Government’s corruption ties have no limits

If reports over the weekend have any veracity, the rot at the SABC runs deeper than the publicised incidents of total breakdown and political interference at the embattled public broadcaster, and stretches into unconnected areas of influence peddling and dubious practices.

But the name of controversial former chief operations officer Hlaudi Motsoeneng, who will not be called to address the parliamentary committee investigating the fitness of the SABC board to hold office, is implicated in a fresh set of allegations.

Motsoeneng and Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula’s wife, Nozuko, were allegedly the beneficiaries – as officers in two trusts – of millions in what is claimed to be a R1 billion outlay meant for housing for the poor in the Free State.

Also fingered in the allegations was Mineral Resources Minister Mosebenzi Zwane who, along with senior departmental officials, reportedly sanctioned the payments of millions of rands to companies that had done no work for the government, while he was MEC for human settlements.

If any of this proves to have a basis (and 106 contractors have been identified for pending lawsuits by current MEC Sisi Ntombela), we would have to seriously question just how far the tentacles of graft, corruption and cronyism have spread within the organs of various levels of government.

It is all very well to call for transparency in the way the country’s leadership disburses public funds, but if the curtains over the windows of the corridors of power remain firmly closed on the hidden cabals we are repeatedly told exist, then what good will this transparency do?

This information of financial impropriety, if proven to have any real basis, would be doubly damning, as it is the disenfranchised poor who suffer.

And if this is indeed so, the growing dissatisfaction with the ANC leadership and violent service delivery protests must be seen as the inevitable result.