Politicians Cannot Police Themselves

There’s a certain level of debilitating futility in watching politicians trying to police themselves.

It’s like watching a hamster in a spinning wheel. The hamster keeps going because it has hope that with each attempt the outcome will be different, but the failed attempts do not make it stop.

The Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development Ronald Lamola has announced what is being referred to as a one-stop shop in dealing with corruption. This is supposed to expedite the process of dealing with corruption.

The effort would be laudable if it were new.

The truth is South Africa has seen all this before. An elite prosecutorial unit meant to deal with corruption existed before, and it did brilliant work in the beginning. It went after the corrupt with blue lights blazing and all the fanfare. But the politicians saw they were not safe and they changed the laws of the land and disbanded The Scorpions. After that they were free to loot state funds with impunity.

Lamola says the new unit will be a fusion of all the elements needed to successfully prosecute corruption cases so it will even include the South African Revenue Service. This he says, is because corruption is sophisticated.

The innocence and good intentions which the minister is displaying in his pronouncements on fighting corruption is only matched by President Cyril Ramaphosa’s naivety in announcing an inter-ministerial committee to deal with the widespread corruption related to Personal Protective Equipment in the last four months.

These efforts for now are simply an attempt to be “seen to be doing something” instead of genuine attempts at fighting corruption.

The reason The Scorpions were disbanded do not require a rocket scientist to understand them. It is not because corruption is sophisticated like Minister Lamola says. There are thousands of low-hanging fruit in the corruption basket that law enforcement can prosecute tomorrow without a fancy investigative unit.

The only thing required here is a will to prosecute. The will to prosecute comrades and colleagues. Nothing more, nothing less.

Names of powerful people like the Secretary General of the African National Congress Ace Magashule are being mentioned as being linked to the dishing out of allegedly corrupt PPE contracts in his home province of the Free State. When the President announces an inter-ministerial committee to deal with such allegations surely he realizes that South Africans are bright enough to know that the Secretary General of the ruling party has a hand in deploying ministers.

Whether the allegations of Magashule’s hand in PPE contracts are true or not, the measures announced to deal with them are simply politicians attempting to police themselves.

It is worth noting that the resolution to disband the effective Scorpions was taken within the ruling party itself and ratified by the ANC’s own politicians in parliament. This was after the elite unit was accused of selectively going after people like former president Jacob Zuma in what were called “political prosecutions.”

Soon after the unit was disbanded State Capture began in earnest. The ‘wasted’ decade was ushered in. Lamola and Ramaphosa were there to witness every move that set the stage for that looting.

For any efforts against corruption to work, the investigations unit must not be formed by politicians or be at their mercy.

To ensure that the country doesn’t go through the hamster wheel situation with the new unit, Ramaphosa and Lamola should pass on the responsibility of establishing this unit to legal structures not controlled by politicians. They must avoid unintentionally setting the scene for another wasted decade of looting because they think they can police themselves and their comrades.

Sydney Majoko.

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