SA’s corruption: What is to be done?

There’s been a lot of lament about South Africa’s loss of its moral focus. Our politics are that of the stomach. Murder, even among members of the ruling party, is said to be becoming a norm in settling scores of political rivalry. Opposition parties also don’t always conduct themselves with expected probity, transparency and accountability.

Year by year the auditor-general complains about the falling standards in our public service. Incompetence leads to the easy flaunting of the regulatory machinery which is in place to prevent corruption. Many people enter public service to gain a foothold from which to provide business opportunities for their family and friends. It’s supply and chain management at its worst.

Business is as corrupt as government, if not worse. It pays government in every sphere to disregard the voice of the majority. We’ve seen it in the e-tolls in Gauteng and the Chapman’s Peak toll plaza building in Cape Town.

Construction, mining, food and bank industries have formed themselves into corrupt cartels of old boys clubs. And they operate with impunity. Financial scandals have become the norm.

Some blame the apartheid system for the state of our affairs; others point to the corruption within the ruling party as a source and end of everything.

There are those who say that the roots of our socio-economic evils took hold when the African National Congress went to bed with white capital, abandoning its social democracy for the neoliberal kind.

There’s even talk about the lack of “sense of sacrifice” in politics and public service today.

It might be true that the waning influence of theology in our socio-economic endeavours was brought about by the colossal shift in our philosophical consciousness.

This might be the result of the ANC’s exile politics, when it moved away from the Christian philosophy of Chief Albert Luthuli’s time to the Marxist, materialist and atheist consciousness of the Soviet Union under the intellectual influence of the SACP.

And when these exiles formed the government in 1994, the political Marxist materialism fused with the economic materialism of the global capitalist economy—to the detriment of the poor.

In light of this, and especially in this month of the ecumenical anti-corruption campaign EXPOSE!, we must ask: what is to be done?

We’ve been asking this question ever since Thabo Mbeki’s second term when it was clear our centre was not holding. But we were overtaken by events with the coming of the prince of Nkandla.

Initially Jacob Zuma was dismissed as a passing political opportunist who would quickly be found out of his depth. Instead he has brought us and our politics, to his level of anarchical, self-help opportunistic politics that compels participants to be part of Rousseau’s stag hunt (everyone for himself and the devil take the hindmost). With that, the ANC irrevocably changed.

Virtue — as defined by Christian morality, as integrity, charity, humility, knowledge, and so on—flew out of our political windows. Conventional ethics were set aside for expediency—“reasons of state”, in Machiavellian language. Power and self-interest took the centre stage.

Our prince of Nkandla has followed the Machiavellian counsel very well, using deception as a central element of his statecraft; masking his true intentions, remaining faithful to pledges only so long as they are in his interest.

He knows others will be false to him, unless he ensures that their falsehoods do not pay. So he makes sure not to surround himself with powerful subordinates; eliminates victorious generals and keeps nobles weak and divided.

He employs both cruelty and kindness, as the situation warrants. He lets others do the dirty work, and then gains favour when he cuts their heads off. When doling out benefits, he does so gradually to those with skeletons in their cupboards, so he can keep them on a tight leash.

Yes, our prince has followed Machiavelli’s counsel to the letter.

Naturally the Church is on a collision course with this sort of amoral politics. To the Church, the public and private worlds are interconnected by the compass of the individual moral codes of conduct that promote the good for the collective, not just the needs of the individual and the connected elite.

There’s nothing new to this; throughout history the Church frequently has clashed with what politicians promote as the security of “a great and glorious state” by unequivocally insisting on Christian values and principles dedicated to the creation of dignity for all, especially the poor for whom she exercises her preferential option.

But things are tricky in our country because the political elite oppresses the poor in the name of the poor. This is fed by the traditional enemies of the poor who have learned to speak the Orwellian “doublespeak” of the ruling party, and so are protected by it. This also explains the escalation of state-sponsored violence against the poor.

What is to be done then, since, in Chinua Achebe’s language, we are clearly not yet at ease?