March 13 2008 at 04:16PM
By Tony Leon and Gareth van Onselen
Peter Hain might have done better for himself had he pursued a political and ministerial career in South Africa, where he grew up, not in Britain.
In late January he was obliged to resign from the British Cabinet for failure to declare a donation to his campaign for the deputy leadership of his party.
His resignation, demanded by the strict standards of accountability in Westminster, could never have occurred in South Africa, where government and Parliament have become virtually ethics-free zones.
Under the influence of the ANC, the South African government does not have a clear understanding of or appreciation for the principle of accountability.
Coupled with its insistence on using "the collective" as a smokescreen to protect individual culpability, this has reduced ministerial office to a safe haven for low standards and poor performance.
As a result, misconduct and malpractice are seldom met with meaningful penalties and, instead, a culture of excuse and compromise has been embraced, where everything is negotiable, there are no red lines and seldom are there consequences for failure.
It is a problem and attitude disseminated from the highest office in the land and one which, in turn, has infected even the lowest levels of the public service. But let's start at the top, with President Thabo Mbeki.
Last week, answering a DA question in the National Assembly on whether the Cabinet should be held to account for the Eskom crisis, the president's response was, at best, specious, at worst, warped.
He said: "The government takes collective responsibility for the national electricity emergency. This means that the attempt to attribute this national emergency to particular ministers is misdirected. The president of the Republic will certainly not join that effort."
And so we reach an intellectual cul de sac. For where do you take the case for accountability from there? Nowhere. You can't, because the president's logic is circular.
First, he equates accountability with responsibility, yet they are two different concepts. Responsibility tells you who is in charge; accountability refers to the consequences that those in charge must face when they fail to perform.
The reference to a collective blurs the issue even more. Instead of one person being held to account, suddenly the entire Cabinet is accountable two very different interpretations of the word.
Second a favourite trick of the president's by stating something forcefully, he implies (or perhaps hopes) it is the infallible truth and anything to the contrary is devious or dishonest.
Why is an attempt to attribute this crisis to a single minister misdirected? Because the president says so? Wrong. Actually, it's perfectly logical.
Various processes failed. In each case, someone was in charge of that process. And, in each case, they must be held to account there must be consequences for their failure.
Here is one element of the crisis, by way of illustration. Politicsweb recently set out how Eskom's management of its coal supply helped created the electricity crisis.
In June 2002, former Eskom CEO Thulani Gcabashe approved a corporate directive on procurement from black suppliers.
This established a "hierarchy of procurement" which had to be followed in sourcing products and services.
Although existing agreements were to be respected, for any further purchases drawn from outside the company Eskom was required to go first to "black women-owned suppliers", then "small black suppliers", then "large black suppliers", then "black empowering suppliers".
Only once these options had been exhausted could "other" South African suppliers be considered."
The result was that Eskom's coal stockpile was systematically reduced year-on-year, from 61 days in 2000 to just 18 days in 2007.
Now, all his other responsibilities aside, has Gcabashe faced any consequences for that massively destructive policy? No, none. In fact, he is still on Eskom's payroll.
He was responsible for that policy. It failed with devastating results. Yet he hasn't had to face a single consequence.
But in Parliament, Mbeki went further. When Dr CP Mulder asked him about the constitutionally mandated requirement of individual ministerial accountability to Parliament, the president's response was instructive. He said: "We can't resort to fall guys and scapegoats and things like that."
But while Mbeki might have intended his response to protect the relevant minister now Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka he ignored the fact that there are, indeed, "fall guys and scapegoats" in this saga.
But they are not in the Cabinet or in the public service, but rather in the work force or more likely in the unemployment queues.
While Mbeki was shielding the Cabinet and Eskom top brass from any responsibility or blame, Goldfields, Africa's second-largest gold producer, had announced, just two weeks before, that it might have to eliminate 7 000 jobs or 13 percent of its workforce because of power cuts in the mining sector.
By removing accountability meaningful consequences or penalties from any corporate structure (public or private) you are, in effect, removing the fear of failure.
Indeed, if failure becomes just another concept to be condoned by reference to generic terms like "collective responsibility", then, in effect, it becomes acceptable to fail. Even if the failure in question causes devastating economic consequences and fuels unemployment.
The leitmotiv of the ANC government appears to be "it is acceptable to fail". And that attitude is rubbing off on our citizenry, which is hardly surprising given the tip from the top.
Be it the electricity crisis or the service you receive at a home affairs office, South Africans no longer expect the best from their government; indeed, many expect hardly anything at all.
The president has now signalled that there is no consequence for poor performance and no one is held responsible.
This grim prospectus one of the less noted legacies of the Mbeki era needs to be reversed unless we are content to slide toward the low road of mendacity and mediocrity.
