DONATIONS ARE A CYNICAL DIVERSION

As everyone fixates on the donations to Cyril Ramaphosa’s ANC campaign, the proven cases of state capture are ignored

While the good ship SA struggles to stay afloat, with its promise of a better life for all looking increasingly like a mirage, the nation falls under the spell of one “dead cat” after another.

You have to give it to the dead-cat strategists: they are masters of diversion, adept at spinning sensational or half-baked information to distract us from something else. The question is, what is it they are distracting us from?

My guess is that they are deliberately diverting attention away from the state capture inquiry, and from how the “lost decade” failed to shore up our economy to withstand the current headwinds.

Recently, someone from the

ANC told me that the Bell Pottinger operatives who ignited the racially divisive white monopoly capital (WMC) campaign had been reengaged as consultants for a “state capture fightback”. (Bell Pottinger as a company may be dead, but its strategists certainly are not.)

So why is control of the public narrative, including diversion of attention away from the state capture inquiry, so essential? For a start, it buys time for those implicated. And, where applicable, leaves snouts deeply in the trough.

I find it interesting that the nation is gripped by concern over “potential state capture” arising from the donations to CR17, while the revelations at the Zondo state capture commission now go virtually unnoticed. There seems to be less concern about the real capture that has already happened than about donations to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s campaign.

The German company SAP, for example, is said to have admitted to its participation in state capture; the Trillian-mckinsey-eskom

scam has already been adjudicated; and an inquiry by the Public Relations & Communication Association in the UK found that Bell Pottinger ignited the WMC campaign on behalf of the Gupta family to undermine my state capture investigation as public protector.

The fact that political funding has “capture potential” is common cause. But to imply that funding always goes with capture is not only dishonest, it suggests that all parties and their leaders are captured. As it is, all parties have received funding of some sort.

What we need is disclosure of funding, so patterns that may suggest undue influence can be flagged. The influence of money is not limited to government leaders alone: overseas, sunshine laws — regulating transparency — were triggered by the behaviour of ordinary parliamentarians, to look at the issues they constantly raise and how they vote. We need a wider view of all those who shape our democracy.

Right now our ship is in trouble over poverty, inequality and stunted economic growth. Yet what dominates debate and our public narrative? Are ideas for keeping the ship afloat discussed? Dololo.

Whose agenda is being pushed? Could the interests of parties and individual funders be involved? We don’t know, because we don’t know who is funding whom, and what their interests are — except for the leaks about who donated to the Ramaphosa campaign.

(For the record, no evidence in the public protector’s office, including personal information, leaked during my time. We guarded this carefully, knowing we obtained it by subpoena on the basis of trust and integrity.) Should we ignore the funding shenanigans that may have occurred in the governing party? No — but we shouldn’t be sidetracked from fixing SA either. We need accountability for the state capture that has already been adjudicated as real. And we need a national indaba to discuss what to do about inclusive socioeconomic growth and the roles to be played by the government, business, labour, civil society and others.

In a small way, I’ve been trying to push this as the social justice chair at Stellenbosch University, with colleagues at the Sustainability Institute and others. A three-day summit and conference starts this week. Others, such as the Imbumba and Nelson Mandela foundations, are mobilising resources under the #Trek4mandela initiative, a cause I supported when I climbed Kilimanjaro on August 9. We must appreciate that our nation is in trouble and it will take all of us to get it back on the winning trajectory that Mandela initiated. We must find a way to collectively reconfirm our understanding of the constitutional promise of a country that belongs to all who live in it. The time for distractions is over.

What we need is disclosure of funding, so patterns that may suggest undue influence can be flagged