SO, THE President has finally grasped the corruption nettle, we reported on the front page of Business Day today.

He formed a committee.

Look, I know it is easy to make fun of people. I know the President is serious when he says he wants to stamp out corruption. But it’s how you go about it that matters, surely. Slipping out of a corruption trial is hardly a good example. Getting your mate out of prison isn’t either.

Surely what has to be done to stop public officials (ok, let’s add the private sector in there, it’s politically correct but more than misleading) stealing money that doesn’t belong to them is to live a pure and modest life yourself. Then you can look people in the face and tell them to stop.

How do you screech to a halt in a Range Rover as the Minister of Whatever and deliver a lecture to poorly paid officials on the values of service and thrift?

I reckon it’ll take a lot more than Jacob Zuma’s interministerial committee to nail (really, really nail and not merely suspend) public sector thieves.  Not thatthey’re hard to find.

Last month the Sunday Times reported that former Gauteng Housing MEC Dan Mofokeng and former acting Land Bank CEO Phil Mohlahlane had pretty well looted an empowerment fund called AgriBEE. The police have known about it for more than a year. But no charges have been laid. These two gents are out there living the good life.

What will the interministerial committee do about them, I wonder? I suspect  you’ll get a lot of junior officials suspended on full pay pending charges that take years to emerge. No-one on that committee is going to have a go at anyone that might be able to threaten them. They could perhaps ask how Julius Malema got his money, but they won’t.

I had a meal with a wise owl the other day and I asked him why he thought nothing was happening, why the government seemed to talk a lot and do nothing. His answer was so interesting.

“It’s either because they lack confidence,” he said,”or that they are overconfident.” I have often wondered about the confidence thing. If you think people are going to judge you, would you rather not take risky decisions, for instance? And if you are too confident, you’re telling yourself that no matter how awful you may be as a government, you’ll win the next election anyway.

What do you reckon? I think the Government lacks confidence, despite its majority. The people it really wants to impress don’t vote for it or are not in the country to vote at all. Perhaps it’s particularly so when it comes to corruption. If you have to start carting  Cabinet Ministers and MECs off to court or jail, what does that say about you?

It is probably also a little ashamed of itself. There is this huge, heaving mass of poverty upon which the ANC has barely been able to make a scratch. At the same time the corruption of the state’s machinery has become so profound, and runs so deep, that it is in all probability impossible to rub out.

You’d be ashamed too if your household looked like the ANCs — drunk, free-spending parents who keep their kids in lousy and cheap schools, don’t get their cuts and bruises cleaned up and buy them second-hand clothes. Every now and then dad sobers up and gives the children a hug and promises them a treat. Then he’s drunk again. He can’t stop.

Cheers

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