DUBLIN — Election Day is getting closer and closer. As South Africans prepare to go to the polls, the ANC has released its electoral list. The lists generated instant controversy as they prominently featured certain dubious politicians, including Mosebenzi Zwane, Malusi Gigaba, Bathabile Dlamini and Nomvula Mokonyane. Why has the ANC allowed these compromised individuals to return as public representatives? Is this a sign that Ramaphosa is struggling to implement an anti-corruption programme? Or is it a simple case of “innocent until proven guilty”? Most importantly, what will voters make of the decision? Alec Hogg and I dig into these questions. We also discuss the Boeing 737 Max 8 crash and Boeing’s struggle to respond effectively to unfolding events. – Felicity Duncan
Hello, and welcome to this week’s episode of The Editor’s Desk, here on BizNews Radio. I’m Felicity Duncan and with me, is Alec Hogg.
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Alec, you’re on the line there from SA. You’re in the middle of a visit and you had a long flight yesterday, and I believe you did a little checking before you got onto that plane to make sure it was not a Boeing 737 Max, which is something a lot of people have been doing. A lot of people refusing to fly on those aircrafts and now, of course, they are grounded worldwide.
But we saw the US holding out on the grounding for several days. China was the first mover there, they grounded the planes at the beginning of the week saying this crash in Ethiopia looks too similar to what happened on Lion Air. A number of nations followed suite, and now finally the Americans have also yanked these planes from the sky. But not very well handled by Boeing, I would say.
Well, Boeing is in a very tough situation because I guess, whatever they say now could expose them to some pretty hefty lawsuits. First of all, when planes go down Boeing ends up paying. Somebody ends up paying, either them or their insurers. So, there is already a considerable liability that has to be calculated by the lawyers. But on this one it’s an interesting story, Felicity.
What we understand so far is that there is something in the new Max, which a pilot has to understand, he has to be trained, to override the system on something that the system would do automatically, and have the pilots been trained or not, and whose responsibility is it for the pilots to have been trained in the system and if it is that important, as we now know that if the pilots don’t know how to override the nosedive that you actually crash the plane, then surely there should have been a lot more care taken. Those are really the issues that are swirling around. Boeing tried it’s utmost to ensure that the new Max Plane, although it was quite an upgrade on the previous 737, was marketed as the same – same-same, don’t worry, your guys will be able to fly it in the same way as in the past. But the did move the engines forward quite a lot and that has caused a lot of reengineering and, as a consequence of that, there were things that were include in the management or the flying of the new plane. That appear not to have been well communicated to the pilots.
I’m sure today, every pilot of a 737 Max knows 100% how to get out of the nosedive, how to override the system, because the pilots don’t want to die. But in this case clearly, Lion air and then Ethiopia air, the pilots there hadn’t been trained properly. That’s what it appears to be. Well, we’ll only know in time but that seems the most logical explanation, not least that the Ethiopia Airlines pilot had only been flying this plane since November. There’re new planes so, if you haven’t had the right training, well tragedies occur.
Yeah, I was reading a bit about it so, it seems like from some of the information that I’ve been reading on our partner site, The Wall Street Journal, one of the problems is that the system in question was relying on one single sensor in the nose. And if it was getting bad information from that sensor it would push the nose down, and as you correctly said, then the pilot would need to manually override this and keep it going it.
Override it.
And I saw quotes from a number of engineers, and actually my father, who is also an engineer, said this was a puzzling design position because with something like a system like that, you really want to build in fail safes. You really need it to be… It can’t be the case that there’s just one sensor and if that goes wrong then the whole plane goes done. You need a bit of flexibility in the system so if one sensor doesn’t work then the others do.
So, there are some questions, I think, around the design choices that Boeing made when they added on the heavier engines and all the rest of it. But as you said, quite correctly of course, there’s also a question of is there enough pilot training happening?
The big story for me here is the way that public opinion has swayed what would otherwise have been something that perhaps the world would have shrugged off and continued with. The outrage that has been shown all over the world and the fact that airlines continue to fly 737 Maxes. The speed with which the information was distributed to the population and despite, here in SA, Comair initially said they would continue to fly the planes because they are fine. But in the same day that they put that statement out, they had to recant and say, ‘they’ve grounded them.’
It’s a similar now with the USA having a few days, remember the crash was on Sunday, and now they have grounded on Thursday. They’ve now finally grounded all the 737 Maxes but the reason there was that the Trade Unions of the airline stewards were saying, ‘hang on a minute, we’re not prepared to get onto these planes.’ The pilots hadn’t said anything yet but you could be sure they would have also have been joining in. So, it is a public opinion that is a reflective of the information age, and it’s reflective of the shift in power, from the big corporates and those who they lobby in government, big government, and the public. The public actually, there are many instances of this but this is another reflection of how the public really is starting to sway what happens in the real world. Whereas, in the past, the public was ignored. That isn’t the case anymore.
Well, let’s hope that the public is not ignored in South Africa in light of some recent news that has broken with the revelation of the ANC’s lists. Now, this is something I know you have some strong feelings on. There are a lot of names on those lists that you might call the usual suspects – the people that we have seen time and again in the headlines for all the wrong reasons are now appearing on the election lists this year, ahead of the May election.
