Few societies, and those that did, it was after a rebellion or similar, have been able to rise above the imagination of those that lead them. In the same vein, the habits or lifestyles of leaders become the values of those they lead and, by extension, society. To understand how pathological the corruption crisis might be in South Africa, let us consider these deep cultural practices as a context for this rendition.
At a meeting with one of South Africa's influential leaders on and about the subject of corruption, the leader related a metaphor that has stuck with me as a prism from which I related everything about corruption and that leader, especially the leader's posture towards corruption. In fact, the metaphor convinced me that the leader disagreed with the (then emerging) definition of corruption and may have believed some of what political elites were accused of was unfair, given their positions about the metaphor.
The story goes. In the villages, when there is a function, it can be a wedding, thanksgiving, and/or funeral, the hosting or affected family would slaughter an animal for this purpose. Depending on either affordability or the nature and context of the function, the decision of which animal to be killed was a family's. If the animal to be slaughtered is a cow, that triggers off a process with regimented roles associated with their ultimate positioning when the 'turn to eat' the animal at various stages of preparing for the broader serving to all that are invited and/or just arrived.
According to the leader, almost every village has a specialist team of trusted slaughterers of a cow. They have the discipline to take it down and process it according to a set process, including where determined to carve out the right portions for paying respects to 'owners of the land.' In this team, the 'leader' will take it down; there will be those holding the carcass so that processing starts. In the removal of the skin, there are bound to be some tiny leftovers of the beef on the skin called 'amatshontsho.' The tinniness or otherwise of the small strips of meat on the skin is a function of those processing the slaughtered animal. In the village, everyone knows how delicacy these strips are and that they are 'eaten' by those who kill and process the meat.
The integrity of the team that slaughters is what the village and host family relies on for the meat on the skin to be genuinely what got stuck to the skin as it was removed. In situations where greed is rife in the village, those that process will deliberately leave on the skin bigger chunks, thus increasing the quantum of advantage when the 'turn to eat' for the slaughtering team comes. How the team deals with 'amatshontsho' reflects the value system dominant in the village and tells a story of how the skill to process the carcass was passed from generation to generation. Onlooking young men would marvel at those entrusted with the task of processing the most significant protein source related to the function at hand. How 'amatshontsho' are managed will instruct future teams on the integrity of slaughtering required by posterity. The leader told us in the story that 'every time there is a cow to slaughter, there will be amatshontsho, and the village never questioned who must eat amatshontsho. In fact, he argued, the villagers would be surprised if there was no fire to grill or cook amatshontsho after the slaughtering'.
We were further taken through the cow slaughtering and processing journey. According to the leader, as the cow is being prepared for the feast, there are parts of it that are designated to be processed and designed to be eaten by specific people. The offal will be taken out and the bile sac removed for 'other uses, and it will be given to a coterie of women that will prepare it into a delicacy usually served a few hours after the slaughter. In the offal, the liver will be cut out and reserved for serving 'amadoda' according to a set pecking order; convention remains that elders would be served first. How the serving of the liver ultimately happens is yet another reflection of the pecking order in that village and how the hierarchies of the town and specific families are structured to define an overall societal value system. The regimentation goes with all other organs of the slaughtered cow.
In this whirlpool of relationships with the 'slaughtered' cow, a value system settles. Hierarchies are established. Roles and Responsibilities emerge, including the part of waiting to be served. Rights and obligations are defined. There is a policing system in place to deter those that might take advantage of the situation. What stays and goes into almost all aspects of life or the life world of those reared in this regimented world is the intricacies of the normative context the slaughtering process leaves in the minds of those in leadership. The rights to 'amatshontsho,' 'the exclusivity associated with the liver, 'how the oxtail is ultimately reserved for a select village or family elite,' and 'the turns to eat as the carcass is processed' become cultural anchors within which corruption, as defined in the western context, can find justification.
The discussion with the leader indicated how the leader understood corruption about how the leader was socialized. It came across in the conversation that the leader was asking if allowing the amatshontsho phenomenon in the 'proverbial slaughtering' is fundamentally wrong. The leader interrogated how we justify our rejection of the 'liver exclusively'; the paced 'turns to eat' the slaughtered cow before the actual beneficiaries can be served.
The leader then explained how the lobola negotiations process can easily be classified as a corruption complex if the predominant definition of corruption is strictly applied. The leader argued that the concept of 'vulamlomo,' critical to facilitating the lobola discussion, is a questionable act in the strictest interpretation of corruption. According to the leader, this might mean that the foundation of African marriages and, thus, families commence with a process whose general application as a normative practice is classified as corrupt. The decorum and reverence accompanying 'vulamlomo' cannot be transposed into other aspects of human life.
