DA finds ANC skeletons

24/05/2009 08:05  - (SA)  

Johann Maarman, Rapport

Cape Town - Expensive Cuban cigars found in a former minister's office, people who were paid up to R100 000 a month to "do nothing" and unapproved expenses.

These are some of the latest scandals threatening the ANC after the DA took over the provincial government in the Western Cape.

Western Cape Premier Helen Zille caused a political furore on Friday when she revealed that the ANC had transferred for free provincial land to the national government a day before the election.

The land is worth about R500m and thought to be one of the province's biggest assets.

Meanwhile, Rapport learned that several new ministers in the Western Cape are investigating suspect transactions in their departments.

"The list is becoming longer. Things are becoming worse for the ANC in the Western Cape," an informed source told Rapport.

Theuns Botha, the Western Cape minister for health and the provincial leader of the DA, said the land deal was nothing less that "constructive disempowerment".

"I don't know how the Western Cape ANC can justify their actions. It is disgraceful."

- Rapport

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The ANC and corruption - the irony

Guest Blog: The ANC and corruption - the irony.

It is almost impossible to believe ANC leaders when they claim that they are serious about fighting corruption.

They never miss the opportunity to emphasize how much the ‘ANC is committed to fighting corruption’. On the other hand, they miss every available opportunity to act against their corrupt colleagues.

The most recent and perhaps glaring example of this is the ANC’s insistence to nominate Mrs. Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and the Travelgate fraudsters as candidates for the National Assembly. Both Mrs. Madikizela-Mandela and the five Travelgate MPs (namely Bathabile Dlamini, Mnyamzeli Booi, Beauty Dludlani, Angie Molebatsi, and Duma Ndleleni) are in the ANC’s top 100 candidates for the National Assembly.

Mrs. Madikizela-Mandela, by the way, had a five-year sentence for fraud and theft reduced on appeal to three and a half years for 43 convictions of fraud in 2004. The sentence was suspended for five years. Mrs. Madikizela-Mandela’s suspended sentence will only lapse in July this year by which time she will already be a Member of Parliament. While section 47 (1) e of the Constitution disqualifies ‘anyone who is convicted of an offence and sentence to more than 12 months imprisonment without the option of fine’, it is silent about the eligibility of individuals with a suspended sentence to be nominated to Parliament. This silence, however, does not suggest that it is appropriate to nominate an individual serving a suspended sentence to be an MP. The nomination of Mrs. Madikizela-Mandela reaffirms the dominant perception that the ANC values party loyalty above good governance.

Now let’s turn to the Travelgate fraudsters. They are:

Bathabile Dlamini no 16 on their national list was ordered to repay R120 000 after receiving five year suspended sentence in 2006 for defrauding Parliament of R254 00 in travel vouchers in the Travelgate scandal.
Mnyamzeli Booi no 65 on the list is still facing fraud charges for his role in the Travelgate Scandal.

Beauty Dludlani no 58 on the list was fined R120 000 payable over 40 months for fraud involving R289 000 in the Travelgate scandal.
Angie Molebatsi no 84 on the list was sentenced to pay a R25 000 fine, or three years in jail, plus an additional five year suspended sentence in the Travelgate scandal
Duma Ndleleni no 79 on the list: She was fined R30 000 payable over three years and given a five year suspended sentence in the Travelgate scandal.

The Travelgate fraudsters collectively defrauded Parliament of millions worth of taxpayers’ money. They betrayed the same constituency they were supposed to serve with excellence: the public. The ANC never took any disciplinary action against them when they were nailed. It still failed to discipline them even after most of them pleaded guilty for their crimes. Now it sees fit to re-deploy them to the same institution they defrauded. If the ANC was as serious about fighting corruption as it claims to be it should have not nominated fraudsters to Parliament. Their nominations make a complete mockery of Jacob Zuma assertion that ‘the ANC does not condone or tolerate corruption’. In fact, all available evidence shows that the ANC rewards individuals with a history of corruption with the offer of public office.

The nomination of candidates to Parliament was a golden opportunity for the ANC to show that it is indeed serious about fighting corruption. Yet again, it squandered the opportunity like it has done in the past.

Their nominations undermine the country’s efforts to defeat the spread of the virus of corruption in the public sector. Parliament needs to be a beacon of good governance and ethical leadership. In order to be seen as such, parliamentarians and potential parliamentarians must be beyond reproach. But when the ruling party repeatedly deploys ethically tainted individuals to this institution, it creates the impression that there is nothing wrong in being embroiled in corruption as long as one is a ‘loyal cadre’ of the ANC.

The ANC has never been serious about fighting corruption. The badly thought move to disband the Scorpions is a case in particular. It is an open secret that the Scorpions were disbanded for their success in nailing corrupt ANC leaders despite all the conspiracy theories that the ANC and its alliance partners have advanced in support of the dissolution of the DSO.

