Graft will go deeper underground if changes happen

One story was about how the Eastern Cape department of social development was used to fund conferences of the ANC Youth League.

Based on a worthy concept document proposing a series of three-day workshops to help young people develop their entrepreneurial skills, the department agreed to fund youth summits organised by the National Youth Development Agency.

But in the Eastern Cape, as in most provinces, the NYDA leadership mirrors the ANCYL leadership and agenda.

Some of the delegates to NYDA summits conceded quite freely that the only business on the agenda of the supposedly non-partisan summits was youth league business - mainly planning for internal ANCYL elections.

Delegates signed parallel attendance registers - one to legitimise the NYDA funding and the other to validate the outcomes of the youth league meeting.

The second story was about the political pressure being brought on an official of the same department to authorise full payment to a local consortium of politically connected tenderpreneurs for six portable gyms in Eastern Cape townships.

The problem was that only one gym had been delivered and its facilities fell far short of those described in the tender. One estimate put the actual value of the gym and its equipment at about a tenth of the tender price.

The deal appears to have been that the consortium gets the contract, puts up one gym to show to anyone asking questions and gets paid the full tender price with neither the promise nor, probably, the intention of finishing the job.

The accounting officer alleges that he has received death threats over his refusal to authorise payment until the job is fully done.

The second example probably could be exposed as corruption if the police investigation reportedly under way is pursued with vigour.

The first could be harder to crack, even with the secret documents that underpinned the newspaper's investigation because youth league members who attended are unlikely to publicly break ranks. It could be hard to prove that the intended training never happened.

Social media buzzed with reaction to the reports but the impression, even among ruling party loyalists, was that everyone knows this is what happens - get over it. Many seemed not to see any problem in the fraudulent diversion of state funds to a political organisation.

After the Eastern Cape on Saturday, the Sunday Times picked up the graft theme with detailed allegations against Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe's partner, Gugu Mtshali.

In allegations which Motlanthe immediately referred to the public protector for further investigation, the newspaper cited tape recordings and documents said to prove that Mtshali solicited a bribe in return for government backing for a private helicopter deal with Iran.

If true, the charges point to yet another mechanism for corruption - selling proximity to power.

When you want to do big business with the government, the first step is to get an appointment. That is how Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma's unhappy engagement with Virodene began. It was the basis of the arms deal corruption, it was at the root of the police leases scandal and you can bet it is going on every day as the government prepares to open a cheque book for the nuclear power programme.

The bottom line is that politicians determine whether officials and public office bearers get to keep their jobs - and the criteria often are obedience and loyalty over efficiency or honesty.

The good news is that many of these scams are exposed, usually by or through the media.

It would be gratifying to regard the flow of exclusive investigations as a credit only to good journalism. They are that and we take pride in ours as much as we admire those published by other papers.

But the reality is that much of the exposure is driven by the internecine war being waged within the ANC in the run up to Mangaung.

Access to documents, tapes and background briefings that explain them comes more often in our society from people with a political score to settle than from a whistle- blower trying only to do the right thing. The leaks that launch most investigations are motivated by malice, not morality.

That does not mean the media should not follow up and publish the results when the matter is one of genuine public interest.

But if the ANC does ever achieve the internal unity to which it aspires and the secrecy laws and constitutional changes currently on the table go through, it is going to become much harder and more dangerous to find and expose the graft that launches a fortune every day.

Boyle is Daily Dispatch editor