Cynical observers of the current state of play in South African politics are wont to observe that “turkeys don’t vote for Christmas”, by which they imply that the ANC is incapable of renewal, a course correction and a clean-up of the corrupt corners of the organisation.

This observation requires unpacking.

Certainly, the ANC was described by its own leader, President Cyril Ramaphosa, as “Accused Number One” before the Zondo Commission of Inquiry into State Capture. Chief Justice Raymond Zondo did not disappoint, he duly found the ANC guilty of orchestrating State Capture, illegally deploying its loyal cadres to control all the levers of power in the public administration and state-owned enterprises.

It was ANC deployees who colluded with crooked businessmen as disparate as the Watson brothers and the Guptas. It was the ANC that voted to disband the Scorpions, a crack anti-corruption unit. It was the ANC that hollowed out and gutted many institutions of state for the nefarious purpose of advancing the kleptocracy, cronyism, nepotism and grand corruption that State Capture in its SA incarnation entailed and still entails.

These malfeasances have brought the country to its knees. Around 55% of the population lives in poverty, children go hungry, and some of them starve to death. In the year to date, more than 550 children have been murdered in SA.

Joblessness is at an all-time high, with 34% or more of the workforce unemployed. More than 60% of young people under 35 years of age fall into the category called Neets, which means that they are not employed, not in education and not in training.

This phenomenon is an insurrection waiting to happen. Of the more than 1,400 suspects identified in the 5,000-plus pages of the State Capture Commission (SCC) report by the Chief Justice, the vast majority are ANC or ANC-aligned persons who need to be criminally investigated and if appropriate, charged and tried for the crimes involved in State Capture.

The state does not currently have the capacity to do the work required. Leaders of the prosecution service and the Hawks unit in the police complain that they are underfunded, understaffed and short of the type of skills needed to mount a successful investigation and prosecution in complex commercial corruption cases.

A backlog of 10 years

They speak of a backlog of 10 years in serious corruption matters and an infestation of “saboteurs” who have been planted in their ranks to ensure that corruption with impunity continues unabated in SA.

Embarrassingly, they have been beaten to the punch in the case of Steinhoff common-or-garden fraudster Markus Jooste by the SA Reserve Bank and by the JSE insofar as insider trading is concerned.

The entire architecture of the state’s operations against serious corruption needs to be revisited. The Scorpions were not perfect and they certainly did not enjoy secure tenure of office, but without them, the criminal justice administration has lingered in the doldrums when it comes to tackling the seriously corrupt in our midst.

Nobody even suggests these days that the Hawks are up to discharging their mandate to investigate serious corruption. They do good work in other respects, but the operational and structural environment is such that the necessary independence is simply not available to them.

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Mcebisi Jonas, speaking at the Motlanthe Foundation’s Inclusive Growth Forum 2022, said that “corruption, especially at local government level, remains at the heart of our inability to build a capable state and attract high-performing professionals into public service”.

His desire for economic growth, the tackling of inequality, and the repair of the bureaucracy all have the necessary precondition that corruption is countered efficiently and effectively so that new growth from new investment flourishes, the creation of jobs reduces inequality, and reform of the public service becomes possible when the bad eggs are discarded via a functioning criminal justice administration.

If Jonas is correct that corruption is at the heart of the dysfunction of the state, it follows that tackling the corrupt ought to be an urgent priority of the government. Now that the corruption in the ANC has been so thoroughly exposed in the SCC report, it has to be addressed urgently if the ANC leadership wishes to continue to receive the support it has hitherto received at the polls during elections.

When Cyril Ramaphosa swept to power at Nasrec in 2017, this is what he said on the topic: “Corruption must be fought with the same intensity and purpose that we fight poverty, unemployment and inequality.” The party would “act fearlessly” against the “abuse of office”, he vowed. Only, nearly five years later, the sun still hasn’t risen on his “new dawn”.

The National Executive Committee (NEC) of the ANC, its highest decision-making body between elections, passed a resolution as long ago as August 2020 on the topic of tackling corruption. “The NEC called upon the ANC-led government to urgently establish a permanent multidisciplinary agency to deal with all cases of white-collar crime, organised crime and corruption. Furthermore, the NEC called upon all law enforcement agencies to carry out their duties without fear, favour or prejudice,” is how The Citizen newspaper reported it.

The criteria selected by the NEC closely match those laid down in binding terms by the Constitutional Court in the Glenister litigation, yet more than two years later the Cabinet has not made up its mind on how to respond both to the NEC resolution and to the failure of successive administrations to implement properly the criteria set by the courts.

Public interest litigation

The ANC leadership must know that if the government continues to dither on the subject, it lays itself open to public interest litigation aimed at achieving the proper implementation of the decisions, findings and orders of the highest court in the land.

The Zondo Commission has highlighted the shortcomings in the criminal justice administration’s capacity to counter corruption. In the SCC report, the Chief Justice calls for “the establishment of a single, multifunctional, properly resourced and independent anti-corruption authority”.

In June 2022, the members of the Constitutional Review Committee of the National Assembly (an ANC-dominated body) unanimously resolved to invite Accountability Now to make a comprehensive presentation to it on the topic of establishing a new Chapter Nine body to prevent, combat, investigate and prosecute serious corruption in SA. A written submission has been presented already and a date for oral representations is awaited.

With greylisting looming, it is imperative that a strong anti-corruption stance be taken by government. There is no faster and better way to show that the enforcement of laws against money laundering and terrorism financing will in future take place in effective and efficient ways than to adopt the suggestions made by Accountability Now, adapt them if necessary, and put the legislative process in train.

Not only will the ANC be able to show to the voters in upcoming elections that it is indeed serious about countering corruption, but it will also be able to point the Financial Action Task Force in the direction of the draft legislation that has been in the hands of the Cabinet since August 2021, compliments of Accountability Now.

To remain paralysed on the need for reform is to surrender to the corrupt elements in the ANC. It will increase the prospects of being greylisted. The advent of greylisting will impact negatively on the wish list of Jonas summarised above.

It will increase poverty, exacerbate unemployment and see the Gini coefficient, which measures inequality, rise precipitously. There will be no incentive for ordinary voters at the polls in 2024 to support an ANC that has not addressed its “Accused Number One” status. The popularity of the ANC is already waning.

Mollycoddling of the corrupt in its ranks by not taking steps to reform the criminal justice administration in a way that enables it to tackle serious corruption would be an implicit concession by the ANC that it does not deserve the votes previously cast in its favour at election time. The delegates at its electoral conference in December should be extremely mindful of these considerations.

If the party of liberation is allowed by its leadership to become the party of corruption, the people of South Africa will take the advice of Nelson Mandela and vote it out of power.

Those turkeys in the ANC who think that they will be voting for an anti-corruption reform Christmas by supporting the necessary reform of the criminal justice administration should reconsider their position. The voters of SA should insist that the reforms be effected on pain of withdrawing their support of the ANC on voting day.

Fair trials for those allegedly involved in corruption is a small price to pay for remaining the most popular party in SA. Failing to lock them up after conviction places that popularity at risk.

Should the whole of the ANC go down protecting its bad eggs, or should the new dawn, so long in the making, break? The Cabinet has had more than two years to ponder the instruction given to it by the NEC on 4 August 2020. A response is overdue. DM