WORLDVIEW: The corrupt walk among us – but Lula’s arrest shows, not forever

I've been shaking my head more than usual of late. Having been specifically targeted by miscreants since early 2016, at Biznews we're delighted to see the media storm that's raging. But that doesn't stop me wondering why exposed Gupta associates aren't behind bars, indeed, that some of them are still making laws and representing SA on the highest international stages..Now that even Cyril Ramaphosa is on the record about the "illicit relationships, contracts, deals and appointments designed to benefit just one family and their associates," there can be no more doubt about the plundering happening in South Africa. But I guess the wheels of justice grind slowly. Ask the Brazilians who yesterday saw their once revered president Lula sentenced to jail many years after he left office..My colleague Quentin Wray has some pithy thoughts on the subject. He writes: "When corruption happens in Africa, Asia, South America and Eastern Europe the popular narrative all too often concentrates on officialdom and systemic government failure and ignores those in the private sector who derive the most benefit from it..___STEADY_PAYWALL___.There are reasons why this happens, none of them being the pro-Zuma faction of the ANC's. Journalists are not racist agitators for regime change in thrall to white monopoly capital. That's just a smokescreen for those trying to evade scrutiny..But newsrooms have been systematically juniorised, understaffed and underfunded and the fact remains that there is far more publicly available data about governments, even opaque ones, than there is about private companies. Listed firms can hide an enormous amount without getting into trouble. Privately-held firms even more so..It's easy to write a story when you are presented with an executive summary and handy tables by Transparency International, but tremendously difficult to do so when you are taking on an outfit that is being jealously guarded by an army of lawyers, spin doctors and captured, to use the term du jour, state officials..Another factor in our unbalanced view of corruption is that we, cynically, expect a certain amount of buccaneer capitalism in the private sector. Maybe it's just me but even if we wholeheartedly disapprove of it, we are seldom terribly surprised by it. So when it is uncovered we are naturally more willing to accept the "rogue agent" explanation rather than the blanket "all is shit, everybody's on the take" narrative that gets applied to government departments and state-owned enterprises..It is only when it is part of a broader outrage, the offences so egregious and the sums of money so enormous that the blame gets more fairly shared. Compare for example, the opprobrium reserved for Bell Pottinger, KPMG, SAP and McKinsey with that against Net 1 and its local operation Cash Payment Services, the companies involved in the most recent social welfare debacle..Because we have for too long ignored the other hand in the handshake, the discourse around corruption has become overly simplistic, unbalanced and, most importantly, unable to change the environment that encouraged it in the first place..This now seems to be changing. I just hope the public anger at the role the private sector has played in abetting such massive corruption in South Africa causes a seismic shift in the way we generally allocate blame. It may be very Zen to contemplate the sound of one hand clapping, but what kind of delusion is it to see only one hand shaking?".Well put Quentin. My late friend and colleague Barry Sergeant, the prince of investigative journalists, used to say investigating government corruption was like clubbing baby seals (he really spoke like that). But the real test of one's skills lay in exposing private sector malfeasance. Quite.

WORLDVIEW: The corrupt walk among us – but Lula’s arrest shows, not forever

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