The
weekly diet of government corruption dished up by the Sunday newspapers and the
Mail & Guardian nauseates. For instance, the story of Transnet’s CE,
Siyabonga Gama’s, payout of R10 million, after having been found guilty of
irregularly awarding an R18.9-million tender to a security company linked to
former Minister Siphiwe Nyanda, should propel South Africans into action. The
Arms Deal is growing like an octopus, while Julius Malema’s alleged access to
tenders for self-enrichment continues to astound. There just is no end to the
stealing of taxpayers’ money meanwhile our President is silent about the
culture of graft that has come to characterise his presidency.
The
municipal elections have come and gone and there is still no sign of President
Jacob Zuma taking any action against Sicelo Shiceka, Minister of Cooperative
Governance and Traditional Affairs. Shiceka is said to have used his influence
to ensure that a R32 million tarred road was routed past a house he was
building for his mother in the Eastern Cape while thousands of residents in the
area do not even have dirt roads to reach their homes.
He
is also alleged to have stayed at a string of luxury hotels at taxpayers’
expense, like his colleague, Minister of Police, Nathi Mtetwa. Shiceka, whose
claims to have a Master’s degree have proven to be untrue, might justifiably
say that both accusations should long ago have been levelled against other
politicians who like him are guilty of the same misdemeanours but who get off
scot free. For instance, according to a court case in the Pietermaritzburg’s
High Court in January 2010, the current Minister of Transport, Sbu Ndebele, had
a road to his country residence in Natal tarred at a cost of R5.5 million (an
amount recorded in the 2004/5 budget for the province). If newspaper reports
and court documents are to be believed, the five kilometres of tarred road
stopped shortly after Ndebele’s property, reverting again to dirt road. The
local newspaper, the Natal Witness, reported that local residents and farmers
had questioned why the nearby and far busier Tugela Ferry-Keate’s Drift road
had not been tarred or maintained given the dangerous potholes on the road.
Corruption
has become so endemic that Shiceka’s profligate lifestyle seems more akin to
that of a Trappist monk if his record is compared to the former ANC speaker in
the Western Cape Provincial Legislature, Shaun Byneveldt, who like his
colleague Ebrahim Rasool, was rewarded with an ambassadorship for his sins. In
September 2008 the Cape Argus reported that Byneveldt had travelled to 51
countries since taking up the speaker’s position four years earlier and that he
had taken family members on some of those trips. According to a source at the
Cape Argus, “...Byneveldt was ‘forever travelling’ and seemed to spend more
time out of the country than at work.” The newspaper asked him what benefit had
accrued to the taxpayer from his many gravy-plane excursions. Byneveldt’s
reply, after a week, was arrogant and devoid of respect for the citizens who
funded his lavish lifestyle: “The Western Cape provincial parliament and the
office of the speaker in particular hereby reserve the right to respond fully
to all and/or any matter raised in your aforesaid email when adequate
opportunity avails itself, save to place on record, at this juncture, that the
information you rely on, in a variety of material respects, is correct.”
This
contemptuous abrogation of the ANC’s solemn commitment in 1994 to break with
our apartheid past and to govern in a transparent and accountable way is a
cynical response to our constitutional right to know how our taxes are spent.
Shiceka could justifiably ask: “Why pick on me when the ANC has given carte
blanche to its legions of deployed parasites in the looting of the public purse?”
He has a point. From the Land Bank, to South African Airways, to the South African
Broadcasting Corporation, and even Robben Island, billions of rand have gone
down the drain. And with every stash of money misappropriated, some poor
community is deprived of a school, a clinic, or a park. No quote seems more apt
than the comment made by Zimbabwean Economist, John Robertson: “We imagine
corruption to be like a tick on a dog. There are some places in Africa where
the tick is bigger than the dog.”
When
that happens, the dog in all probability will die!
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