POLITICS

Helen Zille on how to get tough on corruption

The DA leader writes that South Africa is showing a lazy leniency towards lawbreakers

We tend to soft-pedal corruption in South Africa. More and more, we show a lazy leniency towards lawbreakers.

Two developments reported by the media this week highlight that trend: the ANC's nomination of two convicted criminals as candidates for Parliament, and the revelation that Schabir Shaik received R5 million in a secret deal with the state - proceeds from corrupt transactions with ANC President Jacob Zuma.

The ANC has ranked Winnie Madikizela-Mandela number one on its Gauteng list of nominations for national candidates in the 2009 elections, and put Tony Yengeni on both its Northern Cape and Gauteng lists.

In 2003, Madikizela-Mandela was given a six-year sentence (subsequently reduced to three-and-a-half-years) for theft, while Yengeni was sentenced to four years for fraud and corruption relating to the multi-billion rand arms deal - of which he served less than five months.

Both of them were previously ANC Members of Parliament. Both abused their high office; both violated the trust placed in them by the public; and both have been rewarded for their malfeasance with another offer of high office.

Fortunately, Madikizela-Mandela and Yengeni will be compelled to decline their nomination: the law provides that if an individual is sentenced to more than 12 months in prison without the option of a fine, he or she may not be elected to serve in the National Assembly (or the National Council of Provinces or the provincial legislatures, for that matter) for a period of five years after the sentence has been completed.

Even so, the fact that Madikizela-Mandela and Yengeni made it onto the ANC's nomination lists demonstrates an unacceptable level of tolerance for all that is dishonourable and disreputable in public life. In fact, their untrustworthiness is not so much tolerated as celebrated. We all recall Tony Yengeni being carried shoulder high to prison by Baleka Mbete, the current ANC National Chairperson and Deputy President of South Africa . Yet public representatives should be held to a higher standard than ordinary citizens.

Both Madikizela-Mandela and Yengeni have already shown - in the very institution to which the ANC seeks to re-elect them - that they were accountable only to themselves and their bank balances. During their time in Parliament, they also both had to endure the humiliation of explaining to the ethics committee why they had not declared certain interests.

Remarkably, their betrayal of public confidence has been rewarded with another vote of confidence by ANC members. Perhaps we should expect that of the ANC, which is the archetype of the "closed, patronage-driven party for some" and whose closed, crony politics inevitably leads to corruption and power abuse (and their glorification). After all, this is a party that is determined to have as its presidential candidate a man facing 783 counts of fraud and corruption.

What is more surprising is that the general public's tolerance threshold for corruption seems to be lowering. This week it emerged that Schabir Shaik (who is serving a 15-year sentence for corruption) received a R5 million windfall from the state in terms of a "secret" agreement signed by his lawyer and the government. Yet South Africans barely batted an eyelid at the news.

The money is Shaik's share of the R14 million interest that accrued on his ill-gotten gains from his corrupt relationship with Jacob Zuma. Not only does crime pay; it pays interest, too, it seems.

Both Shaik's settlement and the ANC's nomination of Madikizela-Mandela and Yengeni point to a compromise with corruption by state and society alike. Corruption is increasingly being accommodated and normalised. This is especially true of political life. The other day someone said to me: "I don't care if Zuma is corrupt, he has done a lot for us." People don't seem to understand that when a politician is corrupt, he is stealing from them. Robert Mugabe got rich from looting his own people. Corrupt politicians make poor people poorer.

The DA would begin fighting corruption by re-instating the Directorate of Special Operations (or Scorpions). We would also put in place measures to encourage better co-ordination and co-operation between the various corruption-fighting agencies, such as the Asset Forfeiture Unit, the Independent Complaints Directorate and the Special Investigating Unit; increase the budgets of these agencies to help them manage their caseloads better; and increase the capacity of the forensic auditing division in the office of the Auditor-General.

Our new governance policy, which we released on Wednesday, also seeks to uproot the culture of corruption in public life. We propose that no person who has been convicted on any charge of corruption, fraud or theft should be permitted to hold public office.

We will take this proposal to Parliament's Constitutional Review Committee, along with a proposal to amend Section 47 (1) (e) of the Constitution, which bars certain convicts from membership of the National Assembly for a period of five years after their sentence has been completed. As that section stands, it does not prevent Zuma from remaining President if he is convicted after being elected as President because the existing bar only applies to Members of the National Assembly. If Zuma is elected President, he will, in terms of the Constitution, resign his membership of the National Assembly. As a result, Section 47 (1) (e) will not apply to him. The DA's proposed amendment would make the bar applicable to all public representatives.

Our governance policy aims to establish an authentic link between public representatives and the people they serve, so as to promote democratic, transparent and accountable governance.

It puts power back where it belongs - in the hands of the voters and citizens - by recommending the direct election of the President, Premiers and Mayors. Currently, voters have little influence over a party's choice of candidate for executive office. The result is that people can be elected to high office based on the manipulation of networks in the ruling party rather than a direct mandate from the electorate.

In an electoral system which provides for the direct election of the President, parties would be more cautious about whom they nominate as their presidential candidate.

The DA also proposes a mixed proportional representation (PR)-constituency electoral system to elect MPs and MPLs. This would create a direct link between voters and their constituency MPs to increase accountability without destroying the principle of proportionality.

We believe that these measures will go a long way to giving South Africans greater power over the electoral process, and those they choose to represent them. Our policy aims to empower citizens and make public representatives more accountable to their constituents, because it is only when citizens feel they have a direct personal stake in democracy (and when politicians know they are being held to account) that the rising tide of corruption in public life will be stemmed.

This article by Helen Zille first appeared in SA Today, the weekly online newsletter of the leader of the Democratic Alliance, January 23 2009