VIJAY NAIDOO: Good Business Basics – Organised violence deadly by-product of corruption
Corruption, sadly, has become systemic, and systematic in our country.
It’s been just over a year since the murder of Gauteng Health Department official Babita Deokaran, who was killed in the driveway of her home.
That the murder was in fact a hit is now common cause, perpetrated at the behest of individuals whose looting of the provincial department was under direct threat by her investigations.
While the criminal investigation was fairly swift, and quickly rounded up a number of suspects, the inaction against, and absolute lack of consequence for senior officials of the department has been nothing but shocking.
It is only in the recent weeks that Premier David Makhura has announced his intention for an ‘independent inquiry’ into the murder, and the breaking news of the suspension of the CEO of Tembisa Hospital, Ashley Mthunzi, heavily implicated in the looting of hospital budget, and the CFO of the Gauteng Health Department Lerato Madyo, Deokaran’s line manager.
It has come to light that the late Deokaran had briefed Madyo in detail about the dubious transactions she had uncovered at Tembisa Hospital (some R800m odd) and, alarmingly, had also expressed fears for her personal safety just days before her killing.
Madyo’s inaction is a pointed illustration of the saying attributed to Edmund Burke ….’the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men (or women) to do nothing’.
This may be a generous interpretation of Madyo’s actions (or inactions), as investigations may yet reveal her complicity and direct gain from the financial skullduggery, so a modicum of reasonable doubt for her actions may be justifiable.
No such latitude can be ascribed to Mthunzi though, who actively supported and underwrote the looting of the budget of the hospital, by ensuring that bogus invoices were under the R500 000 mark, which fell under his authorisation powers.
His complicity is bare for all to see in the hundreds of invoices he signed off, many to freshly minted companies with no experience or track record in the items ostensibly purchased.
The evidence of the institutionalisation of corruption, and the incestuous relationship between the nominally independent State (read provincial government) and ruling party was plain to see in revelations (News 24 Online , 17th August) that the embattled hospital CEO had approached ‘ANC connections’ for assistance in the ongoing investigations by the newspapers journalists.
Corruption, sadly, has become systemic, and systematic in our country. Systemic in the sense that the infiltration of the State by the ruling party has allowed the cancer to infect the entire state apparatus, and systematic in the methods and schemes hatched by the perpetrators to extract the maximum dividend from their actions.
Given the cold blooded, organised violence that has become a by-product of corruption, one may well add the term deadly.
Vijay Naidoo is the CEO of the Port Shepstone Business Forum. He writes in his personal capacity. The views expressed are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication.
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