The scourge of corruption has been with post-liberation governments in Africa for as long as independence was gained from colonial masters. Corruption robbed the continent of its development potential and global competitive capacity. In almost all instances of corruption, it has been an in-public sector sub-vocation practised by members of governing parties, often led by senior leaders and/or the dominant establishments within those parties. This sub-public service vocation has facilitated the failed statehood of many African countries. The need, therefore, to confront corruption as the catalyst of state failure has thus been established as a condition precedent for the success of any endeavour to redefine Africa's development path. This opinion piece looks at the ANC integrity mechanism as an anti-corruption innovation more than it being seen as a politically motivated punitive measure. I argue that it is not a step-aside policy as branded.
Context
of the discussion
Various
efforts at dealing with corruption in Africa have mainly been policing and
prosecution-based and thin on dealing with it as an integrity management
system. The policing-prosecution approach assumes the existence of structures,
institutional spheres, a normative order, and a form of collectivity
instructing a reigning value system. Converging post-liberation expectations in
various forms catalyses a new interests-based political economy conflictual with the liberation promise. Leaders and bureaucrats operating with
'executive authority that presides on law enforcement-based anti-corruption
initiatives are colluding with the growing and runaway corruption in Africa and
a similar context in other continents. Consequently, corruption, the most organised
in-state crime facilitated by elected and appointed officials, has become an
institutional sickness occasioning intervention from within the ranks of
political parties, more specifically, their leadership.
Whilst policing-prosecution-based anti-corruption is the apex
aspect of a robust anti-corruption framework, enforcing laws and accountability
by elected and appointed officials and socially acceptable consequence
management will galvanise society against corruption. The extent to which
anti-corruption becomes a habit of a country's leadership will make it a public
service value system permeating through to its private sector as an active
substrate of the broader anti-corruption mix. The depth and impunity at which
corruption occurs has defined the African State as we have grown to know it. As
a result, African governments have been developing policies to reverse
corruption for a while. These policies have, in the main, been based on
international instruments. Adherence to implementing these instruments became a
costly and necessary requirement to attract foreign direct investment,
including preferential treatment of exports from Africa. African governments
acceded to these international frameworks through legislative and other means,
most of which were eclectic to whence they originated. Notwithstanding,
corruption as the new enemy of democracy became a central target for what has
been dubbed the third liberation struggle.
As
a preventative measure to this scourge of corruption, South Africa has entrenched
into its post-apartheid Constitution instruments with which this risk could be
mitigated. The constitution creates an accountability management system etched
on institutions protecting democracy, essentially from the potential of those
elected into office as guardians to its systems delivering on the liberation
promises. These institutions are by design not subject to oversight by those
exercising executive authority but to Parliament, which the legislative
authority vests, thus making their accountability a structurally public affair.
The political accountability framework is anchored on a treasury management
system written into the Constitution. This treasury insulation in the
constitution has made financial, fiscal, and monetary policy matters a province
of constitutionality, thus lessening the impact of arbitrary decision-making. For
this reason, the executive authority-wielding head of the National Treasury is
structurally in a de facto prime position among peers with executive authority
below, and somewhat including the President.
In this instance, accountability has become the central feature of
South Africa's public finance management. Whilst the public sector context is
legislatively regulated through the PFMA, MFMA, and the Auditor General
authority giving regulatory framework, the private sector context has, in the
main, been self-regulating through voluntary and peer-imposed mechanisms such
as the King Codes of Corporate Governance. Anti-corruption legislation dealing
with money laundering and financial intelligence gathering also adds to the
accountability frameworks. These good corporate governance and legislation
codes have been integrated as a condition for participating in a global market
economy through reporting systems. International instruments regulating market
access for goods and services started to depend on how private firms comply
with the global order that has increasingly been hostile to public sector
corruption. Indices on corruption have, in recent times, grown to be sources of
data for rating the status of countries as investment destinations or trusted
democracies deserving of credit by global financing institutions. This
architecture has been a pull factor for governments to enact measures to combat corruption, yet corruption has found a way to
stay alive.
What these measures have yet to be able to succeed in facilitating
a self-regulating dispensation is the role of political parties in the
whirlpool of corruption. This includes individuals in their capacity as organs
of state whose primal entry point has been political parties that deployed
them. In this corruption space, political parties have slowly been identified
as agents to stop or propel corruption and its adjuncts, such as State Capture.
In South Africa, the ANC is at the centre of this problem.
The ANC and the Integrity Management
Mechanism.
The African National Congress of South Africa, arguably the nexus
of all political life in South Africa, came to power in 1994 as the index
guardian of the liberation promise associated with the anti-apartheid struggle.