The ANC will never be seen to be serious about fighting corruption for as long as it continues to elevate party loyalists with a proven track record of corruption to senior public offices. Unless, it is able to consistently show that it values ethical leadership over party loyalty, its ‘commitment to fighting corruption’ will remain what it is; empty rhetoric.

The ANC has talked the talk on corruption. But it remains to be seen whether it will ever walk that talk.

Guest blog by:
DA Political Researcher

 

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ANC has 'created corrupt crony culture'

By Michael Georgy

Sunday April 19 2009

South African opposition parties accused the ruling ANC of creating a culture of cronyism and corruption at closing rallies yesterday before a parliamentary election this week.

The African National Congress is almost certain to win Wednesday's election -- but the party still faces its biggest challenge since coming to power at the end of apartheid in 1994.

The main issue is whether it can retain the two-thirds parliamentary majority it needs to change the constitution, as it faces criticism over its track record on crime, poverty and AIDS.

The new breakaway Congress of the People (COPE) party, formed by ANC dissidents, hopes to tap into frustrations with ANC graft scandals.

State prosecutors have given the ANC a boost by dropping graft charges against party leader Jacob Zuma, whom the new parliament is certain to elect president.

His ANC has promised to do more to bring economically disadvantaged blacks into the mainstream economy through land reform and affirmative action programmes.

But Africa's biggest economy is on the brink of recession, and Zuma will be in a difficult position. Union allies are pushing him to spend more on the poor, while foreign investors fear he will steer the economy to the left.

COPE has changed the political landscape, but analysts say its chances of breaking the ANC's dominance have faded after an initial buzz.

Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi said the ANC had let South Africa down after white-minority rule ended.

"We dared to believe in the even greater hope that South Africa could soon become an equally prosperous, fair and just society," he said. "But soon our hopes were crushed by the harsh realities that some unscrupulous members of the ruling party and erroneous policies imposed on us all."

On Friday, the IFP accused the ANC of employing "terror tactics" and injuring 13 of its members in attacks ahead of the poll.

Critics say South Africa has effectively become a one-party state because people vote for parties, not individuals, giving the ANC an enormous advantage.

Opposition Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille said the ANC could turn the country into another failed African state.

"That's how the closed, crony society for comrades works. It's about making a few people rich and everyone else poor," said Zille.

- Michael Georgy

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ANC lied - Zille

16/04/2009 21:18  - (SA) 

Michael Hamlyn

Cape Town - DA leader Helen Zille on Thursday accused the ANC of lying about its plans to change the Constitution to deprive local authorities of their powers.

"When I raised concerns about this bill on Monday, the Minister of Provincial and Local Government denied any knowledge of it," Zille said.

"He said: 'If Mrs Zille has such a document, she must produce it.' A spokesperson for his department also feigned ignorance, claiming: 'I don't know where [Zille] got it from but right now, as we stand there are no such plans.'

"ANC spokesperson Jessie Duarte said: 'The ANC wishes to place on record that it has no intention to diminish in any way the Constitutional powers of local government'."

However, the draft Constitution 17th Amendment Bill approved by the Cabinet, Zille said, empowers national government to usurp powers from local government, and provides clear proof that the ANC wants to change the Constitution to entrench its power.

'Don't let them get two-thirds majority'

"That is why it is so important to keep the ANC below the two-thirds majority it needs to pass the bill to change the Constitution," she said.

"If voters give the ANC a two-thirds majority, the ANC will destroy the capacity of other parties to deliver where they govern.

"This shows that the ANC lies, baldly and blatantly. It treats the people of South Africa with contempt.

"The rug has now been ripped from under the ANC, and six days before the election, the Cabinet has been forced into confessing its plans."

The DA leader and mayor of Cape Town said that the ANC wants municipalities to be reduced to administrative arms of central government.

The ANC now claims the purpose is merely to facilitate the introduction of Regional Electricity Distributors as public entities.

A grave mistake

"We believe this policy step would be a grave mistake on its own and seriously threaten the viability of local government," Zille said.

"But the way the Bill is worded means that its scope is far broader than that.

"It enables national government to limit the executive authority of municipalities in respect of local government matters listed in Part B of Schedule 4 and Part B of Schedule 5.

"This includes electricity and gas reticulation, water and sanitation, fire-fighting, refuse removal, waste disposal, markets, municipal roads and cleansing.

"This Bill will be interpreted widely to enable a centralised ANC to severely limit the mandate of an elected local government, especially where the ANC does not govern and where local authorities legitimately refuse to implement ANC policies.

If it manages to pass this Constitutional amendment, giving itself a range of reasons to undermine local government, the ANC could effectively nullify voters' choice and enforce ANC policy from the centre.

