Shoddy move at SABC makes a mockery of accountability
WHEN the drafters of South Africa’s constitution in the early 1990s crafted the checks and balances designed to rein in executive power, they surely could not have imagined that, within 20 years, these restraints would be so roundly and contemptuously ignored by the scoundrels who rule over us.
Perhaps they had in mind a more civic-minded political class, not the venal clowns the ANC favours for high office.
We should not be surprised, though, by the ANC’s liking for total power. It has never been able to shake off the totalitarian instincts at the heart of all revolutionary movements, evident from its fondness for authoritarian friends, especially China, where Communist Party diktat is the law of the land — and the envy of Luthuli House.
The ANC government is finding it increasingly difficult to reconcile its lust for power with the demands of a constitution based on the ideals of accountability to citizens and institutions. And how can you be accountable if there is always somebody else to blame?
Why, even the starving pigs on National Council of Provinces chairwoman Thandi Modise’s farm were everyone’s fault but hers. Amid the images of dead and rotting pigs, another chapter of Animal
Farm was playing itself out at the headquarters of the SABC, where Communications Minister Faith Muthambi was having the public broadcaster’s matric-less acting chief operating officer, Hlaudi Motsoeneng, enthroned.
In doing so, the report of public protector Thuli Madonsela on widespread misgovernance at the SABC was blatantly ignored, leading to claims that, once again, accountability was being flouted.
Of course, the SABC bosses need look no further than the Union Buildings, where the saga of the “spy tapes’’ is an enduring testament to the disregard shown in the highest office of the land for our institutions and, indeed, our courts.
Perhaps, in having crafted checks and balances in our constitution, it was naive to expect that politicians, especially when in power, would willingly submit to their power being reined in.
Like the Nats before them, the ANC is digging its own grave in thinking it can govern as if it, and it alone, is the law of the land.
Enforcing the constitution was never going to be an easy task. Rather, it is a daily struggle against those who disregard it — a battle fought in the media, in the courts and by those who still have the backbone to say no. Our rulers will never gladly submit, but will themselves use that same constitution against the ruled. And when that fails, there could be further resort to unconstitutional methods to achieve those aims. Such are the temptations of power, and the duty that falls to all in South Africa is to remind those in high places that they serve at our pleasure.