It assumed a leader of social status because of the moral force its policies as
a movement carried. It represented a course whose impact would define global
humanitarian benchmarks in matters of racism, sexism, and homophobia. The
dividends of the struggle system the ANC led have redefined many constitutional
settlements in the African continent and arguably the world. Its leaders have
grown to become international icons whose names became synonymous with models
of leadership and symbols of how the human spirit could triumph against evils
such as apartheid.
As a human construct, the ANC could unfortunately not escape human
infallibility despite the nobleness of the cause it has once stood for. Like
many in its historical ilk, it has also been able to produce from amongst its
members individuals that started to show tendencies of seeing it as a conduit
to self-enrichment and a personal interest facilitating institution. Invariably,
the ANC grew to become a nest of good and bad cadres who used its historical
legacy, whose appeal could make their actions found nefarious or otherwise
legitimate in one form or another. Its members became the dominant vectors in creating
a post-apartheid state and, by extension, influential in shaping a government
value system. Their conduct became the base substrate of what would constitute
political life after apartheid.
In this responsibility, they could chisel into law mechanisms to
combat corruption. As a result of their post-apartheid majority voter support,
the ANC became an entry point into South Africa's 'political capital'
management. However, being a member of the ANC came with profoundly low
barriers to entry, a lower R20 cost, and South African citizenship. Opening up
to being a mass-based organisation, it thus attracted all breeds of members
and, by extension, strange breeds of leaders too. Its post-unbanning character
started to show institutional fissures whose manifestations began to define it
away from being a leader of society. It became a footnote in any reporting on
corruption and its adjunct State Capture. It became an organisation through
which a journey towards state failure could be launched. Its high-profile
members became the human face of corruption, manufactured and natural.
It is also a fact that the ANC has developed its own values system
to regulate the behaviour and conduct of its members, ordinary citizens and
deployees. Such a value system flows from what the ANC stands for as a thesis
defining its right of moral existence. It is the opposite of constituting
conduct antithetical to being its member or cadre. The value system indexes the
code of conduct for members. Through this, the ANC is supposed to be guided by
the calibre of leadership it should put in place, which essentially defines the
selection process for deploying cadres. Notwithstanding, there had been errors
in living up to its value system, regrettably at a cost to its cohesion.
In vintage ANC character, it responded with a policy architecture
that creates a system to uproot corruption. Through its decision centres that
have defined and, in many instances, optimised its struggle system against
colonialism and later apartheid, the ANC sponsored a conference resolution to
address its member integrity as a catalyst to public sector-based corruption.
It has to be noted that the ANC had, in anticipation of the risk of corruption
disrupting its struggle system, developed a strategic guideline document for
its members to live by as agents of social change through the eye of the
needle.
The 'eye of the needle' document is fragile regarding consequence
management, notwithstanding the plausible way it creates an obligation to
behave in a particular way as an ANC member. It is not decisive on what happens
to members that clog the eye of the needle, and worse still; it is
accommodating to those that widen the needle's eye for all breeds to pass
through. Whilst the ANC respects the country's constitutional provision that we
are all equal before the law and thus presumed innocent until proven otherwise,
it did not define a process of what happens to you as its member when in wait
for your guilty or otherwise verdict. This silence on its policies either clogs
or widens the eye of the needle with catastrophic implications for its
reputation as a leader of society.
There is growing acceptance of the view that the "South
African Constitution does not guarantee for anyone the right to be presumed
innocent by ordinary citizens (and one may add voluntary associations like the
ANC) until he or she is proven guilty in a court of law. It is not a
right at all and is generally invoked by politicians and members of the public
who wish to avoid any discussion of alleged wrongdoing either by themselves or
their friends and allies.” In its strictest sense, argues Pierre de Vos,
"the Constitution guarantees for everyone the right to a free trial, which
includes the right to be presumed innocent at that trial”. In as much as the
Constitutional Court found in the Ramakatsa and others vs Magashule and others
that "the (SA) Constitution does not spell out how members of a political
party should exercise the right to participate in the activities of their party
... (and) for a good reason, this is left to political parties to regulate”, it
did not resolve the applicability of the human rights system as it pertains to
internal regulatory frameworks of voluntary organisations (as ordinary
citizens). It has, at best, created an in-ANC consequence management
interregnum from when a member is charged with a crime to when the trial
ends.
The consequence management interregnum this creates from the time
a member is reported, alleged to have been, charged and entangled in contexts
of corruption has, over the last 27 years of ANC governing party status, eroded
its moral standing amongst citizens and gradually reduced societal confidence
in our democracy as voter apathy statistics show. They procured this
'wait-for-justice' period for a response that does not prejudice its members
but protects the reputation of the ANC while showing respect for the court of
public opinion. The 'Wait-for-justice' period also required a process where the
consequences for being involved in acts the 'eye of the needle' guideline
document envisaged are made personal and never collective. A policy response to
define acts of individuals who are members of the ANC as not being acts of the
ANC or acts influenced by the ANCness of members was thus required.
