Graft shakes South Africa's vaunted ANC party
Several high-profile corruption scandals within the ruling party are weakening South Africans' confidence in the postapartheid government.
from the April 10, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
Corruption now a top priority
South African President Thabo Mbeki, whom most South Africans believe is personally clean, has also made tough speeches about the need to crack down on government corruption. But at a global conference against graft in Johannesburg last week, Mr. Mbeki struck a more defensive tone.
"The anticorruption discourse ... is inseparable from broader goals of socioeconomic development," said Mbeki. "In the era of globalization, when vast wealth and asset gaps exist among individuals, regions, and nations, the fight against corruption must be rooted in common understandings across borders. It must go beyond the rhetoric of perceptions and blame."
The very fact that Mbeki finds it necessary to speak out against corruption is itself a step forward, many observers here say, and South Africans have reason to be optimistic.
The country's Constitution provides a legal framework that is leaps and bounds ahead of the notorious crony capitalism of the apartheid years. Its enforcement agencies, such as the new financial-crimes unit called the Scorpions, and the independent auditor general's office, as well as its laws protecting whistle-blowers, are among the strongest and most progressive in the world.
"We didn't go to the bush as the ANC so that when we are in power, we will plunder," says Vincent Smith, an ANC parliamentarian and member of a committee assigned to study corruption. "Corruption impedes the liberation and its goals. Nobody I know of would have sympathy for someone who is misusing the system for his personal benefit."
Such strong words might be reason for hope. But some newspaper columnists call this rhetoric a double standard and ridicule the president's own corrupt officials as the "Xhosa Nostra" – a play on the mafialike cabal of Xhosa-speaking officials in Mbeki's cabinet.
"This, in my mind, is the beginning of the decline of this country," says columnist Rhoda Khadalie, herself a former ANC stalwart from Cape Town.
"It's about double standards," she continues. "You have ordinary citizens, people convicted of stealing a chicken at a supermarket, sitting in jail, but people within the cabinet involved in the theft of hundreds of millions of rand of public funds getting off scot-free. This selective use of the law encourages criminality. People are saying to government: If you can do this accumulation of wealth, we can do it, too.' "
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