EDINBURGH — Corruption is an insidious crime with, on the surface, faceless victims. But, as Paul Hoffman of Accountability Now explains, nipping corruption in the bud is essential for fixing South Africa’s broken economy which, in turn, will help reverse the high unemployment rate that has many victims. Many South Africans have lost confidence in investing in the country, with many emigrating and many hedging their bets with business growth and portfolio diversification elsewhere. Although President Cyril Ramaphosa has publicly committed to corruption-busting, his promises haven’t yet had the effect of reversing sentiment towards the country. Here is why, says Hoffman: Investors see Ramaphosa as paying lip-service to the anti-graft project, with evidence everywhere that he is insincere about rooting out the villains. Tough action is needed, with a no-nonsense approach required to bring the captured and corrupt to justice. Nothing else will do as, after all, Ramaphosa stood idly next to former president Jacob Zuma as his deputy. In the meantime, investors may nod in agreement with Ramaphosa but they will quietly invest in assets elsewhere, is Hoffman’s over-riding message. – Jackie Cameron
By Paul Hoffman*
The President’s inspiring words during his “charm offensive” at the Investment Conference in Sandton on 26 October 2018 are almost all true. Everyone who wishes SA well should turn attention to those assertions that are not convincing, in order to revive the economy and to make the President’s important initiative to raise funds the resounding success so fervently desired by citizens of goodwill who are concerned about the economic trajectory of our country in its technical recession with low projected growth rate. Whistling up the necessary new investment is a devilishly difficult task.
The credibility of the campaign suffers from the inescapable fact that Cyril Ramaphosa served as deputy to Jacob Zuma during the latter period of the hey-day of state capture. Too many members of the current cabinet are compromised survivors of the Zuma cabinet. Too many of the cabinet members are suspected of criminality ranging from corruption to perjury and defeating the ends of justice. None of these miscreants have been brought to justice, despite the passage of years, many years, in some cases. There are also just too many members of cabinet for investors to take belt tightening talk by the president seriously.
The choices of the president for the ministries of police and justice are just plain wrong. Bheki Cele has been found to be dishonest and incompetent by a formal Board of Inquiry which recommended that he be investigated for corrupt activities around the leasing of police headquarters. No such investigation has ensued.
Michael Masutha signed off on the invalid, illegal and corrupt package paid to Mxolisi Nxasana to vacate the office of National Director of Public Prosecutions as part of the “protect Zuma” campaign. These two ministers are responsible for the SAPS and the NPA. It cannot possibly inspire confidence in the minds of cautious investors who fear that the rule of law is under threat and that corruption might eat into their possible future investments in SA.
It is not enough to boast about the prowess of the Zondo and Nugent Commissions. They are mere fact finding bodies which will and have (in the case of Nugent) make recommendations which may or may not be accepted and acted on by government. They have no executive powers and no powers of prosecution at all.
It is also inescapable that the ravages of state capture have left the capacity of the criminal justice administration to deal pro-actively and properly with the corrupt among us in tatters. A new head of the NPA has been needed since last year. No appointment has been made and a court imposed deadline for doing so looms. The Hawks are lacking in staff and resources as well as the capacity to counter sophisticated forms of corruption. The police are led by illegally deployed cadres of the national democratic revolution, too many of whom are inept, corrupt and all at sea, and all of whom owe their primary loyalty to cadre deployment committees of the ANC.
In these circumstances the utterances that corruption will be tackled by the new leadership ring hollow.
It does not have to be so.
It is within the power of the state to bypass the mess in the NPA and SAPS insofar as corruption busting is concerned. It will take years to winkle out the members of the Zuma faction in powerful positions in these institutions. These are years we do not have available as a country. We need rapid action to address corruption, to recover stolen assets and funds of the state and to make examples of the “big fish” involved in state capture. Letting the Zondo Commission proceed in fits and starts for years on end is not going to impress the hesitant investors who have lost confidence in the climate for investment in SA. A few big criminal trials now against the likes of Zuma, Cele and Masutha, not to mention Gigaba and Dlamini, will serve to address the loss of investor confidence far more effectively than any charm offensive is capable of doing.