Tony Leon is a former leader of the parliamentary opposition and 2007 Fellow, Institute of Politics, Harvard University. Gareth van Onselen is Director of Special Projects, DA.
In the last few days of January, South Africa's steadily escalating power crisis -- there have been increasing electricity outages nationwide for the last few years --finally came to a head when power cuts not only closed businesses and offices across the country but led to the complete closure of all the country's mines. Ever since the discovery of diamonds in 1867 and gold in 1886, this country's economy has been based first and foremost on its prodigious mineral wealth. Never, in all that time, had the mines had to shut for lack of power. Nothing could have brought home more starkly the crisis the country now faces. Eskom, the state electricity monopoly quickly announced that the country should not seek any new foreign investment projects till 2013 since there would be no power to run them. Foreign tourists were marooned on top of Table Mountain for a cold night because the cable cars lacked the power to get them back down. Business confidence plummeted. White emigration began to rise again sharply and everywhere one hears tales of capital flight. The Rand has fallen by over 14%.
Government ministers rushed to insist that the crisis would be managed, that there was no need to panic and the Minister for Energy even told Parliament that one solution would be for everyone to go to bed earlier. But economists hurriedly revised this year's growth rate down from 5% to 2% or less and Eskom warned everyone that even with power rationing there would be continued power cuts until at lest 2013.
Yet when the African National Congress (ANC) came to power in 1994 Eskom was the world's seventh-largest electricity utility, providing the world's cheapest electricity and with a 40% capacity reserve. The government treated cheap electricity almost as a human right and supplied it to many black areas that had never had it before. In 1998, an official white paper warned that new power stations needed to be built if there were not to be power cuts by 2007. The government not only ignored the warning but also imposed a formal ban on the building of new power stations for six years in order to encourage private power utilities to tender. Many came and looked, but realizing that they were expected to provide power at rock-bottom prices while giving away quite a bit of their equity in black empowerment deals not a single one tendered. Meanwhile, Eskom, under its new black management, got rid of large numbers of senior, skilled whites, brought in affirmative action replacements, saw standards of maintenance and technical competence plummet and then multiplied its problems by deciding to sell off its huge coal stockpiles and to privilege small black coal producers in future procurement. Thus, it emerged, when the mines were finally shut down Eskom was operating at 25% less than capacity because of coal shortages, the low quality of coal supplied and the fact that much of it was mere coal dust which, in rain, turned into incombustible mud.
The ANC's embarrassment is considerable for, despite all its avowals that it would not make the same mistakes seen elsewhere in independent Africa, it has done exactly that -- the failure of governance is huge, unmistakable, undeniable. There has been the usual desperate search to see how the crisis can somehow be blamed on apartheid, but the great unmentionable fact, present in every mind, is that under white rule there were no power cuts.
An even greater embarrassment now lies ahead. Last year the head of FIFA, soccer's international governing body, warned angrily that South Africa, which is slated to host the World Cup in 2010, had to strengthen its pitiful soccer team, since it was hard to imagine a successful tourney without a home team capable of keeping fans interested. But the power crisis throws even that in the shade. Can the new soccer stadia possibly be completed in time with the continual power cuts?
If the government were honest it would admit that it cannot promise to stage a decent World Cup in 2010 and ask that its hosting duties be postponed until 2014 or 2018 instead. Such a public confession of failure is, however, politically and psychologically impossible. After all, when South Africa was not awarded the 2006 World Cup, President Thabo Mbeki bitterly labelled it "the globalization of apartheid." Even now the government insists, as an article of faith, that 2010 will be a resounding success, "because all the stadiums will have back-up generators."
FIFA, we are told, is "closely monitoring" the situation, but it is now clear that if the World Cup is held in South Africa in 2010, it will occur in a country where most services work only spasmodically. Even now one faces non-working traffic lights, street lights, escalators, lifts, ATMs, shop and garage tills -- let alone lights, hot water and cooked meals -- on a daily basis. Moreover, Chevron has announced the shutting down of its refinery here since it cannot operate without a guaranteed and continuous power supply, and other continuous process industries are in the same plight.
The Cup will be held in the midst of South Africa's winter, when night temperatures in Johannesburg, Pretoria and Bloemfontein can all fall to near freezing. What is clear is that the government is constitutionally incapable of facing reality, so Sepp Blatter, the current head of FIFA will have to decide, whether to go ahead or move the tournament. Blatter owes his election as FIFA president to the African bloc, which elected him on a promise of bringing the World Cup to Africa, so he too has incentive to ignore reality. All things considered, then, a great ship is steering straight for the rocks with both the captain and the pilot insisting no danger lies ahead. The disaster which threatens deserves only one adjective: titanic. - RW Johnson is emeritus fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and Southern Africa correspondent for The Sunday Times.
