It would be the height of irony were President Cyril Ramaphosa to be found wanting on the allegations against him over the theft of cash at his Phala Phala game farm. That’s because he came to power on a platform of fighting corruption and restoring the criminal justice system and state agencies damaged by state capture.
Ramaphosa promised a “new dawn”, which would be the antithesis of the kleptocracy his predecessor sought to turn South Africa into. The president would be its sponsor and torchbearer.
Submitting to parliament his response to the state capture commission report, Ramaphosa described corruption as “a betrayal of our democracy”. Earlier in his tenure, he had promised the country that “the fuse has been lit” against the perpetrators of corruption.
Which explains why many are petrified by the thought of his departure — which nearly happened last week — fearing a reversal of what progress we have made in fighting corruption in the five years or so of his presidency.
Yet he is now being investigated by entities ranging from the Hawks to the Reserve Bank and tax authorities for suspected illegal conduct. More immediately, he faces possible removal from office after a special parliamentary panel found he may have violated the constitution over the Phala Phala affair. Parliament will deliberate on the report, which he is challenging in court, this week.
So, how do we find ourselves in a situation where the supposed hunter ends up entangled in his own net? It’s all about money — the Benjamins stolen from the presidential sofa.
In the nearly three decades of our democracy, money has corrupted much of our body politic. It has oiled the ostentatious lifestyles of the political elite, many of whom obviously live beyond the means provided by a job in politics, while they pose as champions of the poor and suffering masses.
The problem goes as far back as the arms deal, democratic South Africa’s first major arms procurement programme, which landed Jacob Zuma in the courts, where he’s spent nearly a decade and a half fighting to extricate himself from charges of corruption, money laundering and racketeering.
Others would date it back to the early 1990s, when big business became “nice” to ANC leaders from exile by lavishing financial and other support on them.
Before his death, disgraced mining tycoon Brett Kebble became the sugar daddy of leaders of the ANC Youth League, some of whom would go on to become cabinet members. At his funeral they showed gratitude for his largesse by acting as pallbearers, with his coffin curiously draped in the national flag.
Few episodes of corruption can compare with the state capture project, painstakingly exposed by the Zondo commission, with Zuma again playing a starring role. The commission revealed how crooked politicians and their minions in the state corruptly collaborated with unscrupulous businesses to the detriment of the country.
Knowing what we know now, we should perhaps concede that ethics have little to do with the size of one’s pockets, but essentially with the ability to tell wrong from right
Nearly all our major parties have been contaminated by the corrupting influence of money, whether in the looting of VBS Mutual Bank or the pillaging of the state by Bosasa and the Guptas, among others.
The ANC has admitted to the problem of the use of money to manipulate its leadership elections. Through its electoral committee it has tried to check the impact of money on the process. But the jury is still out as to whether it will succeed.
While much has been made in and outside the ANC about the funding of Ramaphosa’s CR17 campaign, which won him the party’s presidency in 2017, few will believe that the losing campaign of Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma was run purely on fresh air.
All this raises the question: what is the purpose of political leadership in our democracy? Is it public service or self-enrichment? Put another way, what is the ethical standard to which we wish to hold our political leadership? Is it too much to demand that it be beyond reproach?
If the nomination lists for top leadership positions in the country’s biggest party are anything to go by, we may have a long way to go to rid ourselves of ethically defective leadership. Both top contenders for the party presidency bear heavy baggage on this front — Ramaphosa with Phala Phala and Zweli Mkhize with Digital Vibes.
Many other nominees have been implicated by the Zondo commission, with one of them, Malusi Gigaba, emerging as the second most popular leader for a seat on the national executive committee.
At the height of state capture under Zuma, a view emerged that to avoid a repeat we might be better off if we checked presidential pretenders’ bank balances. The proposition being that a hungry incumbent would be more inclined to dip their hand in the national cookie jar, while a rich candidate would lean towards financial propriety, unlikely to fall prey to bribery, or to steal from the fiscus.
Knowing what we know now, we should perhaps concede that ethics have little to do with the size of one’s pockets, but essentially with the ability to tell wrong from right.
Even in the increasingly unlikely event of Ramaphosa being cleared by all the various investigations, his reputation as an anti-corruption crusader has most likely sustained mortal damage. Unless he comes up with a better explanation than he has proffered thus far.
Whoever first said power corrupts was correct. If they lived in present-day South Africa, they might have wanted to add that money, too, corrupts — thoroughly.
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