AMONG a long list of idealist sentiments since ridden roughshod over, this quote from President Jacob Zuma, dating from 2000 when he was deputy president, is worth some reflection: "I think it is important to say that public servants, in particular, more than anybody else, ought to be aware that they should be more upright and transparent insofar as the use of public funds is concerned."
Zuma said this in the National Assembly while answering a parliamentary question, one of the constitutional oversight mechanisms designed to ensure that very thing: the open and accountable conduct of public business.
Since then, however, rather than entrench that principle, the Zuma administration has done much to curtail it. Secrecy, not transparency, is becoming its default position. Instead of the onus being on public officials to explain why information should not be made public, it would now appear to be the case that an argument should be made for why it should.
In other words, the first impulse of the executive is to withhold information (as classified, confidential or a security risk) rather than reveal it.
This subversion is significant. The constitution aims to ensure that the obligation is on public officials to be transparent. The Promotion of Access to Information Act states: "Section 32(1)(a) of the constitution provides that everyone has the right of access to any information held by the state."
From first principles, information held by the state is effectively public property. Officials, elected by voters to represent their interests, are merely its custodians.
It is true there are exceptions — for example, when the availability of such information might genuinely threaten the public good or violate an individual’s private rights — but where there is a constraint, the state must prove that to be the case.
Zuma’s personal KwaZulu-Natal mansion, Nkandla, has come to embody this perversion — and it is doubly problematic. Not only is much of his house built and secured using public money, but the documentation of how the money was spent is public too. Yet those decisions have been shrouded in secrecy.
Only Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe seems to be willing to advocate for more transparency: "Of course, you cannot divulge information that would make the occupants of that residence vulnerable, but I would have thought that the scope of the project would be made public. Accountability and transparency are two sides of the same coin. It is important to be accountable in the public space. Once there’s a shroud of secrecy, it gives rise to speculation, suspicion and mistrust."
It is not clear why Motlanthe decided now was the time to be forthright about Nkandla. Since Mangaung, where he was ousted as African National Congress deputy president, both his power and influence seem to have waned, but whatever the politics, his recent remarks capture perfectly the obligation on the state.
That very public contradiction will win the deputy president no friends. It is as much a political attack as it is a principled position. Nevertheless, it is absolutely correct. Those ministers responsible for the report into Nkandla cannot hide a range of non-security-related expenses behind a veil of secrecy, claiming that any disclosure would compromise Zuma’s safety. The general thrust of the expenditure simply does not relate to security.
What is so refreshing about Motlanthe’s position is that it speaks to a principle, not just to the practical nature of the problem.
One of the biggest problems facing South Africa is the general inability to separate principle from practical concern. Too often we suspend or pervert a principle because we are suckered into obsessing about the particular nature of the practical problem in front of us.
This great love for all things pragmatic means we become distracted. If the issue is Nkandla, all we see is Zuma or presidential privilege. If the issue is Brett Murray’s Zuma painting, The Spear, all we see is culture or nudity. If the issue is the Olympics, all we see is national pride or patriotism. But there are critical principles and values at play in each case: transparency, freedom of speech and excellence.
In 2000, Zuma, too, articulated a principle. It is next to impossible to find that kind of sentiment made by him today. His rhetoric has become fused with pragmatism, not principle. It is no surprise that, under Zuma, we have seen the formulation of the Protection of State Information Act — in many ways the antithesis of the Promotion of Access to Information Act.
This attitude is to subvert the constitution itself — South Africa’s ultimate set of principles. If the state’s first inclination is always to say why something cannot be done, as opposed to why it should be, there is little point to ideals; for then it is striving not for a better future but simply to maintain the status quo. Governments driven by pragmatism are dangerous indeed.
It is telling that both references to principle — Zuma’s 2000 statement and Motlanthe’s more recent remarks — were made possible because of their relationship to power. Zuma, as deputy president, enjoyed less of the close scrutiny he does now; likewise, as so often happens, as Motlanthe’s position has become more fraught and he less beholden to his political masters, so his tongue has loosened.
If this is what is required for our public representatives to advocate for principles, we have much to be worried about. Just as the state’s first obligation should be to transparency, so our public representatives should be the first to articulate, promote and defend those principles that define our constitutional order.
Alas, as the order of things has been reversed, principles have become increasingly subservient to practical constraint, and our ideals restrained by self-interest and shortsightedness.
- BDlive
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