Last week, South Africans came together to mourn the loss of musician Johnny Clegg. Clegg, who was born in the UK, moved to South Africa as a young child. His wholehearted embrace of Zulu culture and his political advocacy against racism and apartheid set him apart in a relentlessly divided country. In this episode, Alec Hogg describes his experiences at Clegg’s memorial service and reflects on the life of a great South African. On a more sombre note, Alec and I discuss his visit to KwaZulu-Natal and the evidence of corruption and mismanagement that he sees in Zuma’s heartland. – Felicity Duncan
Hello and welcome to this week’s episode of The Editor’s Desk with me, Felicity Duncan and Alec Hogg.
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Now, Alec, we had a very sad event in South Africa recently, which was the loss of really a national treasure in Johnny Clegg. You know, when I saw the news first thing in the morning, I was so sad. I was listening to some of his music on the train and, you know, my eyes were brimming over with tears as I was on my morning commute. It was very, very, sad.
We knew that he had been struggling with pancreatic cancer and all, but just a really sad day for South Africa. And now you had the real privilege of attending the memorial service that was held on Friday. And you managed to sit right up front and you got to speak to a lot of the people who knew Johnny Clegg personally, and I would love to hear a little bit about your experience and what it felt like to memorialise a person who really embodied the goals of a non-racial, truly open, truly democratic, and forward looking South Africa.
He did, didn’t he. Oh, he was just the most extraordinary icon for this country – a man who was extraordinarily gifted in his music, which travelled the world, but more than that. And it came out in this memorial service. He was a man who preached tolerance. He bridged the divide between black and white in South Africa, which had been so deep because of political interventions in the time that he grew up. He got into big trouble through having a band which was black and white.
His partner in the band Sipho Mchunu was at the memorial service and actually gave a long talk in isiZulu and then played a piece. His son Jesse, who’s a very talented musician, also played. And I was invited by a friend and business associate Barry Van Zyl who was Johnny Clegg’s drummer for a couple of decades.
I met Johnny as well – as, I think, most people in South Africa had the privilege of doing. I found him to be an amazing human being and one of the real, true superstars to come out of South Africa.
But the privilege of sitting up front, right in the front row, in a group of maybe more than 2,000 people there, was surpassed even by sitting next to a lady called Gerda Labuschagne.
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Gerda is the head of the palliative unit at Netcare, and Netcare provided the service to Johnny in these last few weeks. He had, as you said, pancreatic cancer – she explained to me that the cancer had spread through the body, and she was able to explain to the family how the body breaks down and what to expect as it went through. And also to make sure that Johnny was kept in as much comfort as humanly possible, because she said he would have been in huge amounts of pain, because the cancer had spread into the bones as well. And that was a great blessing to him.
And she told us a few stories about the way that they interacted. And one of the biggest blessings, perhaps, was the day before he died – and no one knew when he was going to go – the family had a long session with him. His sons and I think a few members of the extended family, who were around his bedside. And it was almost as though, she said, that the next day he felt as though maybe it was time to go and away he went.
So, it was an extraordinary event. You had amongst the – well, think of this as a lineup – apart from having the Soweto Gospel Choir as backing vocalists and the band (that’s why Barry was there on the drums and the other members of Johnny Clegg’s Band who’ve been with him and toured around the world with him for a long time). Apart from having them, you also had John Kani, who is one of the South African superstar actors, who was the master of ceremonies and read a eulogy. Then Jesse Clegg played a song that he’d written with his father and also gave, well, obviously a very moving address.
Charles van Onselen, the author who has written some very good books about South Africa and in fact about the world as well. He gave a eulogy as well. Max du Preez was incredibly moving. I think we all know Max du Preez is an excellent journalist and a very good writer. But to see the emotion that he was able to evoke in this audience… It was one of those events that I think you’ll remember forever.
I was supposed to go to a colloquium on the National Development Plan on Friday and I decided that, as important as that was and to understand more about the National Development Plan, this was just a once in a lifetime opportunity. And I’m so pleased that I did choose to rather cancel that other engagement and go along to this one.
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It was just something very special to an iconic South African whose example is inspirational to all of us who believe that we can have a great country where people exercise tolerance and empathy for one another and build together a country that that could be a great place in a global sense. So, yes it was one of those things, Felicity. You know that I am an upbeat person and I really do love South Africa and love everything that we stand or many of the things that we stand for. But this was a little bit of confirmation that there are some truly great people who think the same way. And he will be missed, he will be greatly missed.
He will indeed, and you’re right. You know, I think among his many talents and obviously his musical gifts and the warmth and humanity that he really brought to all the aspects of his life, I think one of his really primary gifts, if you will, was that he clearly loved South Africa. He really did. He moved to South Africa as a young child and he came to this country and just completely embraced it, loved it, built an amazing life for himself, and was just relentlessly positive about it.
And you know, in a time when there is quite a lot of negativity in some quarters in South Africa, it’s really lovely to just be reminded about someone who was just happy and loved the country.
And he could have lived anywhere in the world. Don’t forget this: he has an OBE from Britain, he’s got the highest civilian honour from France, he’s a megastar in the northern hemisphere.
So, he could have lived in great luxury anywhere he chose, But, as Jesse, his son said, the number one priority to Johnny was his and, I guess, his country and he was here doing what he could to shape a future for the place he loved. So, an extraordinary human being and a great gift to South Africa.