- I-Net Bridge (News24)

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SA's selective democracy

30/03/2009 09:02  - (SA)  

Almost exactly 15 years ago, Nelson Mandela took the oath of office as President of the Republic of South Africa and our country immediately became the world's most shining example of a constitutional democracy at its best.

We smiled, walked tall and generally looked down our noses at far less perfect democracies like the USA, UK, and Europe.

Today, we are not the world's best example of a constitutional democracy. If anything, the only sort of democracy we can lay claim to is a Selective Democracy, which is probably the worst kind of democracy there is.

Selective Democracy is so bad that it's actually almost better to come right out and admit to being a one party dictatorship of a country in which the favourite national pass time is social one-upmanship.

You know you live in a Selective Democracy when:

Politicians vociferously commit themselves to upholding the independence of the judiciary until a judgement goes against them and then they publicly say that all judges are racist idiots.

When politicians who fought for decades against the iniquities of apartheid and struggled for human rights, ban someone like the Dalai Lama just because his presence in this country might annoy China.

When politicians are seen to uphold the rule of law by watching as their friends go to jail for fraud, then use their clout to set them free on all sorts of flimsy grounds before they have spent more than a couple of minutes in a cells.

When politicians are found guilty of a crime and their political party carries them shoulder-high to the gates of the prison while behaving as though the guilty party had just scored the winning goal in a World Cup final.

When political party youth leagues rant and rave about their democratic right to go and address crowd in opposition strongholds and then talk about killing anyone who doesn't agree with their leader.

When politicians create a special task team to combat crime and then disband it when they find it targeting them.

When it takes prosecutors five minutes to stick a shoplifter in jail and almost ten years to get to first base in a legal action against a high profile politician in spite of claiming for years and years that they have cast-iron evidence of his guilt.

When a bunch of politicians appoint a board of directors to the national broadcaster and within a few months those same politicians want to fire them due to a sudden apparent lack of confidence, but actually because those politicians now have a new boss who doesn't like the old boss and therefore doesn't like the board of the national broadcaster not because they have suddenly become bad people. Then, when they can't fire them they just make up a new law to let them do it.

When the most visible result of a decade and a half of affirmative action and black economic empowerment is 500 exceedingly rich fatcats and just as many unemployed as there were before. Now, because of these fine examples set by politicians, the whole country is getting in on the Selective Democracy act.

Ordinary

To ordinary people, Selective Democracy means:

If you are poor you are entitled to steal electricity even if this kills your neighbours.

If you are poor you can steal just about anything because your are entitled to. Even steal from other poor people.

If you are homeless, you can just move into houses in spite of some equally poor people being on the list ahead of you.

Driving unroadworthy taxis like manic madmen, causing accidents and killing passengers right left and centre just because you feel entitled to.

Disrupt traffic, destroy property and assault innocent passers-by just because government wants to introduce a better bus service. Selective Democracy to the taxi industry means competition only works when they are competing against poor bus and rail services and absolutely not the other way round.

Driving your new BMW at 200kph on a freeway while at the same time changing lanes without indicating and chatting away on your cell phone because you have spent R500 000 on your Beemer and feel entitled to get your money's worth out of it.

Selective Democracy means being able to drive any car at any speed and any old how no matter how dangerously because if the taxi drivers can get away with it then why shouldn't you.

Selective Democracy means you can beat another motorist to death with a hockey stick for cutting you off, but at the same time feeling entitled to give the finger to and/or shoot anyone who has the nerve to hoot at you when you cut them off.

It also means that if you run a business where a lot of cash is involved, paying tax is optional. And if you opt not to, you can still bitch like hell when your rubbish isn't collected or a pothole in the road isn't fixed within minutes of appearing.

If you run a big business and a senior executive rips you off, you can give him a golden handshake, ask him to resign and then promise not to say anything if he doesn't, and then sweep it all under the carpet. You don't have to lay a charge of theft even though the law insists you must, because you don't want to damage the image of the company with controversy. Then, you complain at dinner parties about politicians flouting the rule of law.

The list of examples of Selective Democracy goes on and on and, let's face it, not only politcians and businessmen, but a huge number of ordinary folk who are guilty, even in some small way, of manipulating democracy to suit themselves.

But, who is to blame? Who the heck started it all?

Well, there is only one answer to that. It starts by the people who lead us. Politicians and businessmen.

The examples they set by being so patently selective in the way they either vociferously uphold democracy or simply ignore it when it suits them can't help but have an impact on society.

It is the start of a process that has more and more ordinary law abiding people thinking: "Well, if they can do it, why can't I."

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Support for Hogan grows

26/03/2009 12:32  - (SA) 

Cape Town - Civil society groups and a Constitutional Court judge have added their voices to growing support for Health Minister Barbara Hogan's stand on the Dalai Lama.

