Back in May, I worked for a now-defunct Taxpayers’ Union organisation for two weeks. I wrote several articles for them which were never published. I feel they are still relevant today, and hope you find them interesting.
In Soviet Russia, a show-trial was a theatrical public event in which political dissidents or elites who fell foul of the games of power in the heart of the Kremlin were subjected to abuse and recrimination in unfair and biased tribunals. Justice was not the aim, merely a demonstration of the power of The Party.
In South Africa, we have our own show-trials, but while they are equally for show, they do not serve to put people in prison. They serve primarily to let the public and foreign investors feel that “something” is being done, while deliberately never going far enough to actually impact corruption or change the way politics is done.
The Siriti Commission, for example, far from being an exercise in public justice, was yet another element in a long chain of government cover-ups designed to protect Thabo Mbeki and other high-ranking officials from the consequences of their illicit actions in the Arms Deal. Judges from across the land passed comment about how the commission carefully avoided asking pertinent or penetrating questions, and became the very opposite of what it sold itself to the public as being.
To scan the official list of public commissions of inquiry is an exercise in despair. In few if any of those commissions listed here was a single person held to account for the vast crimes addressed by the inquiries. They largely serve to exhaust the public by exposing them to the pointless circular actions of a state in decline, parasitised by a political party that does not share any of the ordinary citizens’ regard for due process or the rule of law.
Judge Raymond Zondo, seeing the need to wrap up loose ends in the inquiry into state capture, has issued a statement declaring it necessary to extend the inquiry until September, despite costs to the taxpayer rising above R800-million. Zondohas acquired a perhaps well-deserved reputation for clean conduct and evenhandedness, but even he can only do so much. The prosecution authorities cannot afford to target people close to a sitting president, and the accuracy of the testimony has been thrown into question by accusations of perjury allegedly committed by key witnesses.
There have been some hopeful signs – Jacob Zuma’s old charges being reinstated, his public legal aid being cut off, Ace Magashule being cut off from party funds and being unable to pay his vast patronage network, these are all steps in the right direction. But at this stage, they are little more than factional rivalry. All the dynamics of this present wave of factionalism can teach us, is that the ANC values their secrecy, solidarity and compliance over any other value. As public statements released recently regarding Ace Magashule’s suspension show, the only unforgivable sin in the eyes of the party is to appeal to the courts for settling issues – the party is above the law.
Much like the Chinese Communist Party which Ramaphosa’s inner circle so admires, this government is pursuing corruption charges only selectively, ignoring those who are loyal to the president, even placing them in his cabinet, protected from any consequences for past wrongdoing, while instilling fear among the disloyal. As Bathabile Dlamini adroitly observed, all of those within the party have their “smallanyana skeletons”, and in a truly transparent and just process, every single member would be dragged to the ground.
The Ramaphosa cabinet and many of the branches of the party and civil service downstream of it are just as guilty of violent crime and looting as their predecessors, if not more so.One can reasonably expect that, much like with the SiritiCommision after the changing of hands from Mbeki to Zuma, and the Zondo Commission after the changing of hands from Zuma to Ramaphosa, once Ramaphosa has retired his office, a new commission will be instituted to investigate the unprecedented looting seen under the Emergency Management Act during the viral pandemic crisis.
The ANC has settled into a stable pattern of decay, dragging down all of our institutions with them, and making each of us pay for the privilege of witnessing this downfall. Perhaps if one or two high ranking officials are made scapegoats, the international community, ever lacking the eye for detail and context a local may have, may believe the pantomime of purity Ramaphosa has been performing for the press, but the rest of us will be wiser in our beleaguered experience.