To tenderpreuners: time of reckoning is nigh
It seems the time of reckoning for the massive corruption that has hobbled South Africa’s economy is nigh. Two parts of the three-part report by the judicial commission investigating allegations of state capture under former president Jacob Zuma have now been published. The third is due at the end of the month.
“State capture” has become the South African term for what is elsewhere called kleptocracy.
First, the Gupta family – friends of Zuma who, the commission says, orchestrated massive corruption and the capture of the South African state – were rumbled by events that caught them offguard. They had not, for example, anticipated that their actions in South Africa would result in a media uproar and political backlash. The media’s role in the ultimate demise is recognised in this latest report. These exposes eventually saw the Gupta’s fleeing to the United Arab Emirates in 2016.
They also never anticipated that South African banks would close down all their corporate and personal accounts.
These developments indicate that South Africa’s institutional safeguards, civil society, NGOS and democratic culture are more robust than those of some other countries.
The Guptas were also rumbled because they failed to take note of the fact that the most successful parasites never harm their hosts. That’s so they enjoy a lifelong nurturing host environment. The scale of their rapaciousness meant that, within just a few years, the institutions they leeched were in a state of collapse. These included Transnet, SAA, Eskom and Denel.
The specifics of this part of the Zondo report are that procurement and related crimes cost Transnet R41-billion, which amounts to 72% of all contracts tainted by corruption.
These losses mounted following successive decisions that were driven by avarice and corruption. One example was the decision over a new chief executive for Transnet. When Barbara Hogan, then a cabinet minister in charge of the state transport company, resisted Zuma’s demands on who to appoint as chief executives, he fired her from the cabinet. The commission found that the man Zuma preferred, Siyabonga Gama, should be prosecuted for transactions involving the Guptas, amounting to billions of rand.
In the immortal words of one of Nigeria’s heroes against corruption, its former finance minister and current World Trade Organisation president, Ngozi Okonjo-iweala: “When you fight corruption, corruption fights back.” Corruption is indeed fighting back. As a result, it has become one major dimension of the factionalism now wracking the ruling ANC.
It is evidenced by pseudo-populist attacks on “white monopoly capital”, the “Stellenbosch mafia”, and on President Cyril Ramaphosa.
In US slang, this is not grassroots rhetoric but an Astroturf campaign, referring to a campaign pretending to be populist, but actually waged by a business clique of tenderers and its political clients.
They richly deserve the South African Communist Party witticism denouncing “tenderpreneurs” – businesspeople who enrich themselves through government tenders, often dubiously.
One of Zondo’s recommendations is that in future, cabinet ministers should not have unlimited power to appoint their cronies as chairs or board members to parastatals. Instead, all candidates for the board of state-owned enterprises should be subject to the background checks and procedures akin to those of the Judicial Service Commission. In turn, the board members, not the minister, should elect their chairs and CEOS.
Zondo also points out that it is not yet a crime in itself to abuse public power for a politician’s private interest. This should be criminalised across the board, from the president down to the lowest official.
Finally, the success or failure of the report will be what consequences will result from it for the criminals, such as prosecutions, and reclaiming illegal and illicit profits from tenderers.