Whilstle Blowing Week: 17-23 October 2011

Last week President Zuma appealed to South Africans not to run their country down.  The very same day, Thabo Mbeki broke a long silence on the occasion of delivering the Oliver Tambo centenary lecture.  One quote that gives the gist of what he said is that he is “deeply troubled by a feeling of great unease that our beloved motherland is losing its sense of direction.”

C4L is located in Mpumalanga province.  It is divided into three districts, the one where C4L is being Ehlanzeni.  It has five local municipalities, the one where C4L is being Mbombela.  In the news over the past week you have 3 big stories:

1. Some rigging is suspected in the voting for Party leader, who then becomes State President

2. One of the corruption cases reported by Jimmy Mohlala, the former Speaker of Mbombela’s municipal legislature, is delayed again in coming to trial

3. A former Municipal Manager has been arrested for embezzling millions

Rigged voting

ANC members have claimed that auditors padded the figures for provinces crucial to Jacob Zuma's party presidency re-election campaign.  ANC members aligned to the anti-Zuma group in ­Mpumalanga have accused provincial and district party leaders of colluding with its auditors to inflate membership figures in a bid to boost Zuma's re-election prospects.

Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal and the Free State are expected to be central to Zuma's re-election at the party's national elective conference in Mangaung in December. These provinces have recorded a significant increase in membership over the past few months.

• More than 2 000 ghost members in Bohlabela region in Mpumalanga were added to the final audit report, which Luthuli House conducted in August

• Nkomazi local municipality alone is bigger than the Northern Cape province and Western Cape province. It is bigger than some district municipalities in Mpumalanga. It is now second after eThekwini (Durban). “Only God knows how they recruited the new members," said an ANC member

Corruption scandals

Former Mbombela municipal speaker Jimmy Mohlala blew the whistle on two corrupt deals, one related to the new stadium tender and the other to housing tenders.  Both eventually led to convictions, but first he was gunned down in January 2009.

Mohlala had been told by the ANC’s leaders for the Ehlanzeni region to resign, but he refused.  It is quite typical of senior management in most organizations to close ranks against whistle blowers, as we are finding out first hand at C4L.

Mohlala’s killer or killers have yet to face the law. The stadium tender irregularities involve fraud, forgery and theft… in relation to allegations that false SA Revenue Service documents were submitted.

Now a former Municipal Manager is also in the dock for taking millions in kickbacks.  It is the front page story in today’s Lowvelder.

The Constitutionalists and the Triumphalists

There is this on-going tension in South Africa between the rule of law and those whose sense of entitlement makes them believe that they are bullet-proof.  Some cherish Accountability and others prefer Impunity.

The biographer of Thabo Mbeki, Mark Gevisser, wrote in the introduction of The Dream Deferred: "Mbeki allegedly worried that Zuma and his backers had no respect for the rule of law, and would be unaccountable to the constitutional dispensation the ANC had put into place… There was also the worry of a resurgence of ethnic politics, and - given his support from the left - that Zuma's leftist advisers would undo all the meticulous stitching of South Africa into the global economy that Mbeki and his economic managers had undertaken."

Yet Mbeki fired Vusi Pikoli, head of the National Prosecuting Authority, who he perceived as a threat.  No wonder that when Zuma took over, Pikoli’s successor Mpshe decided not to prosecute the new state president!  The Scorpions were disbanded and replaced by the less independent Hawks.  Two successive police chiefs have lost their jobs since, the first one ending up in jail.  The second one is still in limbo.

These days the champion of the rule of law seems to be the Public Protector, more of an ombudsman.  Her name is Thuli Madonsela and she just nailed Julius Malema, the populist youth leader, this week.  Being a “tenderpreneur” can be synonymous with looting! 

Mo Ibrahim Prize

This has become Africa’s equivalent to the Nobel prize.  Jay Naidoo, a South African, is a Board member of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation.  This week in a speech he said that Africa's future will hinge on the continent's citizens taking a proactive role in governance:  “It is not individual leaders who will take our continent forward, it will be an overall leadership directive driven by Africa's people".

The language that I have used in the past that followership is as important as leadership.  Until voters understand Democracy and until terms like “loyal opposition” sink in, the rule of law will continue to be undermined by greed for money and power.

Whistle blowing

This brings me to the near and present dangers at C4L.  The leadership team at C4L, not any one individual, recently decided to withdraw from dispute negotiations when they quite suddenly realized that fraud had been uncovered.  C4L reported the crime believing that it is good citizenship to do so.  Not to mention the harm done to C4L as a result.

As was expected, those accused have turned quite nasty.  Here is what Wikipedia says about this topic:

“Whistleblowers are commonly seen as selfless martyrs for public interest and organizational accountability; others view them as "tattle tales" or "snitches".

“Persecution of whistleblowers has become a serious issue in many parts of the world. Although whistleblowers are often protected under law from employer retaliation, there have been many cases where punishment for whistle blowing has occurred, such as termination, suspension, demotion, wage garnishment, and/or harsh mistreatment by other employees.”

There is relatively new legislation in South Africa called the “Protected Disclosures Act”.  C4L is exploring if that can offer any refuge for the reprisals that have begun since it blew the whistle.  But in the last analysis, the only way to deal with corrupt and abusive leaders is for the followers to take a stand.

In October 2011, there was a Whistle Blowing Week.  But there is no sign of it in 2012!  One can only hope that this is because it got the job done, and not because it got taken out by the Triumphalists!

The last straw

Matric exams started today.  Only in Mpumalanga do you find the exam paper being delivered to high schools in armoured cash-in-transit vehicles!  Truth is stranger than fiction.