Now, to change gears a little from a real ornament to South African society to something a little more negative.
Your week was not exclusively attending this event. You also were down in Durban giving a talk at SAICA, that’s the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants, and you came away from that feeling, I think, a little thoughtful and a little bit disturbed by the discussions you had with people about the state of things there in KwaZulu-Natal, which obviously is the region of the country that is most supportive of former President Jacob Zuma.
It was an eye opener. It’s where I come from, it’s my home province, but I hadn’t been – because of our adventure in the UK, I hadn’t been back to the province for any period of time for a few years.
And what is interesting is that there’s a lot of development along the north coast, because when you land at King Shaka Airport in Durban – and I was talking at the Durban Country Club, so you’re just going along the north coast and it’s quite impressive.
But what is not as impressive is as you drive past Umhlanga, there is a massive development right in the middle of Umhlanga. Those people who know KwaZulu-Natal will know that Durban has moved north, or the city centre has moved north, to Umhlanga, which last I saw, last time I was there, was a pretty impressive place with lots of new buildings and lots of development etc.
But the cranes have been standing on this massive development in the middle of Umhlanga – something like 140,000 square metres of bulk where the post office and the library used to be – and nothing’s happened. So, there was a development that began and stopped.
And it doesn’t take you long to discover that this development was in land that had been given or donated to the village, as it then was many years ago. And somehow the Umhlanga town council decided to sell the land to one Vivian Reddy, who is a very close associate of the former president of South Africa Jacob Zuma. Vivian Reddy somehow got the rights to, first of all to buy the land very cheaply. He sold off a small portion of it for the money the R30m that he paid for the property, and then he started developing this, telling people that the flats or the apartments had been pretty much sold out, using that money and presumably finance raised elsewhere, including from a property developer, a very reputable property developer in Pietermaritzburg, called Rob Alexander, to put money to develop this, as I say about 140,000 square meters. That’s huge. It’s like a Sandton City in the middle of Umhlanga.
Well, they ran out of money about a year ago, which coincides with the end of the Zuma era, or the end of the Zuma era of power. And the cranes that are standing – there are three cranes standing there and on my enquiries I discovered that the crane hire people, for instance, will not remove the cranes from the site until they get paid. And the problem with that for the developers of a site like this is that cranes are charged out at around R60,000 a day. So, if you can imagine, if you’re not building it’s costing you R180,000 a day just for the cranes.
Then talking to other engineers, they tell me that because of the sea air in Umhlanga, if you stop building at a certain area, you might actually have to condemn the whole project, because the wiring and some of the other parts of the construction, given the way that they’re corroded by the sea air makes it all useless, so, you literally have to start again.
This is a disaster of note. The numbers that are being thrown around is around R3bn that the project was supposed to cost. Vivian Reddy is looking for finance and doesn’t seem to be able to find it anywhere, because he is regarded in the province and by the banks as a politically affected person, given his relationship with Jacob Zuma.
And it’s a reflection of what happens when the power that vested in a group of people, no longer is there any more.
Talking to other members of the accounting profession, they tell me that within eThekwini, which is the old Durban municipality, there have been a lot of continuous resignations of people who are not prepared to go along with a system where the handouts are still extremely high.
One guy said to me, a businessmen, went in there and made a tender bid and as he was walking out he was told he’s not going to get the tender because he’s Indian, but if he paid the right people, he would be able to have a chance and, in fact, to land the tender itself.
So, even though there’s been quite a lot of extrication of the cancer of corruption in other parts of the country, in the heartland of the Zuptoids, it appears as though it’s a lot more difficult to extricate.
But there’s a really good story to end this off with. And that was Paul O’Sullivan, which happened this week. Now, towards the end of last year, Paul O’Sullivan who’s an investigative sleuth in South Africa who’s done so much good work for the country, was approached by a whistleblower who told him that Transnet, the rail and port parastatal, had issued a contract of about R4bn to an Italian company called CMCD Ravenna, which was corrupted, and that lots of people along the line were being given cuts in this.
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He then started investigating and very quickly uncovered that the whistleblower was on the money. He then put together his report, took it to the new Transnet board, which is run by Popo Molefe, who is Camp Against Corruption, and they immediately suspended this contract, which was for a to do with the Durban harbour.
CMCD Ravenna came back to Transnet, and Paul says, the way he puts it, he says that they almost got the contract renewed again by badmouthing O’Sullivan’s Forensics for Justice and by saying that the report was flawed. The report he had done into it, and in fact everything was above board.
That’s like a red rag to an O’Sullivan bull. And he went off to places like get Gedansk, to Uganda, to Kenya, Nairobi, Kampala and did more investigation into this Italian company, which is a multinational, and started uncovering that this was their modus operandi. That they would work with state institutions and then bribe people along the way and as a consequence get these inflated contracts, much like we know of the infamous Bosasa in South Africa.
He then gave those reports first to Transnet, who clearly confirmed their decision that they were not going to continue with his flawed contract, but better than that – he gave it to the Kenyan government and to the Ugandan government. And in Kenya last week, they arrested the finance minister, who is implicated in CMCD Ravenna corruption. They have a warrant of arrest for the South African country head of CMCD Ravenna and the finance minister of Kenya spent the night in jail, because of his relationship with this corrupt entity.
So, it shows that there is definitely progress here and things are moving, not just in a South African sense, but what is being uncovered here is having an impact continentally.