It’s extraordinary and you have to try and understand why the ANC would put someone like David Mahlobo, who has been named as spying illegally on 38 people, including the Chief Justice. How does he get onto the list in the top 30? Or Mokonyane, the Environment Minister, who was named by Agrizzi in the Zondo Commission with evidence of how her family were for many years given hundreds of thousands of Rands of Christmas catering facilities and yet, they’re both on the list.
I guess we are looking at Cyril Ramaphosa as a new broom sweeping clean, but in politics it isn’t absolute and I guess what must be going on here is that there is a little bit like when you’re in a corporation and somebody has been suspected of a misdeed but they haven’t yet been disciplined for it or they haven’t been found guilty for it. So, in those cases usually, people actually resign and leave. In politics it doesn’t work like that. Malusi Gigaba is on the list in the top-20, and you’d think, has the man no shame that he would continue to agree to put himself up for election after some of the crazy things that have happened there. There are a number of others that have got huge question marks against them.
Perhaps, and this is the only thing that I can assume that the ANC is saying they are innocent until proven guilty. The members of the ANC are perhaps not that well informed yet – they haven’t been following the Agrizzi Commission or what’s been going on with SSA (State Security Agency) etc., and that they were put forward by various branches who either haven’t understood this yet or refuse to believe the truth and as a consequence of that, their names appear on the list but I think it’s going to cost the ANC very dearly.
At this point, the ANC is already on the back foot because of all the corruption and the information that’s coming out and we’ve discussed this before. It’s a high-risk approach that Ramaphosa is following. Would you now honestly vote, David Mahlobo into Parliament or Malusi Gigaba into Parliament or as a rational human being, Mokonyane into Parliament? I guess there are a lot of people who would have give the ANC their vote, those rational voters, perhaps they’re only swing voters but who would be having second thoughts now and going for opposition parties. So, it’s going to be… The list is all important. Remember, those are the people that if you vote for that political party, those are the people you are putting into Parliament.
The EFF has been getting a lot of support in SA for the young and vibrant names and individual that it’s put onto its list. So, that’s an interesting difference. The ANC seems to be more of the same cadres, who some of them already been pointed out to have done some very bad things to the country. Whereas, the EFF has gone for a young, fresh, bright group – this could sway voters in that respect. It’s a very interesting point that before you have your vote in this most critical of elections, you will no longer, or many people perhaps will no longer (the rational people) say that Ramaphosa, as we said last week – this is a vote for him to clean-up everything or clean-up house. Is it really a vote for him to do that now that some of those on the list are obviously implicated in the plunder? I don’t think so. I think they’re going to lose a lot of votes that they would otherwise have got as a consequence of some of the names there.
That’s interesting, and I think it will be a real test of SA’s political maturity to see how voters respond to this list. All the information is in the public domain. There’s no hiding it. There’s no putting it in the back. Everybody who has seen a TV or read a newspaper knows that this is what’s happening, there are these Commissions of Inquiry – so, it’s not a secret. I think seeing how South African voters are going to respond to this and what they’re going to do with this list – given what we know now, and given what is widely known now is going to be a real insight into how politically mature SA voters are.
I know you had been concerned about some people or rather, sign-ups of people registering to vote, and that I think is also a bit of a commentary on this type of thing. Is this the sign of a maturing democracy or is this a bad sign, or what does it mean? So, I think this is a very different kind of election and a very interesting one.
The mood is very down in SA at the moment, not surprisingly because the economy is, I won’t say it’s on its knees but confidence is very low. As a consequence of that people are maybe going to stay away from the polls and that is the worst thing that could happen for the ANC. The ANC needs a big turnout. It needs this vote of confidence in the future and it needs the support that it wasn’t getting at the Municipal Elections.
If you think of a name like Mosebenzi Zwane who has been completely implicated as a Zuptoid and somebody who strong-armed Glencore to give their optimum coal mine to the Guptas – he’s on the list.
And you’ve got to ask yourself, hang on a minute – if I am a member of the ANC am, I going to support this individual? Am I going to rather, not vote for the opposition, but just stay away, which in essence, is like voting for the opposition? Remember, in the SA political system we have proportional representation, which means that every vote counts, which is a great thing.
But on the other hand, if people don’t do, don’t vote, if the vote doesn’t come out, that also counts. This is going to be a very interesting election on the 8th May and we could see some significant surprises, particular after the names that are on the list. I would have thought, Felicity, within the ANC – and they say that they’ve Ace Magashule who is quoted all over the place here in the newspapers and saying that they did have some tough conversations with people who are implicated in corruption and they got them to step down off the list but there’s still too many who are of the big names, who are right up there and very prominent on the list.
Just for those who are not fully aware of this, what happens is that each political party, because we have proportional representation – they will give a list of candidates and if they, for instance if the ANC were to get 50% of the vote, then the top 200 on their list, because there’s 400 members of parliament, the top 200 on their list would go to Parliament – they would go in. So, where you appear on the list is very important because it depends whether or not you’re going to be getting a seat eventually. These people that we’ve mentioned appear very high on the list, which means they will be sent back to Parliament next year. So, they have clearly taken the view that they’re going to try and brazen it out.