Hogan provoked the ire of the government on Tuesday by saying its denial of a visa to the Tibetan leader under Chinese pressure showed it was "dismissive of human rights", and urging it to apologise.

The Helen Suzman Foundation said in a statement it supported the "principled stance" taken by Hogan.

"The notion of a minister having a different view from Cabinet on a matter is not unprecedented nor is it unacceptable for that opinion to be voiced publicly," the foundation said.

"Any censure or other steps that may be taken against Hogan will be deeply unfortunate."

It said Hogan, who "personally" knew the deep suffering of political intolerance, should be commended for reminding South Africans of some basic tenets of their own history and how the country had a special duty to human rights campaigners globally.

Constitutional Court judge Kate O'Regan on Thursday publicly backed Hogan, SABC radio news reported.

"It is a matter of dismay that human rights does not seem to enter into the picture of some foreign affairs decisions that are made," O'Regan was quoted as saying.

She said that like Hogan, she remembered the years of the 1980s "when South Africa was so fortunate to have friends all over the world assisting our human rights struggle".

Narrow interests

Managing director of the Afrikanerbond Jan Bosman said the refusal of a visa to the Dalai Lama was an example of a government that puts its own narrow interests first with no regard to internationally acceptable norms.

"It must therefore be welcomed that individuals such as Ms Barbara Hogan, Minister of Health, spoke out against this decision," he said.

"The deafening silence by the rest of Cabinet must be seen as condoning this abuse of the most basic of human rights."

The Western Cape Religious Leaders Forum on Thursday released a letter it sent to President Kgalema Motlanthe earlier in the week expressing its "serious concern" about the denial of the visa.

"We raise our voice alongside the many others of our civil society expressing anger and disappointment," said the letter, which was signed by forum chairman, the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town Thabo Makgoba.

"We were... shocked by the decision to block a visit by one of the world's most highly respected and visible spokespersons for religious faith, tolerance and human rights.

"By acting in a way that reflects Beijing's political demands you have weakened our national sovereignty."

The letter asked Motlanthe to "reflect" on the decision.

"As leaders of diverse faiths and communities, we believe South Africa has erred in its judgement."

Peace conference

The Tibetan spiritual leader, along with other Nobel Peace Prize winners, was to have addressed a peace conference aimed at thrashing out ways of using football to fight racism and xenophobia ahead of the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

On Wednesday, government spokesperson Themba Maseko said Hogan's comments were "rather unfortunate".

"The comments of the minister of health were rather unfortunate in the sense that this position on the Dalai Lama is an official position of this government."

Maseko repeated government's stance that the Dalai Lama was refused entry because his presence would draw the world's attention away from World Cup preparations.

But he conceded that relations with China also played a role.

- SAPA

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'China funding ANC campaign?'

26/03/2009 21:00

Cape Town - The government's refusal to grant the Dalai Lama a visa highlights the need for the regulation of political party funding, political analyst Judith February said on Thursday.

"We just had the situation with the Dalai Lama, so I think it is reasonable to ask whether the ANC received funding from the Chinese recently to fund its election campaign," February, an analyst for the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa), told the Cape Town Press Club.

The Dalai Lama was refused a visa to attend a 2010 World Cup peace conference to have been held in Johannesburg starting on Friday.

The event was cancelled after Nobel peace laureates FW De Klerk and Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu withdrew in solidarity with the Dalai Lama.

Shrouded in secrecy

"The whole process of party funding is shrouded in secrecy," February said.

"There are no regulations of private funding to political parties. This is a big gap in our anti-corruption apparatus. It needs to be fixed sooner rather than later."

Idasa took five political parties to the Cape High Court in 2005 to get them to reveal their funding.

The organisation was unsuccessful in its application, with the judge ruling that political parties were private bodies which did not have to make their books public.

Issues with funding

She said all political parties had had issues with funding, including the ANC, DA and Independent Democrats.

"I think most political parties agree on a situation of 'show yours and I'll show you mine'," she said.

February said it was worrying that Parliament had shown no movement on the issue, despite the ANC taking a resolution at its conference in Polokwane in 2007 calling for transparency on contributions to parties.

February also spoke on the upcoming April 22 elections.

ANC could be hurt in polls

She said there was a good chance that the ANC might be hurt in the polls after the way in which it handled corruption charges against party president Jacob Zuma.

"I think that the ANC is in danger of losing the two-thirds majority in Parliament," she said.

"Some of the pressure to drop the charges against Zuma might hurt them at the polls," she said.

"The ANC needs to be very careful in the way it deals with this issue."

February said she expected the DA to "do very well" in the Western Cape and the ANC had itself to blame for losing support in the province.

"The party did not do a good job in running the city," she said.

"I think that in Helen Zille people see a leader of integrity. The city of Cape Town has had no corruption scandals. That sticks with people."

- SAPA

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