Much attention has been paid to reports of corruption in the government and state-owned enterprises and so-called phenomenon of “state capture”.
A new phase in the public debate has been fuelled by a report of the SA Council of Churches, by hearings of the parliamentary committee on public enterprises and by the publication of a study by the State Capacity Research Project.
The SACC announced the findings of its “Unburdening Panel” on May 18. It created this process in April 2016 as a safe space and “facility” for persons who wished to relieve themselves of a burden caused by being pressured to perform a corrupt act or where they had witnessed such an act.
The SACC emphasised this was intended as a pastoral process not an investigation. It created this “listening facility” as a result of the ANC’s unwillingness to deal with recent revelations on state corruption.
Introducing the report the SACC said: “Today we are ... seized with anchoring democracy, as we have come to recognise that South Africa may just be a few inches from ... a Mafia state, from which there may be no return – a recipe for a failed state.”
It now seems the problem is far greater than corruption, but is organised chaos. We have come to learn that what appears to be chaos and instability in government may well be a systemic design. A careful analysis makes the case for inappropriate control of state systems through a power-elite pivoted around the President that is systematically siphoning state assets. They do this by:
- Securing control over state wealth through the capture of state-owned companies by chronically weakening their governance and operational structures;
- Securing control over the public service by weeding out skilled professionals;
- Securing access to rent-seeking opportunities by shaking down regulations to their advantage, and to the disadvantage of South Africans;
- Securing control over the country’s fiscal sovereignty;
- Securing control over strategic procurement opportunities by intentionally weakening key technical institutions and formal executive processes;
- Securing a loyal intelligence and security apparatus; and
- Securing parallel governance and decision-making structures that undermine the executive.
What we see persuades us that the present government has lost moral legitimacy. The question this has raised is in the constitutional dimension. Does the conduct of the government render it to have violated its constitutional mandate? That is for lawyers to explore further.
We urge the ANC to examine itself and mend the ways of government before we reach the point of no return – for this has implications for the ANC in government, for its leadership and members. We appeal to civil servants in government to note that whereas governments come and go with elections, civil servants are part of the permanent state system of the citizenry, and the instrumentation of the public good envisioned in our constitutional dispensation.
Moving on to the parliamentary committee meeting on public enterprises urgently and unanimously called by committee members in an attempt to obtain clarity on recent events at Eskom, especially the reappointment of CEO, Brian Molefe. The former Minister of Finance, Pravin Gordhan, now an MP and member of this committee, put it to the Minister of Public Enterprises and chairman of the board as follows: “The public is increasingly aware that you are abusing state property and state resources, that you are part of, wittingly or unwittingly (and in some cases there is enough evidence to say wittingly), a conspiracy to capture Eskom for the benefit of the few. That’s the reality, let’s not play around with technical questions.”
The public is worried that we are reaching a stage in managing governance where a significant number of people in the bureaucracy and elsewhere, and on boards, are taking the view “I don’t care, I don’t care if you know what I do, I don’t care if you know that public resources are going elsewhere, I don’t care how many reports the public protector or anybody else provides, because I am protected”.
The chair stated at the end of the hearing that the committee viewed the reappointment of Molefe as illegal.
It is interesting that the Minister and Eskom’s chair received no support whatever from any ANC MP on the committee.
The State Capacity Research Project published its study “Betrayal of the Promise: How SA is being Stolen” on Thurday. It made the following findings: “Until recently, the decomposition of state institutions has been blamed on corruption, but we must now recognise the problem goes well beyond this. Corruption normally refers to a condition where public officials pursue private ends using public means. While corruption is widespread at all levels and is undermining development, state capture is a far greater, systemic threat. It is akin to a silent coup and must be understood as a political project given a cover of legitimacy by the vision of radical economic transformation.
“The March 2017 Cabinet reshuffle was confirmation of this silent coup; it was the first Cabinet reshuffle that took place without the full prior support of the governing party. This moves the relationship between the constitutional state and the shadow state that emerged after the ANC’s Polokwane conference in 2007 into a new phase. The reappointment of Molefe as Eskom’s CEO a few weeks later in defiance of the ANC confirms this trend.”
This raises the question of whether there is a strategic centre of sorts. In general, the answer is no. Nor is there one single powerful network that overrides all others. But there is evidence that Zuma tends to govern via a set of “kitchen cabinets” – small informal groups convened on an as-needed basis. They can also be shell structures activated when needed. As will be demonstrated, they have been known to be drawn from the state security establishment, Gupta networks, the SOE sector, sub-groups of Cabinet ministers and deputy ministers, family networks, international networks (eg, Angola, Russian intelligence), key business groups, the ANC (in particular the Premier League and Free State Premier Ace Magashule), and selected loyalists in the public service (usually loyal director-generals).