In acknowledging the role of some amongst its rank and file in
corruption and acts short of integrity as guardians of public resources, the
ANC boldly noted in a 2017 Conference the resolution that there is an
increase in corruption, factionalism, dishonesty, and other harmful practices
that seriously threaten the goals and support of the ANC; and the lack of
integrity perceived by the public has seriously damaged the ANC image, the
people’s trust in the ANC, its ability to occupy the moral high ground, and its
position as leader of society.
Further
to this, and in an unprecedented manner by an ANC leader, President Ramaphosa,
writing to ANC members and some South Africans, declares in his letter that
"the ANC and its leaders stand accused of corruption. The ANC may not
stand alone in the dock. Still, it does stand as Accused No. 1. This is the
stark reality that we must now confront. ... the ANC National Executive
Committee (NEC) recognised the justifiable public outrage caused by recent
reports of corruption. It said these developments cause us collectively to dip
our heads in shame and to humble ourselves before the people.”
To mitigate this publicly acknowledged role of its members in
state corruption, the ANC, as a sequel to the 'eye of the needle' document, had
already introduced a Member Integrity Management Mechanism (MIMM). This process
was established by a conference resolution in 2012 at Mangaung to support other
architectures of discipline that kept the ANC in its more than a century-old
existence. The mechanism was set up to ensure that membership of the ANC does
not facilitate the public sector or any form of corruption in society,
including making its leadership willing or otherwise objects of state capture.
The Mechanism outlines a process that integrates it with an already elaborate
internal to the ANC disciplinary system, the 'presumed innocent until found
guilty' provisions of the constitution and the 'moral expectations of society
of leadership given the custodianship of creating a values-based nation. In
facile terms, The Mechanism can be thought of as a non-negotiable process
through which the integrity bar of ANC leaders is lifted. The mechanism is not
about pronouncing the guilt or otherwise of ANC members on allegations or
charges brought against them. Still, it is assented about the extent to which
the process towards that verdict lends the ANC to disrepute and thus erodes its
political support. It addresses the consequences of integrity management
interregnum abuse by members, especially leadership.
The mechanism's process is not only about stepping aside but
stepping aside is also a crucial manifestation of its consequence management
prowess, among others. According to the mechanism, members are required to
report to an Integrity Committee and explain themselves. Through a criterion still
in its formative stages, the IC would evaluate the explanation and make
recommendations to the member and the NEC. Two possible scenarios will arise from
the recommendations: the member is requested to voluntarily step aside or,
based on the proffered explanation's acceptance, be allowed to continue as a
member in good shape. The onus to step aside that lies with the member is the
crux of the integrity mechanism. If the member does not step aside, the NEC
will process the recommendation of the integrity committee into an NEC decision
requiring the member to step aside at a set date, failing which an automatic
suspension will kick in. Appeal processes to what is occasioned by the
integrity management mechanism apply when the member is suspended from
enforcing stepping aside and redefining the normal appeal process to be
consistent with the reputation protection thrust of the mechanism.
The suspension dispensation would, of course, start an internal
disciplinary process. The DC process will be about the extent to which the
trial or allegations against the member put the ANC into disrepute. The DC
process cannot be about claims or trial matters, as that will be left to the
province of the criminal justice system. It is only until the courts have
pronounced that a member can get a sanction related to the judgment, save to
say the mechanism is unambiguous of its path from reporting to suspension.
The integrity mechanism requires legitimacy to survive the
factions inherent in political parties in transitional economies such as South
Africa. Due to its impact on investor confidence and the perception of an
otherwise media-owned electorate, the mechanism faces a characterisation
challenge of being seen as a mechanism for South Africa' rather than a
mechanism of South Africa'.
However, arguably, the mechanism is an anti-corruption innovation
by the ANC. Its reliance first on the self-restraint of members, which
contrasts with the traditional 'wait on the disciplinary process', defines the
ethical conundrums its application will face as a mechanism etched in a context
that is itself political. Politics in a 'free market' economy context like
South Africa have been growing into a vocation that takes the pursuit of
self-interest and profit as the ultimate for being in it. The yearning in the
human soul for the altruism that instructed the anti-apartheid struggle and its
higher meanings beyond materialism has given way in favour of greed and crass
materialism. Whilst ANC cadres could die for the 'cause of liberating' 'the
people' from the clutches of apartheid colonialism, the pursuit of
self-interest has produced a breed of cadres that can facilitate the country to
collapse for their material self-interests.
The survival of the integrity mechanism will thus have this internal crass materialist as a determinant of its success.
What are the risks of and to the integrity management mechanism?
FM
Lucky Mathebula
The
Thinc Foundation
Comments
Post a Comment