INSIGHT

Tim Cohen

THE dropping of charges against ANC president Jacob Zuma is truly an event of historic proportions. For one thing, it demarcates the moment the South African dream ended. All those lofty ideals; all those claims on history; all those proud notions of the triumph of the human spirit over darkness … they are all now gone.

The dream of a moral State – long the target of cynics, long championed by idealists – is now defunct.

In truth, it disappeared a long time ago, but now it is plain for all the world to see, and it cannot be denied.

For better or for worse, we are now ordinary participants of the global body politic. In some ways, this is not such a terrible thing. Instead of claiming special gifts, we are frantically scrabbling in the grease and the grime under the bonnet of our jalopy, desperately trying to get it back on the road again just like everybody else.

We can claim no special place, no special rights, no special privileges. We are no longer miracle workers, just another grubby participant in the carnival of global politics, subject to base desires, enduring of haughty leaders, ever hopeful of finding just one decent person to carry our banner.

Never before has the true nature of the South African State been so obvious, so plainly laid open to public view and so revealing for what it is. Much as we pretend otherwise, the hard truth is we live in a quasi-totalitarian State. And the rules that apply to single-party dominant States apply to us, too, though we pretend they don’t.

Single-party dominant States share characteristics with single-person dominant States, otherwise known as dictatorships.

Rule number one is that one set of laws applies to ordinary people and another to higher echelons of the political class or the dictator himself. I think this is part of the reason why ordinary people, and particularly business, cling to parties in single-party dominant governments, even though they know in their hearts what they are doing is wrong. They do it because the proposition made to them is so obvious and plain: work for us and the set of laws applicable to us will apply to you, too. Otherwise, you are subject to the laws applicable to, well, the subjects.

No matter how much Zuma’s devoted supporters claim otherwise, fair-minded independents here and abroad will see the National Prosecuting Authority’s decision as capitulation.

Since the State opened its coffers to Zuma and his legal team, the option of gaming the system has always been available to him and any other public servant charged with wrongdoing.

Zuma lost 90 percent of the legal issues brought against him, but as he has had no limit on how many he could bring, and what he spent, the NPA was faced with Hobson’s choice. Either it fought this case – which would see it constantly in court trying to sidestep yet another vital point of law brought with the accused “only defending his rights” – and no other. Or it sacrificed this case and tried to regain shattered credibility elsewhere.

The question that confronts the theoretical supporters of justice in South Africa is how precisely they intend re-establishing their credibility. What I would like to see is a public commitment, not just to the notion of being anti-corruption but to ending at least these three forms of corruption.

First, the ANC must commit itself to ending the practice of fund-raising through granting so-called BEE stakes to companies it controls, which then participate in public projects. Of all the thousands of little acts of corruption we’ve seen, this has to be one of the most insidious. It degrades BEE, it makes a mockery of the tender process, and it starts a terrible precedent. If the ANC as national government is allowed to grant itself tenders in public projects, then any other party in control of a municipality, for example, can do the same.

It’s fascinating how little outrage there has been at the news that ANC fund-raising company Chancellor House owns a 25 percent stake in Hitachi Power Africa, part of a consortium awarded contracts to supply boilers to Eskom’s two new coal-fired power stations. It makes Zuma’s little supposed indiscretions seem embarrassingly pathetic. The stake is worth about R5.8billion, and the ANC promised to “look into it” a year ago. Oddly, nothing has happened since then.

Second, the ANC must stop the practice of letting people it appoints to regulatory positions then enter the industry they have just supposedly been regulating.

I was told recently by a very informed person that the Department of Mineral and Energy Affairs has been playing a role in deciding which BEE partners applicants for mineral rights should choose. Not surprisingly, a whole bunch of former employees of the department strangely started appearing as BEE partners of mining companies. This is not a form of corruption peculiar to us; the latest financial crisis is partly the consequence of market regulators taking positions in the banks they were previously trying to regulate. But its consequences are the same.

Third, the ANC must set a limit on how much of taxpayers’ money it is prepared to spend on allowing its members to “defend their rights”. Personally, I can’t understand why public servants should constitute a special case. Presumably, lots of innocent people are criminally charged and need legal assistance, some of which is provided, inadequately no doubt, but it does exist. Why should public servants have the right to make additional claims on the taxpayers’ purse to “defend their rights”?

More than anything else, this is why we have ended up in this mess. It’s crucial that public servants should fear not only being found guilty of corruption but also being charged with corruption.

None of this should be impossible for the ANC to implement, partly because by allowing it they are tacitly allowing other parties to engage in the same practice. This is where we differ from dictatorships, and it’s this loophole in the single-party dominant system that opposition parties should grasp.

Ultimately, what we want to see, more than one politician facing charges, is an ethic of honesty permeating the political system from top to bottom.

Is that too much to ask?

Tim Cohen is a freelance journalist