SA cannot afford to become both a failed state and a mafia state

There is a saying that goes “if someone is talking about you, you are doing something right”.

It would seem that in the South African public service, that needs to change to “if someone tries to assassinate you, you are doing something right”.

The news that outgoing Eskom chief executive André de Ruyter allegedly survived an assassination attempt would be shocking and would dominate national news for days in other countries. Not in South Africa. It trended for a day.

In certain circles it became a bit of a joke, as in “Oh please! Who wants to kill an outgoing CEO?” And therein lies the problem with this country: assassinations have long been part of SA’s political landscape so, for it to spill over into the economic/business sphere, is not surprising.

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Fights for political positions, especially in the lower rungs of the ruling party, have tended to be solved through assassinations, especially in KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga, the Free State and, to some extent, Limpopo.

It also became common for people to be killed so that they may not be there to be witnesses in corruption trials involving millions of rands.

But the attempted assassination of the leader of SA’s most important state-owned enterprise should set off all the alarm bells. The next level of leadership after that is members of the country’s executive.

Before the attempt to assassinate De Ruyter was permanently wiped off the news cycle, in came the news that the vice-chancellor of the University of Fort Hare, Prof Sakhela Buhlungu, survived an assassination attempt last Friday.

His bodyguard was killed when the vice-chancellor’s official vehicle was shot at, but Buhlungu was not in the vehicle.

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Buhlungu and De Ruyter are both leaders in charge of institutions that require billions of rands from the state to run. And both have been trying to turn their respective institutions around. Not just operationally, but financially, too.

Buhlungu has had a longer bite at the cherry than De Ruyter and the university achieved its first unqualified audit during the time he has been in charge from 2017. That is a milestone. Turning such important institutions around means closing taps that gave money away to corrupt individuals and institutions.

And given the sizes of the budgets at Eskom and Fort Hare, it only makes sense that the people and organisations that stand to benefit from De Ruyter and Buhlungu’s deaths are those whose financial fortunes changed because things are being done right at those institutions.

Sceptics would ask: what possible financial benefit is there to assassinating an outgoing CEO? Eskom’s monthly diesel volume alone has scaled close to R2 billion a month. With him having agreed to stay on longer than the stipulated 30-day notice period, he could be standing in the way of several billions for some tenderpreneurs.

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Of more concern to the government should be that those disgruntled by leaders doing positive things are now using assassinations at the highest level to gain control of funds in state institutions.

One of the clearest signs of a failed state is the state’s failure to provide basic security for its citizens. But an even more damning sign of a failed state is that the failure to stop organised crime from running its institutions’ finances. South Africa cannot afford to become both a failed state and a mafia state.