Professionals must curb graft
Helped by activists in the private and public sectors, collaboration will safeguard the country’s future
AT 25 YEARS of age, our country is a young adult.
A young adult, depending on what happened in their adolescence, might have some residual identity crisis.
The concept of identity crisis is credited to a 20th century development psychologist, Erik Homburger Erikson. His eight-stage theory of psychosocial development explains how humans grow in eight phases, resolving two conflicting ideas at each.
South Africa like a 25-year-old human, tends to battle to resolve the intimacy-versus-isolation conflict.
They toil to develop and maintain successful relationships with others.
Listening to our daily conversations, one cannot help wondering if we are not paying the price for our actions in our previous stage, adolescence. Adolescents negotiate the identity-v-role confusion conflict, answering who they are and what their role in life should be.
Ours is a young democracy, which some among us consider it to have failed in benefiting the majority of citizens. We have one of the world’s best constitutions, but for women, children, members of the LGBTQI sector or the poor – their human rights are merely on paper.
The world envies our reconciliatory transition in 1994, but daily – our black-white, poor-rich conflicts threaten to breach the bounds of human decency.
The SA Human Rights Commission’s Trends Analysis Report last December highlighted health care, food, water and social security among the top five recorded violations of human rights between 2012 and 2017.
This situation requires leaders of integrity to turn things around and ensure human decency.
We should acknowledge those courageous professionals who contributed to the respective judicial commissions such as the Nugent, PIC and Zondo on state capture. Most of these professionals related the difficult conditions they had to ward off – some risking their livelihoods, yet they stood firm with integrity and commendable ethical conduct. This exemplary activist conduct can only embolden more professionals to play their part to stand against wrongdoing.
Listening to EX-SAA chief executive Siza Mzimela at the state capture commission recently was yet another tale in the tapestry of what professionals are subjected to on a regular basis even at executive level.
As she was relating her experience on how the then Minister of Public
Enterprises Malusi Gigaba allowed the Guptas to run roughshod with an attempt to replace the national carrier’s flight to Mumbai with that of Jet airways – I couldn’t help but feel my heart-wrenching for the many professionals who have to deal with unethical and corrupt requests from the so-called leaders.
The weakening of our moral fabric by grand-scale corruption in state-owned corporations stifles basic social services. Corruption in public procurement siphons off plenty funds – intended to educate children, buy basic medical supplies for clinics and hospitals, pay for a robust police force to protect our neighbourhoods or deliver electricity for better living.
All South Africans, especially professionals, must step forward to create a better second quarter of a century for our country. Otherwise, by the time we get to stage 8 of our development, the integrity-v-despair à la Erikson – we will be wondering what could have, should have been, instead of basking in our integrity – one we can still salvage if we all act in concert as a nation from today.
With the sixth administration now settled in office marking the new dawn, it gives us a chance to correct the missteps from our adolescence stage and regain our balance during our young adulthood, still; ie before we hit our 40s and enter the next stage, which is about generativity-v-stagnation.
Professionals ought to take charge and lend their weight to our recovery and reawakening. If South Africa can sustain the current trajectory – in spite of the crisis of stagnant economic growth, unemployment and economic inequality – our future can only be one to want to imagine and look forward to. Aided by activist professionals in both the public and the private sector with intentional graft fighting efforts – this kind of collaboration is sure to safeguard our country’s future.
Professional bodies have to play their part in supporting whistle-blowing and all instruments that promote weeding unethical conduct in corporations.
They must be at the forefront of protecting the individual whistle-blowers so as to encourage more professionals to be emboldened to stand and speak against wrongdoing.
Of course news of the Steinhoff claim to claw back over a billion rand from its ex-chief executive and EX-CFO Markus Jooste and Ben la Grange respectively is giving me hope in the mooted consequence management against the rogue professionals.
Once all the monies have been recovered, I want to see these two in orange overalls languishing in prison.
Fortunately, the new National Director of Public Prosecutions, Shamila Batohi, is cracking the whip early in her first year in office to prosecute those implicated in the judicial commissions of inquiry. Surely these kinds of actions will receive a favourable look from ratings agencies and our attractiveness to the right kind of investors should boost economic growth that can produce jobs.
We have it in us to change things for the better as we charge on towards the Africa we want. Most importantly, as professionals we must play our part in fighting corruption to protect the citizens and help South Africa Inc to be competitive globally.