We have a chance to stop the rot — please do your bit
In medicine, according to Roger Fisher, there is a traditional call that strikes a balance between duty and opportunity, that invites us to lend a hand with all the skill and compassion we can muster: “Is there a doctor in the house?”
So is the call today, to work together to combat corruption and promote open government in our constitutional democracy: “Is there a human-rights activist in the community?”
We all know rampant corruption cannot go on unchallenged.
Because of corruption and state capture, our country faces political and socioeconomic threats as great as any I have seen in my lifetime.
Our liberation movements and political parties representing us in legislative bodies are in peril of being branded as a generation as divided, self-indulgent and indifferent to the nation’s needs to realise the priority goals of a developmental state.
On Saturday last week, President Cyril Ramaphosa submitted a 76-page document to parliament outlining the cabinet’s response to the recommendations of the Zondo Commission on state capture.
The much-awaited response to parliament comes six years to the month since former public protector Thuli Madonsela released her state of capture report, which led to the establishment of the Zondo Commission.
“Through the implementation of the actions contained in this report, we can start a new chapter and a new leaf in our struggle against corruption. No matter the challenges, we will walk this path together,” said Ramaphosa.
Please, fellow compatriots, when you contribute to implementing the recommendations, put the country first.
Every one of us went into the active citizenry spaces because we wanted to make SA more prosperous and secure, to make life better for our fellow citizens.
Yet, over the past years, we have appeared incompetent, tin-eared and obsessed with our individual political parties’ prospects at the very time millions of households are worried sick about how to meet their needs to overcome poverty, unemployment and inequality.
Even those lucky enough to have a decent income and a secure shelter worry about those who do not.
After all, they include our relatives, children and grandchildren, who have increasingly become our financial and social responsibility.
This has been amplified by the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and frequent droughts and floods caused by climate change.
Every time political parties in legislative bodies talk publicly about how this or that step will help us to stave off corruption, they add to the resentment and rage among growing numbers of the public that politicians are no longer thinking first about the national interest in our fight to combat corruption.
Consider the prevailing political environment that is supposed to be fertile ground for the Ramaphosa administration to implement anti-corruption measures in the commission’s recommendations speedily.
Yet, Ramaphosa’s address last Sunday followed a torrid weekend in which graftplagued Eskom implemented a new wave of load-shedding.
He endured fresh attacks from his predecessors, Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma.
Why didn’t the former presidents speak directly to Ramaphosa and offer constructive suggestions for the challenges ahead?
Focusing on what is right for the country in the next phase of implementing the commission’s recommendations is the right approach morally and the best way to stem and reverse the collapse in electoral support for the liberation movement leaders across political parties.
They carry the historical mandate of restoring moral regeneration in our society, including the batho pele principles in government.
So, let me urge you to do what you can to ensure speedy and successful implementation of the commission’s recommendations and more.
Let us also join hands to ensure our utterances and actions will be the right move for our country governed by democratically elected leaders.
Ramaphosa outlined his detailed response to the findings and almost 400 recommendations the inquiry chair filed four months ago, saying the Investigative Directorate, the special unit in the NPA initially established in April 2019 for a tenure of five years, will be made permanent to focus on investigating and prosecuting corruption cases.
He said the directorate had to date enrolled 26 cases, with 89 investigations under way, while 165 suspects had appeared in court for offences linked to state capture.
Reflecting on the deleterious legacy of the state capture era, the president said he was deeply concerned by the depths to which SA would be dragged by greed, selfishness and abuse of power.
“Few people could have imagined that from among the leadership of our public institutions, from within our business circles, from among our public representatives and public servants would emerge a network of criminal intent,” he said.
Ramaphosa said he had sent the report to the ANC, auditor-general, City of Johannesburg, Hawks, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal and North West provincial governments, Magistrates Commission, National Prosecuting Authority, Eskom, Denel, SAA, Airports Company SA, SABC, SA Revenue Service, State Security Agency, Transnet and Prasa.
However committed our president and government institutions may be to combating corruption, the measures they implement will work only if the public has sufficient trust in their ability to produce tangible results and go after the leading players in the corruption web.
In the past months since the release of the first volume of the Zondo Commission reports, I have lost count of the number of people, many lifelong anti-corruption and open government activists, who have stopped me in the street, in the seminar rooms, in the gym and the supermarket, to express despair at the state of the country and disbelief, mingled with contempt, at what has happened to our democracy in the successive ANC administrations.
This week onwards, we have a chance to stop the rot in targeted and deliberate actions.
For the sake of our country, please do your bit.
When contributing to implementing the recommendations of the Zondo Commission on state capture we must put the country — not politicians or their parties first, writes Nkosikhulule Nyembezi —