Kameraad Mhambi

Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife

If we were to make a moral pecking order there are indeed many in the ANC that would be more culpable than you. (Besides the perpetrators)

If The Speaker of Parliament, Frene Ginwala, had kept her word and stood up for Feinstein who knows how the last few years might have turned out. She was more powerful and influential than you.

If she had resigned, it would have been a major embarrassment for the party and given plenty of pause for thought for those starting to get tired of Mbeki. Perhaps other ANC members like yourself would also have been emboldened. Perhaps Jacob Zuma would have been emboldened and acted differently. Who knows.

Trevor Manual is perhaps even more culpable than Ginwala. He took Feinstein for lunch shortly after their 8th of November bollocking described in post 1. Manual admitted he was against the deal as it was wrecking the budget, but that it could not be halted. Besides he said, the arms deal funded the ANC’s 1999 election campaign.

“Let it go” was Trevor Manual’s advice to Feinstein.

If Manual had threatened to resign a whole new level of pressure would have been bought to bear.

At the time Mbeki himself was under severe and increasing pressure from the SACP and Cosatu over macro economic policy, Zimbabwe and Aids. His aloofness and paranoia had cost him friends. After 8 November Zuma himself had called Feinstein to meet him secretly. Zuma urged Feinstein to keep going with his investigation.

Who knows what could have happened if Manual stood up for the investigation of the Arms deal.

Feinstein himself dedicates several pages in his book to the conundrum he faced in going against the ANC. He felt deeply conflicted. It is something that I suspect you must have at least considered. In the end he expresses his regret that he had not spoken out sooner.

But you can argue that it was advantageous that he kept his powder dry. If he had spoken out earlier it would have been unlikely that he would have been the ranking ANC member on SCOPA. Perhaps we would not have known what we do now about the Arms deal.

(Funny enough Feinstein – who calls your fellow minister Barbera Hogan his friend and closest political confident in parlaiment – said she had warned him that investigating the Arms deal truthfully would bring a premature end to his political career.)

Perhaps you to reasoned that way: It’s best that I keep quiet until I can make a real impact. Perhaps now that your a deputy minister or perhaps later a minister, you’d be more inclined to use your influence?

One of your problems is entirely not of your own making. In South Africa’s proportional representation system you have no independent base of your own. Go against the party and you loose your position as MP.

And unlike like some ANC MPs ( like Winnie Mandela ) and externals in cabinet (Pieter Mulder springs to mind) you really don’t have much of an independent following. It’s not as if your presence in the ANC brings it a block of votes. So your in a particularly difficult position.

But then. I never thought you’d be in it just for the job. Being a MP is not just a job as MPs here in England are being reminded of now. They made expenses claims, the vast majority within the rules. But the British people think them not in the spirit of what being a parliamentarian should be all about. 12 have resigned and so has the speaker of parliament for daring to defend them.

In South Africa, where many of the electorate are semi-literate or poor and one party dominates so completely there is an even bigger responsibility on members of parliament. You have much more leeway to act like you want than ruling parties in many other democracies.

With great power comes great responsibility. Power oozes from the ANC. Responsibility should ooze from your pores as well.

Related deployments:

1. Kameraad Mhambi responds to Kameraad Nel (Part 2)
2. Kameraad Mhambi responds to Kameraad Nel (Part 1)
3. Barbara Hogan is health minister (Video)
4. Let bygones be bygones Kameraad Nel? (Part 4)