The bottom line is that speaking in the future tense about what will be done about addressing corruption is an inadequate “sales pitch” to the type of risk-averse investors who are concerned about the levels of corruption to which the several commissions of inquiry point. This is especially so as the commissions are without the power to do anything to end impunity and to harness the criminal justice administration against the corrupt.
The defects and dysfunction in the criminal justice system need to be side-stepped in order to get to grips with grand corruption and kleptocracy. The existing institutions have been and are littered with fellow-travellers of the corrupt. Some have gone, it is true, and some are currently on suspension but the overall damage will take years to fix. The Concerned Members Group of the NPA, those who sought to preserve the Scorpions, warned that this would happen in 2008, and the warning was well-founded.
The appropriate strategy that requires urgent implementation is the establishment of a new body that is free of crooked cadres. A body mandated to prevent, combat, investigate and prosecute grand corruption in the High Courts of the land (or even in special courts established to circumvent the delays that the over-worked High Courts are unable to avoid). The staff of the new body can be drawn from the ranks of the Hawks, the NPA and other bodies like the SIU, subject to stringent vetting. Their specialised attention to grand corruption will necessarily involve the training of staff as was done with the Scorpions of old. Indeed, the Scorpions are proof that the country has the skill, talent and grassroots will to deal with the corrupt properly. The only chink in the armour of the Scorpions was that as a mere creature of statute the Scorpions could be closed down, as they were, by a simple majority in parliament. The new body can avoid this fate by being established as a chapter nine institution. These institutions, like the auditor general and public protector, can only be dissolved with the support of two thirds of parliament.
The commitment of the government to tackle the corrupt head on will be proven by the establishment of a super-corruption-busting body. The failure to do so speaks to lip-service, insincere charm offensives and lack of political will to do what manifestly needs to be done to address grand corruption, state capture and kleptocracy head on and immediately, not at some unspecified future date.
The political will to do so has to be generated by the president, and those he leads, if he wishes to avoid going down in history as the super-salesman who sold nothing to wise investors at a time when his country needed bumper sales.
The Chief Justice warned, as long ago as 2014, that the “malady” of corruption was then in danger of “graduating into something terminal.” The medicine for the malady which his court prescribed can be summed up in his own words as:
“We are in one accord that SA needs an agency dedicated to the containment and eventual eradication of the scourge of corruption. We also agree that that entity must enjoy adequate structural and operational independence to deliver effectively and efficiently on its core mandate.”
The opposition parties in parliament should embrace the notion as part of their manifestos for the forthcoming elections and challenge voters to only vote for the parties that are sufficiently serious about conquering corruption to do what the Constitutional Court required of government in 2014. That government has not, of its own volition, done so already speaks volumes about its lack of commitment to the rule of law and its seriousness about now fighting the corrupt properly through obedience to court orders that bind it.
There is a direct relationship between investment and exposure to corruption. In the words of former finance minister Nene:
‘Almost all South African and foreign investors have lost confidence in SA. This situation must be turned around urgently’
He spoke these words in March, when announcing that a government anti-corruption strategy would be rolled out within 100 days. This strategy has yet to be announced. This failure to follow through speaks to the lack of political will in the Ramaphosa cabinet to tackle corruption in the here and now. Investors will not be so impolite as to call out the president on this topic; they will simply invest elsewhere in countries in which the risk of the corrupt making off with investments is more acceptable.
Accountability Now has long championed what it calls an Integrity Commission to take on the important functions of state around combating corruption. The name chosen is not important, the capacity to prevent, combat, investigate and prosecute corruption properly is. As the new entity will be taking over some of the work of the Hawks it would be appropriate to give it the nick-name “The Eagles”. After all, eagles fly higher, see further and go after bigger prey than hawks.
Until government gets real about countering corruption the sales pitch in Sandton will sound like nervous whistling in the graveyard of the SA economy.
- Paul Hoffman SC is a director of Accountability Now and author of “Confronting the Corrupt” in which the idea of an Integrity Commission is championed.
