3 April 2009
By their very nature, general elections represent an end and a beginning: the end of one term and the beginning of another; and as opposing politicians do battle against each other, the election, and the changes which this could represent, almost demands that political commentators, editorial writers and columnists offer their audiences assessments of the term that is ending, and their expectations, hopes and fears for the term about to begin. And this all happens in a very feverish atmosphere.
It is against this background that I am reproducing Max Du Preez's column from the Argus newspaper of 19 March 2009. He damns the ANC government - some will say he is over harsh. But many will agree with his sentiments. Of particular relevance, however, is that these are Max Du Preez's views. Max was probably the National Party governments' most trenchant critic – especially being an Afrikaner. In fact, the government of PW Botha tried their damnest to frustrate him. He is therefore a significant commentator on current affairs with considerable influence, both domestically and internationally.
I personally don't accept the overall message of this particular column. Very simply, South Africa and its people are much bigger and more enduring than the ANC. But I wanted somebody in the ANC to respond specifically to Max's column and am delighted to publish Jeremy Cronin's contribution. Most South Africans know who Jeremy is. But for the benefit of our many international readers - Jeremy Cronin is a Member of Parliament, ANC National Executive Council member and Deputy General Secretary of the South African Communist Party. He happens also to be a poet of some note.
“ANC apparatchiks ‘didn’t struggle to be poor’ – by Max du Preez
I am going to say something today that I was so sure for so long I would never say; something that I told many an audience over more than a decade would never happen: corruption has become systemic, has become a part of our culture in South Africa.
We have now become like Angola and Nigeria. Bribery, theft of public money, tender fraud and general racketeering are no longer aberrations condemned by society, they’re accepted as normal.
What I thought was an almost understandable human weakness of “its now our turn”, a sense of entitlement after the end of the struggle against apartheid, has moved on to become an integral part of how our state and our ruling party operate.
This is why pollsters tell us a sizeable chunk of ANC supporters believe the allegations of criminal behaviour against their leader, Jacob Zuma, may well be true, yet they will still vote for him.
This is why I won’t be surprised if the reports that all charges against Zuma will be dropped, eventually prove to be true.
What the hell, why not appoint Tony Yengeni Minister of Finance?
It was when I was told that Parliament spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayers’ rands to close the door on the Travelgate scandal and that 60 MP’s got away with stealing from their voters that it finally dawned on me that we had moved beyond a tipping point with corruption.
It meant that there is now no possibility left of claiming back the millions lost through the dishonesty of the MPs and travel agents. It means the ANC is condoning the fact that members voted into Parliament by the citizens steal from Parliament without any sanction.
Yes, I know, I was naïve.
I was naïve, as white racists told me thousands of times, to believe the liberation movement would have higher ethical standards than the evil apartheid regimes of Verwoerd, Vorster and Botha.
The ANC apparatchiks clearly didn’t “struggle to be poor”.
Perhaps it is true that they fought for power, perhaps even freedom, but certainly not for a decent and moral democracy.
Of course, the signs have been there for a very long time.
But suddenly the evidence that the ANC has the cancer of corruption growing in its very heart has become overwhelming.
Like putting someone found guilty of fraud and unlikely to withstand a legal challenge to her candidature at number five on the electoral list – someone who had earlier been convicted of the kidnapping of a young boy who died a horror death shortly afterwards. Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.
Like tasking another fraudster who is not allowed to take up a seat in Parliament, Tony Yengeni, to lead the ANC’s election campaign in the Western Cape.
Like refusing, in the face of over-whelming suspicion of possible dirty dealings, to order a review of the release on medical parole of the man found guilty of bribing the leader of the ANC.
Virtually every week now a new scandal breaks of senior ANC personnel or top bureaucrats committing fraud or theft or bribery or nepotism.
ANC leaders condemn corruption in public statements, but few crooks in the party ever suffer any consequences.
And all this happens in the dark shadow cast by the massive and massively corrupt arms procurement deal which the government and the ANC refuse to have investigated properly.
Andrew Feinstein, a former ANC MP and member of Scopa, wrote a damning book about the arms deal scandal with first-hand evidence of gross wrong-doing.
But he might as well not have bothered – it had no effect.
