The political cash-in

by Editor · Published August 19, 2009 · Updated March 6, 2012

Addressing a memorial service for two Catholic anti-apartheid activists in Cape Town recently, Anglican Archbishop-emeritus Desmond Tutu asked what Robbie Waterwitch and Coline Williams had died for in 1989: �So some of us can have three motor cars?�

The question is timely. The idealism that informed the struggle against apartheid has made way for often ignominious and unjust self-aggrandisement by some of those who once bravely fought for justice. An idea has taken hold that the material benefits they now enjoy represent a fair compensation for the sacrifices they made in the struggle.

Such behaviour is profoundly disrespectful of millions of impoverished South Africans. Those who observe service delivery protests from the comforts of their double-storey houses and luxury sedans should not be surprised at the virulence of these protests. They are supposed to serve the poor, not taunt them by their wealth.

The reward for the activists� distress during the struggle, so often heroically borne, was the elimination of the evil apart-heid system, not the accumulation of wealth. Likewise, it is for leading South Africa towards democracy that the ruling African National Congress continues to be rewarded with the electorate�s confidence, not for its performance in government (much as the Zuma government tries to distance itself from the Mbeki government, both were given their mandate by the ANC).

Not all who represent the ANC-led alliance are hostage to the hunger for the accumulation of personal wealth by all available means. Many good people are serving with sincerity in government and leadership positions to serve and improve South Africa.

Yet there are not a few who seem to regard government as their cash cow, particularly by way of tenders that don�t invariably meet the highest ethical standards and by lucrative �deployments�. Black Economic Empowerment has not alleviated poverty, and there is little prospect that the trickle-down economics that provide a moral justification for BEE ever will.

A few high-fliers have gone as far as to claim that they did not enter the struggle to emerge from it without material reward. Such people have excluded themselves from any moral claim to be in government, whose task it is to serve the country and its people.

Little discernible action has been taken by the ANC to correct such shameful attitudes, even as some of its leaders have publicly deplored them. Indeed, ethically questionable conduct often is defended or only grudgingly censured. Corruption, even direct theft from taxpayers, is not always punished. Few of those parliamentarians involved in the Travelgate scandal have lost their elevated status because of it. And the arms deal, source of allegations of extravagant corruption, is yet to be investigated.

It is not healthy for the democracy for which the ANC and other organisations so valiantly fought that the party has become a virtual oligarchy, seeing itself and the state as synonymous, much as the National Party did in the dark days of apartheid.

It is a threat to democracy when the ANC insists, even takes it for granted, that those occupying leadership positions in the agencies of the state � such as the judiciary, police, army, reserve bank or national broadcaster � should be members of the ANC, preferably loyal to a particular faction.

The party�s relentless hegemony compromises these agencies� independence, as their office holders may well hold themselves accountable to and potentially be held accountable by the ANC�s leadership. Moreover, it communicates the toxic notion that in order to attain top positions, one must be a card-carrying member of the ruling party.

This and the mercenary greed of some of its members, the ANC must surely know, is not transformation, but exploitation.