Interests, the currency
and oxygen of politics, are a complex web that binds members of an
organisation. Their acceptance, voluntary or otherwise, of its rules, rituals,
and ways of doing things will enable them to hold together, creating a
fascinating dynamic.
Corruption, as an
'interest', has not only occupied a larger space in our country's politics but has also been rationalized to a level where it seems to have developed a
political economy with moral value chains. This normalization of corruption is
a cause for concern and requires our collective awareness.
Politics, being
non-moral, is shaped by the prevalence of diversity as a fact in human life.
This diversity elevates the importance of politics and confirms that interests
are the actual embodiments of active diversities in political systems, shedding
light on the complexity of political dynamics.
The Oscar Mabuyane,
Premier of the Eastern Cape, episode of the many Public Protector reports that
wrote several political obituaries in South Africa, is growing into a classic
case study of how interests vary in their sharpness of definition, strength of
purpose, and degree of activity in a political system. The new 'interest' at
the centre of the governing establishment has been 'manufactured' about weeding
corruption, corruptors, and corruptees out of the political system. This
interest has thus far been sharply defined to the extent that it keeps the 'new
order' stable enough until the entirety of the 'real interest' pursued is
consolidated.
The anti-corruption
narrative is an investment whose capital returns seem only known to 'vocal
investors'. As a society, our membership in the anti-corruption movement has
the outcome of good governance and the levelling of the playing field as a
towering return on investment. It is those we assigned the public power to
institutionalise the objects of the anti-corruption movement that we did not
interrogate their 'actual' interests in the movement and, therefore, their
return on investment.
Consequently, corruption
will be allowed to be corruption if it dislodges challengers to the reigning
political economy hegemon or templates of economic domination. Otherwise, it
gets a compromise label. The strength of the purpose of declaring a condition
corrupt creates a firmament within which law enforcement and the rule of law
assume significance as an activity in the political system. This makes the
asymmetries of law enforcement respond to reports of corruption, thus
undermining the very narrative of 'cleansing' South Africa of corruption.
Interests are
constructed of humans and tend to be as biotic as their carriers. They develop
a life of their own, have some form of genetic variability, and tend to spawn
fibres with which they attach themselves to other corrupt life forms in the
ecosystem. Since ecosystems have latency as a feature, latent interests mature
as the comfort of the individuals hosting them concretises. In the South
African context of tackling corruption and state capture, there is compelling
evidence that the interest in fighting these seems to be more about the displacement
of incumbents in the corruption and state capture enterprise with those that
would do it within 'acceptable' levels.
There is an
unannounced variance in tolerating corruption and state capture by 'others' in
the 'game'. The secrecy of the variance, shared amongst those for whom there is
demonstrated evidence of law enforcement snail-pacing towards them, establishes
a duality in the 'moral' legitimacy of dealing with those who have grossly
wronged society differently from 'others' who have done worse.
As a node of 'interests'
and its 'networks', the Premier, according to the Public Protector report, and
several 'under oath affidavits' as well as the 'embarrassing Fort Hare
University' qualification saga, seems to have been caught up in the vortex of 'we
are not them' urges of members of the 'organ' he might be leading. It is like 'organs'
or 'groups' to concentrate or close ranks so that the ‘cause' defended may
procure considerable strain from the 'nodal' person. For as long as what is
'defended' is in the 'common interest' of the 'organ', 'organs' in the network
will intensify the 'legitimacy' narrative to levels of a 'swimming pool
becoming a fire pool', and this we have seen before. As interests continuously
orbit around a 'nodal person', every turn made creates layers that ultimately
become a universe of interests deserving of socio-political capital investment
whose growth creates a breed of prerogative leadership only failed states must
be good at failing those they are governing.
The institutional
response to the Public Protector report by accountability centres the Premier,
as an organ of state and a member of a political party he belongs to, seems to
have vitiated their roles of being institutions established for registering conflicts
of interest, resolving such disputes, and ultimately maintaining the
institutional resilience required to genuinely deal with 'interests' that
impugn the reputation of South Africa. The power which the institution of the
person-in-the-Premier embodies has such force of coercion that he cannot be
left to draw on the judicial authority of the Republic whilst being an
incumbent of the Provincial executive authority in the republic.
Suppose the essence of
the anti-corruption drive is etched on the 'interest' of making South Africa's
democracy durable. In that case, it should be natural for all accountability
centres to conduct the politics of the Mabuyane malfeasance against the
background of power that is sanctified by both the country's and his party's
constitutions and codes of conduct that flow from them. The procedural demands
of a context focussed on dealing with malfeasance cannot tolerate affidavits
with content that least addresses the facts of the malfeasance at the
convenience of the factional sieves created in the political. For a while, the
political has been underperforming in the normative of state building in South
Africa; this has been so because we allowed the prerogative in the political to
be normative in the selection of those that must operate in a competently
normative demanding public service.
Mabuyane, especially his
Premier of the Eastern Cape self, should understand that as a person, and
because he took an oath to assume public power and thus an organ of state, he
is, by definition, an entity of law. It would thus be foolish of our
in-government and in-political party institutional edifice to think of Mabuyane
outside his organ of state status unless we operate in a despotic democratic
arrangement where everything is subordinated to the prerogative will of
dominant factions, establishments, and 'nefarious elite consensuses'.
Like his institutional
peers, he should have known that the Public Protector as an institution was
written in the Constitution to protect us against the 'public power' he
embodied at our instance when we voted his party into power. In constructing
that office, we created procedures for him, operating with the 'public power'
we 'borrowed' him, to the effect that he should have a right of representation
as the investigation ensues. We understood that once the remedial action is
proposed, he shall have a legal recourse that might require him to invoke the
integrity management system whose basis includes 'stepping aside' from 'our'
public power if there are fewer to no grey areas about allegations against him.
His affidavit, which I suspect might have already served elsewhere before the
public protector, is at best compromising all that lead the anti-corruption
movement and still consort with breeds of leadership that he has now defined
himself to belong to.
Ours has now become a
political order that has been increasingly intolerant of insolence by those we
borrowed our power as the public. Our leaders have been hard at work in the
sixth administration to believe that they are a convergence point of what is in
the nation's interest, their competence, and their interest in accepting our
borrowed power. In its role, the office of the Public Protector has pronounced
and proposed remedial actions. We expect those who took an oath of office to
preamble any arguments in their defence of allegations of malfeasance with the
contents of the oath. That way, contempt for the oath will automatically
restrain our integrity management systems.
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