Generally, Africans, interestingly almost all of them beyond tribal enclaves, believe that when engaging those with 'executive or otherwise authority over the affairs of the tribe or kingdom,' you must take a vulamlomo. Although the 'vulamlomo' context is transparent and encourages declaration to the royal household, its transposition as an undergirding practice will be at variance with the corruption definition. This and many African cultural practices interrogate the concept of corruption beyond the exigencies of wanting to be compliant.
TALKING ABOUT CORRUPTION IN SA
South Africa has entered an era of renewing its post-apartheid society in a way that defines its politics of 'freedom' away from the risks of corruption and state capture. Just a quarter of a century old, this democracy has plausible milestones to celebrate, despite it being wrought with the rise of the criminal element as the kingmakers of those that ultimately lead. The kleptocratic character of how the dominant political coalition in the country, the ANC, arrives at decisions of who ultimately leads dominates the context of leadership and is toxic to the accountability ecosystem. Corruption thrives on a collapsed accountability system and a state in crisis-cum-failure.
Corruption, a dishonest conduct by those entrusted with public power, has emerged as a practice in how new politics are conducted. In fact, it has in South Africa become a political campaign subject, already foreshadowing service delivery and development as conditions to get a political mandate. Its pathologies have become essential in answering why the leadership of such an illustrious organization, the ANC, fell prey to it or its proxies.
In the past 28 years of democracy, we have seen predatory members of the private sector, operating almost like a criminal mafia, making inroads in striking deals with an otherwise generationally lagging behind political elite trying to catch up on lost time to accumulate a bequeathable legacy to descendants. South African democracy is based on the moral power of clean and good government, which has constrained wholesale corruption to date.
A constitutional democracy like South Africa, with its demands for the rule of law, the supremacy of the constitution, and a free market system, assumes a society that has internalized these demands as conditions of citizenship. The open society with equal opportunities, notwithstanding without guaranteeing equality of outcomes, also assumes a society community whose rights and constitutionalism literacy are high.
Corruption is a threat to the value system which undergirds our society. Its continued existence is a human fallibility matter than the system allowing it. The codes of good practice and regulatory expectations of the government system provide institutional leadership that isolates corruption. In pursuit of the objects of the system and its enforcement instruments, those entrusted with public power have found themselves easy targets of corruption watchers.
Notwithstanding, an intricate web of political influence and in-party vote-buying traders has taken control of the soul of the dominant political coalitions of South Africa. We have seen the rise of political leadership created millionaires who have clearly used their positions in government to facilitate self-enrichment. Factions within political movements go to levels where they name themselves titles, denoting the impunity associated with what or who they glorify. There has been a rise of 'black waste bag with cash' and 'brown envelope' wielding lobbyists. The crass materialism in society's glare points to the existence of a predatory economic elite paying bribes and creating distortions in the market.
The political influence reach of these predators has grown into a distinct political capital with which they trade with voting blocks within political parties to maintain the status quo, which advantages them. Unless truncated, their passionate dislike of political accountability and the functioning of an in-state accountability ecosystem is shaping our political system to levels where the representative character of our democracy is good to the extent that it is kleptocratic.
The dysfunctional branches of the governing party, how the integrity of their membership system is compromised, and the contestable results of most provincial conferences, all point to a compromised party political system that might be a proxy to a mafia-type political system. Things are no better inside some organs of state; the prosecution authority has experienced one of the highest staff turnover rates. Macroeconomic integrity and investor confidence are at all-time low levels after apartheid times. This is not related to the political party in charge but etched on the integrity of the person of South Africa.
The Zondo Commission, which has fingered those whose hands were in the proverbial cookie jar, has indeed foregrounded the depth of risk the democracy faces if corruption is not elevated into national security threatening variable. The fragility of our otherwise effective accountability systems in the hands of predatory political elites was exposed as evidence was led at the Zondo Commission. The pattern of hollowing out the state through the looting of public funds has operated as normality for a while, whose truncation generated responses that included a derailment of 'transformation.'
Noting that South Africa is a country of great geopolitical interest in a global scheme of things, how it engages with the global power complex can determine how Africa relates to the emerging power matrices that are shifting the dominant liberal order. The corruption of political elites in developing countries is now a strategic weakness that has to date, been leveraged to pursue the national interests of desperate mineral resources. Consequently, there are shifts in international relations, which are not ideological but crass materialist and serving kleptocrats who prey on corruption. How national interests of high GDP per capita countries of the world have propelled corruption as a new currency to guarantee spheres of influence is reshaping the international order is what our national power complex should ideationally be in control of. CUT!!!
🤷🏿♂️Ku dyiwa matshontsho
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