Cyril Madlala
25 February 2008
opinion
Johannesburg — LACK of accountability and an apparent disregard for the important oversight role among our elected representatives is gradually being entrenched in KwaZulu-Natal politics.
Jo-Ann Downs, chairman of the standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) in the legislature is to be removed this week because the African National Congress (ANC) is uncomfortable with her zest for exposing fraud and corruption in government. The ANC has tabled a motion to sideline her, accusing the African Christian Democratic Party deputy president of using her position to score political points.
We thought we had learnt our lesson when the ANC removed Dr Gavin Woods and Andrew Feinstein from Scopa for asking awkward questions about the arms acquisition programme. And it is not as if Downs was spectacularly successful in getting answers. At least she made a noise.
We are sitting with elected public representatives who are simply unable, if not unwilling, to get to the bottom of some of the greatest shenanigans in politics.
Last week the head of the agriculture and environmental affairs department, advocate Modidima Mannya was suspended with full pay while the government determines charges against him. It is hardly six months since he was brought in to sort out the mess left by Dr Jabulani Mjwara who resigned and left with a handsome performance bonus -- yet the public is yet to be told how R80m vanished from his department. For some inexplicable reason, our public representatives in the legislature are not all itching to find out what happened.
And then we have the saga in the health department. The head, Dr Busi Nyembezi, has been sitting at home on full pay for some five months now. Apparently she refuses to accept a generous severance package that will allow her to disappear quietly before the public gets to know what lies beneath the fallout with her political bosses.
The stakes must be very high for her to dare the premier's office to charge her. We are so used to senior government officials being given millions of rands to walk away that this story should be fascinating when it unfolds publicly. It is just that, again, our public representatives do not seem particularly eager to find out what transpired during Nyembezi's tenure.
PARTICULARLY intriguing about the suspected massive fraud and corruption in some government departments in the province, is the apparent failure of law enforcement authorities to apprehend the culprits. We are not talking here about plain incompetence. Suggestions in the corridors of power are that there is a cartel of powerful individuals who have their fingers in every conceivable act to milk the public purse dry. They act with such impunity that our oversight bodies, such as Scopa, have been rendered toothless, as will be confirmed when a docile chairman is chosen to replace Downs this week.
It would perhaps be an exaggeration to say our system of good governance is in danger of collapsing in KwaZulu-Natal. However, it would be reassuring to know that there is no grain of truth in the story about a powerful cartel of untouchable corrupt politicians and officials.
A decision by the majority of our elected representatives in the legislature to endorse Downs's removal will undermine the public's confidence in their ability to play a meaningful oversight role.
Significantly, one of the key decisions from the Polokwane conference was that ANC members of Parliament would assert their authority and demand accountability from the executive. The lesson was that our democracy could have been derailed by timid legislatures which forgot to represent primarily the interests of the majority of South Africans, and not those of a powerful clique with their own undeclared agendas.
It would be doing a great disservice to our new democracy should members of the KwaZulu-Natal legislature choose to ignore that lesson.
Madlala is editor and publisher of UmAfrika.
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