Strange, how tragedies have their way of forcing us to face ugly realities. The Tongaat mall episode has done exactly this, says Devi Rajab.
Everything about this incident is shocking: the man himself, described as “Mister Scumbag”, who was convicted of bribing a city building inspector, and the officials who supported him and gave him the tenders, knowing full well that he had a record of delivering sub-standard work.
The tragedy will impact on many families – but it has opened the way for public scrutiny, a critical aspect of a responsible democracy.
All of us are acutely aware of the widespread corruption at all levels of government and parastatals, but our impressions are loosely based on anecdotal evidence and hearsay.
When buildings collapse and kill people in its aftermath, we are forced to deal with the devil itself.
“One hand cannot clap without the other,” goes a famous Chinese saying. Strength lies in bundles, is a simple but profound message. But when this applies to corruption, we see the effects of partnerships in crime. As bribery and corruption spreads, this country will sink into a quagmire of destruction.
Loyalty to the ANC, it seems, is the only credential corrupt people need to get ahead in the game of economic empowerment. This, death mall owner Jay Singh understood too well. Singh urged tenants to vote ANC in return for a R500 rent cut, screamed a headline in the City Press, as a provincial matter goes viral nationally.
Now we learn that double payments have been made to Singh’s ex-wife, Ms Shireen Annamalay, a former business associate of Nompumelelo Ntuli – one of President Jacob Zuma’s wives – for housing projects in Phoenix. This raises the question of the role of the State Housing Regulatory Authority in charge of low-cost housing.
So when the Minister of Human Settlements, Connie September, calls for an investigation into malpractices by contractors regionally and nationally, one wonders if she will not be investigating herself in the process, and how many of her comrades will be implicated.
Over the years all kinds of allegations have been made against the eThekwini Municipality.
The Manase report has alluded to bribery, nepotism, and handing out contracts without due process – so much so that when the eThekwini municipality came before Impumelelo Innovations Trust, on which I am a trustee, we had to think carefully before we awarded a prize to the municipality for its successful project on fuel conservation.
Our thinking was that a good project should not be judged by the rot around it.
In 2009, in this column, I questioned the city management under Mike Sutcliffe at the time. I got a call from a very irate Mr Sutcliffe – but the questions I asked at the time are still relevant today. Many of us will recall how Remant Alton Transport botched the bus service for schoolchildren, many of whom were abandoned and left without recourse for claiming back their prepaid bus fares, and how school principals were glibly told to organise transport for their pupils, while workers battled to get to work.
“Can you imagine a city without an operational bus service?” I asked.
Well, few of us knew then of Jay Singh, who was given the bus service for R70m then sold it back to the city for R403m after running it into the ground.
How does a transport failure become an expert building contractor – and how can the city rationalise this idiotic financial loss?
And who is to be blamed here, the man or management? Judge Hilary Squires, in deliberating in the Schabir Shaik trial, highlighted the fact that there are two parties in every corrupt transaction, namely the giver and the taker, and it would seem that Jay Singh does not stand alone. As he begins to fall we will find many others following him.
Albert Camus said: “Real generosity towards the future lies in giving all to the present.”
Perhaps we need to take note of this simple but profound message as we grapple to satisfy our insatiable greed, raping the present to make hay while the sun shines. When we gorge on all the resources we will be left with having to burn the window frames for firewood and destroy the very foundation of our institutions. In the process we all suffer and a decaying morality sets in.
Ironically, when all of Africa has freed itself from colonisers, its own internal decay can cause the second wave of a scramble for Africa.
When moral degeneration sets in, it spreads like a cancer. It is rapidly crossing boundaries of race, gender and generations and, unexpectedly, it is binding citizens into a vibrant opposition. Even diehard political protagonists have been silenced into submission, making it hard to defend the ANC government in its present form. Their unspoken acquiescence confirms a common plight: to put it colloquially, our government is messing up big time.
Politicians are behaving abominably. So, when the press takes the government to task it is not doing so on a whim of disloyalty, racism, biasness, prejudice or white liberalism. It is merely holding a light to all the corrupt practices of a disloyal government.
As Helen Suzman once retorted to a Nationalist parliamentarian who accused her of being disloyal: “It is not me who is disloyal, it is you who is bringing our country into disrepute on account of your heinous laws.” When history records our deeds it will be precisely on this score that presidents and their “merry men” will be assessed.
* Devi Rajab is a psychologist.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Newspapers.
No comments:
Post a Comment