VIJAY NAIDOO: Good Business Basics – Time to turn off the party lights
There appears to be a sense of entitlement from the politically connected for their chance to ‘feed at the trough’ of state resources.
Does the President really need another committee or council (call it what you will) to tackle the scourge of corruption in the country. Methinks not!
There exists a raft of legislation and a plethora of investigative and prosecutorial bodies who bring serious firepower to the fight against corruption.
Legislation includes the Public Finance Management and Municipal Finance Management Acts (PFMA and MFMA) and The Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act (PRECCA).
The Special Investigating Unit (SIU), Hawks, and Asset forfeiture Unit (AFU) are directed almost exclusively toward the fight.
The simple thing that hamstrings them is political will.
The creation of the National Anti-Corruption Advisory Council (NACAC) cannot but bring to mind for me, the words attributed to the American comedian Fred Allen, who described a committee as “a group of the unprepared, appointed by the unwilling, to do the unnecessary”.
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There are, for me, a few simple steps that need to be taken to begin reining in the rampant looting of state resources.
Firstly, there must be swift consequence management for all transgressors, at all levels of government.
Secondly, the incestuous relationship between party and state (an unfortunate consequence of single party dominance) needs to be severed.
Finally, a line needs to be drawn in the sand that says this far and no further, for corruption.
Let’s unpack these a little bit.
There is an absolute sense of impunity amongst perpetrators that stems from the lack of capacity, urgency and willingness of law enforcement agencies to tackle them head on.
High powered, highly paid legal teams run rings against their State counterparts, dragging cases to the highest of courts over a number of years.
Employers (state departments or parastatals) also resort to labour law sanctions in the form of disciplinary inquiries that generally result in a slap on the wrist, allowing culprits to resurface in sister departments, not unusually the same ones they were accused of plundering previously.
The notional Chinese wall between state and party is all but destroyed by the professed policy of cadre deployment by the ruling party.
In most cases this deployment has no alignment with the skills and competencies required, but arise purely from political connections, making sanctions when wrongdoing is unearthed all the more difficult.
At its grossest manifestation, when you get party owned entities dealing with the State, as in the case of Chancellor House and the power station build, the seed is sown for financial skullduggery.
There appears to be a sense of entitlement from the politically connected for their chance to ‘feed at the trough’ of state resources.
Hence, ANC stalwart Smuts Ngonyama’s retort when challenged about his participation in a mining empowerment scheme that… ‘I did not join the revolution to be poor’. So, at some point, the party has to be declared over for the country to move forward.
Clearly, the golden thread is political will: to capacitate law enforcement and prosecutorial agencies to evenhandedly pursue miscreants, to curtail or properly implement cadre deployment, and to boldly and unequivocally turn off the party lights and draw the curtain on the looting party.
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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