in using secret software to manage emission tests to make diesel engines appear more efficient, Germans are possibly losing their reputation for trustworthy “German engineering”.
The Economist magazine reported last week that, as a result of VW’s actions, the country risks suffering “Sippenhaft – collective punishment, but literally ‘kin liability’”.
I resent being labelled with the evolving tag of the corrupt that South Africans and our kin increasingly are associated with by the rest of the world. If I have to march and agitate against fraud and corruption in all its forms, I will do so willingly. And I have no doubt most South Africans feel the same.
Marching against corruption is not a waste of time. Marching against apartheid certainly was not. – rayh@dispatch.co.za