Ethical breaches always start small. First, you protect a comrade when it is discovered that they took a bribe. Then you say a hefty discount on a luxury car is not a kickback. Then you look away when another comrade receives millions so that he can protect a comrade’s company from scrutiny in the arms deal. Then a family of thugs is appointing your cabinet ministers for you — and you are applauding them as they do so.
If you want to understand what brought us to where we are now — a country where thievery and corruption are rampant and our institutions are collapsing because no one does anything unless they are bribed — then look no further than the utterances last week of the Eastern Cape ANC’s Babalo Madikizela. Speaking at the party’s provincial conference, where he was challenging premier Oscar Mabuyane for the chairmanship, Madikizela told his supporters that they must expect to be offered bribes to vote for Mabuyane’s slate of candidates.
“They will give you money because they are part of the establishment, they are the haves. Take the money, comrades, but do the right thing. Let’s remain focused, disciplined.”
The “right thing”, in this case, was to vote for him.
There is so much that is wrong about Madikizela’s statement one wants to throw one’s hands in the air out of sheer and utter despair. For example, he exposes his comrades and his premier, Mabuyane, as a fraudster who pays bribes to garner votes. Surely the police should open a fraud docket? When an MEC of a province, and a senior ANC leader, accuses his own comrades of using “establishment” money to win votes, then surely this is a police matter?
Both Madikizela and Mabuyane are implicated in allegations that they may have taken bribes from monies that were meant for funeral arrangements for the late Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. Both Madikizela and Mabuyane have denied the allegations vigorously, except for one curious aspect — hundreds of thousands of rand linked to the funeral arrangements made it into their or their spouse’s bank accounts for no clear reason. Were they “taking the money” but doing some mysterious “right thing” with it?
The ANC always has an excuse for criminality, no matter how damaging, craven or depraved it might be.
Now, if Madikizela were really an ethical leader he would be telling his supporters that if anyone enticed them with money, they should expose such criminality. Yet, when Clement Manyathela asked him on Radio 702 why he was encouraging unethical behaviour, he answered that “vote buying is wrong but sometimes people are in a tight corner”.
This is the heart of the matter. The ANC always has an excuse for criminality, no matter how damaging, craven or depraved it might be. When Madikizela says “people are in a tight corner”, what exactly does he mean? Most South Africans are in a tight corner — they are unemployed, impoverished and hopeless. Unlike many ANC leaders, they don’t take bribes, they don’t steal, they don’t encourage looting.
To be fair, this article is not about Madikizela. What he said is nothing new or outrageous. This sort of casual criminality is what most ANC leaders have been tolerating or openly encouraging over the past 28 years.
The ANC’s slippery slope began back in the 1990s. Take a moment to reflect on the case of UDM leader Bantu Holomisa. Holomisa was expelled from the ANC in 1996 when he alleged before the truth commission that the then public enterprises minister Stella Sigcau, a former Transkei homeland prime minister, had accepted a R50,000 bribe from another former Transkei headman George Matanzima, which originated from hotel magnate Sol Kerzner.
Holomisa was vindicated when Kerzner told the US’s New Jersey Casino Control Commission in 1997 that he did make a R2m payment to Matanzima in December 1986. He said he “foolishly and stupidly” passed on a bank account number from the Transkei Development Corporation to a lawyer, but it was never his intention to pay to obtain the Wild Coast Casino licence in the 1980s. The president of the ANC at the time of Holomisa’s expulsion was Nelson Mandela.
Such breaches of ethics increased quickly in the ANC and in SA society. The party looked away as many of its leaders who found themselves “in a tight corner” became frontmen for corrupt businesspeople. Then corruption became the rule, not the exception.
We are here now. On Friday ANC NEC member Aaron Motsoaledi, asked by journalists if there was vote-buying in the ANC, answered: “I am not going to stand here and lie to you and say there are no ANC members who offer others money.”
It started with the small things, with excuses that one “is in a tight corner”. It’s a deluge now. Is it unstoppable? Perhaps yes, but that won’t be through the ANC’s doing. As Madikizela illustrates, that party is gone for good.
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