JUSTICE MALALA | A sting in the tail: don’t hold your breath for the Scorpions’ return

The ANC now has a golden opportunity to show the nation that it is a sincere and serious organisation whose leaders are capable of deep reflection and contrition. It has a chance to show us it is capable of action, that it is not the face of corruption and that it is not just full of hot air. It has a chance to redeem itself.

I say this because on Sunday the party’s secretary-general, Fikile Mbalula, declared that the disbandment of the Scorpions crime-fighting unit in 2008 — despite protests from civil society and opposition parties — was a terrible mistake.

“The model of the Scorpions seemed to be working for us at that time, and to be honest the ANC needs to go back to that,” Mbalula told the Sunday Times this weekend. “We were very big critics of the Scorpions, about the way to arrest. But from a quality point of view criminals knew that [when you were] surrounded by the Scorpions, it’s game over.”

As I have said before, the one thing ANC leaders sorely lack is the ability to listen to themselves when they speak. These fellows speak as if they are political analysts and not elected, powerful, men and women who can bring about change. When we, the people, moan, they also moan as if they are not sitting with the resources and the constitutional power to act.

The only time that I have been truly amazed by the ANC’s ability to act is back in 2008, when the party went to extraordinary lengths to protect its corruption-accused leader Jacob Zuma and swiftly and ruthlessly disbanded the unit.

I have written about that shameful period many, many, times before in this column, but I am going to repeat the history for new readers and those who have forgotten due to the many other acts of corruption that have attended the ANC since 2008. It is important to remember what happened to the Scorpions because it was the beginning, in many ways, of the destruction of key institutions of accountability that took place between 2008 and 2018 during Zuma’s leadership of the ANC and the country.

Within months the ANC had introduced the requisite parliamentary motions to disband the unit, and by September 2008, just nine months after the ANC resolution to do so, the Scorpions unit was dead and buried.

At its December 2007 conference the ANC vowed to disband the crime-fighting unit as it was the key cog in the prosecution of the party’s scandal-soaked new president, Jacob Zuma. Now, the ANC took many resolutions at that conference (for example, it said it would implement a national health insurance scheme or NHI) but very few, if any, of them have been implemented.

Yet, with the Scorpions’ resolution the ANC was an efficiency machine. I wrote here a few years ago: “The ANC under Jacob Zuma was in such a hurry to get its president off the hook from his alleged crimes of corruption that it dismantled the Scorpions with a speed we have yet to see take place with any legislative project in our country”.

It did not just dismantle the Scorpions quickly, it did so boastfully and with venom, trampling on all advice and calls for caution. The ANC secretary-general at the time, Gwede Mantashe, arrogantly told the Business Day newspaper that “the ANC had created a monster in the Scorpions, and this monster had to be undone”.

Many will remember the rabid Maggie Sotyu, at the time chair of the portfolio committee on safety and security in parliament, declaring just as arrogantly: “The Scorpions are going ... We are here to implement the policies of the ruling party.”

They did. Within months the ANC had introduced the requisite parliamentary motions to disband the unit, and by September 2008, just nine months after the ANC resolution to do so, the Scorpions unit was dead and buried. This was corruption at its most organised level: the entire party, all its parliamentarians, killed a state institution to protect its leader who was in the dock for corrupt activities. If you want to know why South Africa is being spoken of as a potentially failed state today (Mbalula said this to a BBC interviewer two weeks ago), then the destruction of the Scorpions in 2008 is where it all began.

Now, with Mbalula’s declaration to revive the Scorpions, the ANC has a chance to redeem itself. It can do so by reinstating the Scorpions within the next few months — a move no single party in parliament today (except the ANC) would oppose.

Will the ANC act instead of just talking? Well, the tight grip of crime and corruption in SA is like the collapse of healthcare facilities in SA. Malegapuru Makgoba, the health scientist, was asked in a radio interview this week whether the public health crisis can be solved. His answer was short and dry: “I don’t think with this government.”

The Scorpions back in months — or ever? Not with this government, not with this party. Prove me wrong, ANC.