The study goes on to note that the evolution in recent decades of rent management systems in neo-patrimonial regimes around the world has taken many forms. In summary, they can be characterised within a spectrum ranging from centralised/coordinated to chaotic.
The SA rent-seeking system is a kind of hybrid, partly because of Zuma’s personally vulnerable position due to outstanding and unresolved charges against him, the Constitutional Court finding on Nkandla and his embeddedness within a well-structured constitutional order.
He aspires to be like Russian President Vladimir Putin or Angola’s Eduardo dos Santos, but is entangled by constitutional state requirements he cannot dispense with (like reporting to parliament and subordination – at least for now – to the Constitutional Court) and competitive dynamics within the shadow state that the Gupta networks do not always control (witness the Prasa debacle).
The report also highlights the effect of this perverted management system on the poorest sections of society: “The politicisation of procurement frequently results in the subversion of service delivery mandates. In recent years there have been purges of professional public servants and the repurposing of administrations away from their constitutional and legislative mandates.
“It has also opened departments and especially SOEs, to massive competition and rivalry, not so much about policy, but about who gets what tenders. This weakens and often breaks administrations, which are then unable to deliver services. A vacuum is created that can be filled by transactions that occur within the shadow state.
“This is especially devastating for working families and the poor. Failures in health and education, for example, reproduce historical, racialised patterns of inequality. It distracts attention from the economy itself and the inclusive structural transformation that is needed to make the economy more productive and labour-absorptive.”
These events demonstrate that the public debate on corruption and state capture has been ratcheted up. Certain aspects have come to the fore and the manner in which they are expressed, show they are accepted as fact, not mere conjecture:
l The connection is increasingly being made between certain events and the acts of representatives of government and state-owned enterprises, ie the dots are being connected, showing systemic corruption;
l Chaos and incompetence have become part and parcel of the whole system. It is therefore, not corruption on its own that needs to be confronted, but the fact that a corrupt system has been facilitated by the removal of adequately experienced professionals/bureaucrats from government and state-owned enterprises; and
l The concept of a “mafia state’’ is now firmly entrenched. Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa has also referred to this threat in his speeches immediately after the SACC report was made public.
The SACC and State Capacity Research Project reports and the proceedings at the parliamentary committee, have provided important additions to the public understanding of how major functions of government and state-owned enterprises have been subverted for the benefit of a select few. The reports do not provide much new evidence, but make a valuable contribution in helping the public to make sense of the damaging and pervasive effects of state capture and corruption.
Unravelling is well under way and more of it can be expected in the coming months.
Anton van Dalsen is legal counsellor for the Helen Suzman Foundation. This article is from Politicsweb
Joining dots as democratic project unravels
A new phase in the public debate has been fuelled by a report of the SA Council of Churches, by hearings of the parliamentary committee on public enterprises and by the publication of a study by the State Capacity Research Project.
The SACC announced the findings of its “Unburdening Panel” on May 18. It created this process in April 2016 as a safe space and “facility” for persons who wished to relieve themselves of a burden caused by being pressured to perform a corrupt act or where they had witnessed such an act.
The SACC emphasised this was intended as a pastoral process not an investigation. It created this “listening facility” as a result of the ANC’s unwillingness to deal with recent revelations on state corruption.
Introducing the report the SACC said: “Today we are ... seized with anchoring democracy, as we have come to recognise that South Africa may just be a few inches from ... a Mafia state, from which there may be no return – a recipe for a failed state.”
It now seems the problem is far greater than corruption, but is organised chaos. We have come to learn that what appears to be chaos and instability in government may well be a systemic design. A careful analysis makes the case for inappropriate control of state systems through a power-elite pivoted around the President that is systematically siphoning state assets. They do this by:
What we see persuades us that the present government has lost moral legitimacy. The question this has raised is in the constitutional dimension. Does the conduct of the government render it to have violated its constitutional mandate? That is for lawyers to explore further.
We urge the ANC to examine itself and mend the ways of government before we reach the point of no return – for this has implications for the ANC in government, for its leadership and members. We appeal to civil servants in government to note that whereas governments come and go with elections, civil servants are part of the permanent state system of the citizenry, and the instrumentation of the public good envisioned in our constitutional dispensation.
Moving on to the parliamentary committee meeting on public enterprises urgently and unanimously called by committee members in an attempt to obtain clarity on recent events at Eskom, especially the reappointment of CEO, Brian Molefe. The former Minister of Finance, Pravin Gordhan, now an MP and member of this committee, put it to the Minister of Public Enterprises and chairman of the board as follows: “The public is increasingly aware that you are abusing state property and state resources, that you are part of, wittingly or unwittingly (and in some cases there is enough evidence to say wittingly), a conspiracy to capture Eskom for the benefit of the few. That’s the reality, let’s not play around with technical questions.”
