MAKHUDU SEFARA | Commitment before commissions: democracy is not an easy ride

Chief justice Raymond Zondo’s mistake when he calls for a permanent state capture commission of inquiry with subpoena powers, is to assume that simply because it happened, it was necessarily a success worth repetition.

This, of course, isn’t to argue that the Zondo commission was a waste of our resources or time. Though, I suspect, the RET types now excited by the prospect of coalescing in the EFF after party leader Julius Malema’s announcement that he’s in talks with former ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule, might passionately argue, especially with the botching of some state capture cases, that the country has not received returns on its over R1bn investment in the corruption soap opera that unfolded before our eyes. Yet that’s not my point.

The Zondo commission was useful — to a point. Zondo on Thursday said the country must investigate making such a commission permanent. “[The commission] can call anybody, whether it’s the president or MPs or any minister, to come to answer and give evidence where there are allegations of corruption and state capture — so that even if the majority in parliament does not want questions asked or protects ministers and the president from questions, that commission would be an opportunity for everything to be explored and the evidence and answers to be given in the open.”

On the surface, this seems a reasonable point to make. After all, the ignoble pursuits of corruption overlords thrive in the dark.

Further, being agnostic champions of transparency comes naturally to journalists. It is what the South African National Editors Forum do too. The further away from the dark we move, the closer we get to accountability. But we should never confuse transparency for accountability. The fact that we can see that someone is corrupt brings us closer to holding them accountable. Yet we must still do the deed — hold them accountable.

What we do need is not to simply create new structures to replace old, infiltrated ones that no longer serve us. We should clean up what no longer works. We should professionalise policing, prosecution and the magistracy to the point we don’t need any more commissions.

Part of what the Zondo commission accomplished was to expose how deep-rooted corruption is in our country. For some, this had the effect of pushing them further into despondency, gnashing their teeth in disbelief as powerlessness crept in. Hopefully, to many, it made them resolve to take concrete steps to ferret out amasela (thieves).

This is why a commission like Zondo’s needed to be followed up by prosecutions that led to people wearing orange overalls. Without this, the commission serves to share depressing though crucial information. When ordinary people see the state bungle the prosecution of state capture champions in the Nulane case, for example, they throw their hands in the air in despair. They wonder if the state couldn’t successfully prosecute the people whose corruption we witnessed ad infinitum on our screens, who would it be able to successfully prosecute? The success of the commission — which was to surface corruption — is not leading to the jailing of the bad guys. If anything, the bad guys are emboldened. They claim their prosecutions are politically motivated. Read Magashule. Or Bongani Bongo, against whom some charges were withdrawn this week.

But even if we accepted that merely knowing that corruption gets exposed (even if not followed by successful prosecutions) is still a positive, who is to say that the commission won’t eventually be captured? The police, in the first place, are supposed to investigate everyone, including presidents and ministers, without fear or favour. Ditto elite units like the Hawks in its prosecution-led previous incarnation, the Scorpions. The courts, too, are supposed to be manned by people of integrity. Yet the magistrate’s commission is as busy as the Independent Police Investigative Directorate.

We need to not simply create new structures to replace old, infiltrated ones that no longer serve us. We should clean up what no longer works. We should professionalise policing, prosecution and the magistracy to the point we don’t need any more commissions. But looking for green shoots instead of fixing our challenges is what we do. The proliferation of private schools talks to our failure to hold government accountable and to force it to give us good public education. Ditto private medical care. Private security is another. We create parallels because we avoid doing the hard work democracy requires.

So no, chief justice Zondo, we don’t need a permanent Zondo commission. You did your part. We understand it not as a panacea to our complex corruption woes, but simply a part of the arsenal useful at the time. What we really need is a police force that does its job without fear or favour as enjoined by the constitution. We need prosecutors and judges who do not kowtow to power, but are guided only by the law. We need politicians who are in it to serve, not to be served.

And where you are right, we need an active citizenry, one that punishes leaders who sleep on the job. That way, we do not create unnecessary parallel structures simply because we do not have the gumption to confront the vagaries of South African life. It may be inconvenient, but we must be prepared to toil for this democracy if we want long-term results.