We hear former president Thabo Mbeki had meetings with French arms traders, but he simply can’t remember.
We hear he received $22 million from the arms dealers and gave most of it to the ANC’s election fund, but no one investigates that any further. Just like Oilgate.
One of the top men in the South African Communist Party stole a paper bag with R500 000 in cash in it that was donated to the party, but nobody gets prosecuted.
We make a big hullabaloo out of ANC spokesman Carl Niehaus’s dishonest behaviour, but let’s be honest: his only real sin was that he got caught.
We’re in trouble, we really are.”
“The danger in delusions of grandeur – by Jeremy Cronin
I generally enjoy Max du Preez’s feisty columns. They are not always accurate, but they are never boring. However, there is also a predictable rhythm about them. Over the years, du Preez has tracked between bubbly euphoria and abject despair. Not infrequently, these zigzags occur, back and forth, between one week and the next (which is why, I guess, his column is called “Maximum Headroom” – he needs it).
If this manic behaviour were confined to a handful of media commentators, we could put it down to the competitive demands of weekly journalism, the need to say something truly big every week. But du Preez’s columns are symptomatic in other ways. They reflect something about our national psyche.
The popular (and global) portrayal of post-apartheid SA, as welcome as it might have been, was always over-cooked - the “South African miracle”, “the rainbow nation”, “the winning nation”. This provoked all manner of hubris on our part. Yes, of course, the negotiated transition to democracy was an immense and collective South African achievement, but much remained (and still remains) to be done. In the mid-1990s, a half-dozen Western leaders (Francois Mitterrand, among them), in trouble with their domestic electorates, flew out for a photo-opportunity with our global icon, Nelson Mandela. Nothing wrong with that, but again we were encouraged to believe that behind the photo-opportunity lay an eager avalanche of Marshall Aid.
After Mandela, Thabo Mbeki continued to nurture elevated expectations of being able “to punch above our weight”. He envisaged SA leading an imminent African Renaissance.
The danger in delusions of grandeur is that, when reality bumps into your script, you are liable to move into denialism (about AIDS or Zimbabwe), or blame some improbable conspiracy (“it’s the West”, or the “ultra-left”), or you plunge into an overwrought and generalising post-colonial despair (“we are just like the rest of Africa”).
Which brings me specifically to Max du Preez’s recent column. It is a litany of woes ostensibly showing that the ANC and its support base are thoroughly venal, “we have now become like Angola and Nigeria”. (Why are these the negative references and not, say, Enron, WorldCom, Arthur Andersen, or, in the light of recent scandals, Wall Street itself?)
Du Preez’s list of examples of supposed ANC moral laxity is a mixture of part truth and plain error. On a minor note, Tony Yengeni is not leading the ANC’s Western Cape election campaign. “One of the top men in the SACP” (a reference to Blade Nzimande) stole a paper bag with R500,000 in cash” we are told. In reality, it was an accusation (two black plastic bags, by the way) made by a fraudster currently behind bars. Nzimande voluntarily opened personal and family accounts to the police. Absolutely no evidence was found for this libellous accusation. But who cares? After all, Nzimande looks like he could be Angolan.
Space permitting, there’s more in detail that might be said about du Preez’s other allegations. But, yes, there are challenges we confront in regard to corruption. These challenges are within the ruling party and indeed in other sectors too – as recent excellent work done by our Competitions Commission into big corporates has unveiled.
The ANC, like SA at large, is not an out-of-this-world model of perfection. But nor are we on the brink of a ground zero dystopia. The real story of our times is to be found, not in some fictional paper bag, but in the relative durability of our economy and democratic institutions. In the recent period, we have seen the recall of a serving president without the remotest hint of “civil war” (a ludicrous prediction made at the time by Archbishop Tutu), a noisy but typical break-away from a ruling party in power now for 15 years, and a robust but peaceful electoral campaign. Our economy is doing better than most in the midst of the current bleak global situation. We are a pretty average country, with our strengths and weaknesses. Let’s honestly admit to both…and then let’s try to avoid hyperbolic mood-swings.”
Dr Denis Worrall
Email: kamreyac@omegainvest.co.za for all enquiries
www.omegainvest.co.za
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