The public is worried that we are reaching a stage in managing governance where a significant number of people in the bureaucracy and elsewhere, and on boards, are taking the view “I don’t care, I don’t care if you know what I do, I don’t care if you know that public resources are going elsewhere, I don’t care how many reports the public protector or anybody else provides, because I am protected”.
The chair stated at the end of the hearing that the committee viewed the reappointment of Molefe as illegal.
It is interesting that the Minister and Eskom’s chair received no support whatever from any ANC MP on the committee.
The State Capacity Research Project published its study “Betrayal of the Promise: How SA is being Stolen” on Thurday. It made the following findings: “Until recently, the decomposition of state institutions has been blamed on corruption, but we must now recognise the problem goes well beyond this. Corruption normally refers to a condition where public officials pursue private ends using public means. While corruption is widespread at all levels and is undermining development, state capture is a far greater, systemic threat. It is akin to a silent coup and must be understood as a political project given a cover of legitimacy by the vision of radical economic transformation.
“The March 2017 Cabinet reshuffle was confirmation of this silent coup; it was the first Cabinet reshuffle that took place without the full prior support of the governing party. This moves the relationship between the constitutional state and the shadow state that emerged after the ANC’s Polokwane conference in 2007 into a new phase. The reappointment of Molefe as Eskom’s CEO a few weeks later in defiance of the ANC confirms this trend.”
This raises the question of whether there is a strategic centre of sorts. In general, the answer is no. Nor is there one single powerful network that overrides all others. But there is evidence that Zuma tends to govern via a set of “kitchen cabinets” – small informal groups convened on an as-needed basis. They can also be shell structures activated when needed. As will be demonstrated, they have been known to be drawn from the state security establishment, Gupta networks, the SOE sector, sub-groups of Cabinet ministers and deputy ministers, family networks, international networks (eg, Angola, Russian intelligence), key business groups, the ANC (in particular the Premier League and Free State Premier Ace Magashule), and selected loyalists in the public service (usually loyal director-generals).
The study goes on to note that the evolution in recent decades of rent management systems in neo-patrimonial regimes around the world has taken many forms. In summary, they can be characterised within a spectrum ranging from centralised/coordinated to chaotic.
The SA rent-seeking system is a kind of hybrid, partly because of Zuma’s personally vulnerable position due to outstanding and unresolved charges against him, the Constitutional Court finding on Nkandla and his embeddedness within a well-structured constitutional order.
He aspires to be like Russian President Vladimir Putin or Angola’s Eduardo dos Santos, but is entangled by constitutional state requirements he cannot dispense with (like reporting to parliament and subordination – at least for now – to the Constitutional Court) and competitive dynamics within the shadow state that the Gupta networks do not always control (witness the Prasa debacle).
The report also highlights the effect of this perverted management system on the poorest sections of society: “The politicisation of procurement frequently results in the subversion of service delivery mandates. In recent years there have been purges of professional public servants and the repurposing of administrations away from their constitutional and legislative mandates.
“It has also opened departments and especially SOEs, to massive competition and rivalry, not so much about policy, but about who gets what tenders. This weakens and often breaks administrations, which are then unable to deliver services. A vacuum is created that can be filled by transactions that occur within the shadow state.
“This is especially devastating for working families and the poor. Failures in health and education, for example, reproduce historical, racialised patterns of inequality. It distracts attention from the economy itself and the inclusive structural transformation that is needed to make the economy more productive and labour-absorptive.”
These events demonstrate that the public debate on corruption and state capture has been ratcheted up. Certain aspects have come to the fore and the manner in which they are expressed, show they are accepted as fact, not mere conjecture:
l The connection is increasingly being made between certain events and the acts of representatives of government and state-owned enterprises, ie the dots are being connected, showing systemic corruption;
l Chaos and incompetence have become part and parcel of the whole system. It is therefore, not corruption on its own that needs to be confronted, but the fact that a corrupt system has been facilitated by the removal of adequately experienced professionals/bureaucrats from government and state-owned enterprises; and
l The concept of a “mafia state’’ is now firmly entrenched. Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa has also referred to this threat in his speeches immediately after the SACC report was made public.
The SACC and State Capacity Research Project reports and the proceedings at the parliamentary committee, have provided important additions to the public understanding of how major functions of government and state-owned enterprises have been subverted for the benefit of a select few. The reports do not provide much new evidence, but make a valuable contribution in helping the public to make sense of the damaging and pervasive effects of state capture and corruption.
Unravelling is well under way and more of it can be expected in the coming months.
Anton van Dalsen is legal counsellor for the Helen Suzman Foundation. This article is from Politicsweb
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