Thieves have no right to govern, says Madonsela
Voters must throw out state officials who steal
FORMER public protector Thuli Madonsela has warned South Africans to avoid re-electing people to public office who have stolen from the poor and vulnerable.
Delivering the Unisa 2018 Founders Lecture on Ethics in Democracy in Pretoria on Thursday, Madonsela said: “We should stop a Stockholm syndrome in which a person who has abused us over a period is returned to office because we like him.”
She added that it was about time individuals who wanted to hold public office were given a background check.
“We need to check their past. We need to find out if they ever improve the living conditions of people before occupying public office,” she said.
She told her audience that in Athens, public representatives who ignored their mandates were removed from office.
“They did not have to commit theft before being removed. If residents feel you have failed to deliver on your mandate, they immediately petition for your arrest or removal from office,” Madonsela said.
She urged the electorate to adopt the same attitude ahead of the 2019 poll. Madonsela, while not mentioning former president Jacob Zuma by name, reiterated her criticism of responses he gave during investigations into the Nkandla scandal.
Madonsela said recently she came across local leaders, who when asked to account on allegations of wrongdoing against them would say: “I have committed no crime therefore I have a right to govern.”
“That was my question in Nkandla. That was my question in Midvaal. In Midvaal, a person owes R5 000 but his property worth more than R500 000 is taken away from him. The person who took the property away then sells it to his partner, who then sells the same property for a fortune in the open market,” Madonsela said.
She likened US President Donald Trump’s allegations that the South African government of “was expropriating land without compensation” and killing white farmers as part of a “dead cat strategy”.
Trump’s tweet was an attempt to divert the attention of the world away from his country’s internal problems.
She, however, acknowledged that the issue of land was not properly “curated in South Africa, saying the country needed to look into a better solution to the land dispute”.