Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg)
27 July 2001
South Africans heaved a collective sigh of relief when the world community of 186 nations -- with the notable exception of the United States -- adopted the Kyoto protocol on climate change this week. Not only does the protocol promise to reduce pollution; if it had not been signed there would have been the very real possibility that ongoing negotiations would have bogged down the Earth Summit to be hosted in Johannesburg next year.
Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Mohammed Valli Moosa, who participated in the negotiations in Bonn this week, hailed the agreement as "a victory for the peoples of the world and a boost to the success of the Earth Summit. The successful conclusion of these negotiations means that the Earth Summit agenda can be focused on other substantial issues critical for development and poverty alleviation in the developing world."
The agreement was a slap in the face for US President George W Bush, who repudiated the treaty as "fatally flawed" in March, expecting the rest of the world to follow. The deal makes the US an environmental pariah and puts enormous pressure on the White House to come up with its own promised proposals to tackle climate change.
A recent editorial in the respected scientific journal Nature compared those who dismiss the threat of man-made global warming to those who maintained that HIV does not cause Aids or that smoking does not cause cancer. The menace is real.
But Bush is giving the finger to that menace, despite the fact that the US produces more than a third of the world's greenhouse gases, on the basis that money and economic growth are the only real indicators of world progress. His father, former president George Bush snr, applied the same attitude when he tried to influence Botswana to lift a moratorium on lion-hunting earlier this year. He, too, was beaten back by Africa.
The South African delegation in Bonn this week was asked to lead negotiations on the thorny issue of compliance with the Kyoto protocol. They came home with the view that co-operation of all nations in respecting the agreement is critical to its success.
The fact that South Africa has been chosen to host next year's Earth Summit is another indication of the increasingly important role this country is playing on the world's environmental stage. Indications are that the summit may end up being the largest gathering of international leaders ever, with more than 100 heads of state and 50 000 representatives expected.
We have a big voice. It is time to let Bush and his dirty money-digging cronies hear it.
Vindicated
If doubts persist about the important watchdog role of the media, the past fortnight should have allayed them. Three investigations by this newspaper have had consequences that clearly serve the public interest.
The first of our three investigations probed Don Mkhwanazi. In November 1997 we reported that a company owned by Emanuel Shaw II -- a notoriously corrupt former Liberian politician -- landed a R3-million contract to advise Mkhwanazi, then chairperson of the Central Energy Fund (CEF), on "all issues affecting the chair's position" and on the restructuring of CEF. The contract was awarded without tender at Mkhwanazi's behest. The next year, under the headline "What was in it for Don?", we reported that Shaw "has been bankrolling the man who gave him the contract, CEF chair Don Mkhwanazi". Shaw and Mkhwanazi even shared a bank account.
This week, after a lengthy investigation by the Investigative Directorate for Serious Economic Offences, Mkhwanazi pleaded guilty to contravening the Companies Act. The charges related directly to the contraventions exposed by the Mail & Guardian in 1998. He was fined R6 000 (or six months).
The second investigation involved Bheki Langa, who resigned as Telkom deputy chief operating officer when the M&G published details last Friday of the allegations (of collusion with private security companies) he faced in an internal Telkom disciplinary hearing. Langa claimed that his resignation was unrelated to the allegations.
The Department of Mineral and Energy Affairs confirmed this week that Langa had been about to be offered the job of CEO of Petrosa, the new state oil company being created from Mossgas and Soekor, when we published the allegations against him. But the department said the offer was now being withheld pending the outcome of Telkom's investigations.
The third investigation probed alleged petition fraud by Democratic Alliance members and/or Cape Town city council officials to promote Mayor Peter Marais's campaign to rename two streets. We published on June 8, demanding that the truth out. Seven weeks later came the breakthrough, thanks to an affidavit from an official in the city's legal department, Victoria Johnson. The council, province and the DA then acted with exemplary speed. Marais's spokesperson and the head of the city's legal department were suspended, and a fuller investigation, under Judge Willem Heath, was ordered. We shall see what more comes of it.
We do not gloat at others' difficulties. But we are gratified to see our calls for an unrestricted, independent media vindicated, and to see our institutions acting on alleged or proven wrongdoing in the public sphere.
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