Kameraad Mhambi

This is Kameraad Mhambi’s last response to the new deputy minister of Justice Andries Nel. And then its over to you Kameraad Nel.

Somewhere between your appointment to SCOPA and the 8th of November bollocking Feinstein received, Jacob Zuma stopped speaking to and supporting Feinstein. He knew that without this cover he was in serious trouble.

Alec Erwin, Trevor Manual, Terror Lekota, and Jeff Radebe held a press conference to announce that the cabinet held the ‘firm’ view that the process was undertaken with the ‘utmost integrity’.

Public protector Selby Baqwa, who had supported the initial investigation, suddenly withdrew his support. But only after he was accused of sexual harassment. And low and behold the charge was withdrawn as soon as his support for the investigation evaporated.

On the 19th of January President Mbeki went on TV to announce that Judge Heath’s investigation Unit won’t be part of the investigation – as Feinstein’s Scopa had asked for. He justified this by relying on the legal opinion of tow Cape Town advocates. When their advice became public it was clear their advice was exactly the opposite. But the shameless Mbeki went on to to say:

Our country and all our people have been subjected to a sustained campaign that has sought to discredit our Government and the country itself by making unfounded and unsubstantiated allegations of corruption.

Among other things, this campaign has sought to force us to do illegal things, to break important contractual obligations, to accuse major international companies of corrupt practice and to damage our image globally, arguing that if we did these things, we would, inter alia, strengthen international investor confidence in South Africa.

Nothing whatsoever, will force us to do any of these absolutely wrong and unacceptable things.

We know that various entities have been hired to sustain this campaign to create a negative climate about our country and Government.

I would like to assure you that the campaign will not succeed. We will leave no stone unturned in the effort to ensure that you, the people, know everything that needs to be known about this matter.

All lawful investigations will continue. All wrongdoers, whoever they may be, will meet their just deserts.

Mbeki had just flunked a massive test. Only a few days before in an editorial ‘an test of integrity looms’ the Mail & Guardian had challenged him:

“Either they give the investigation presided over by SCOPA, their patent or unqualified support and co-operation or they risk grave consequences for themselves and the country…”

Exactly the opposite started to happen. And Minister Nel, you were a small cog in this oppressive and destructive wheel.

Said the Mail and Guardian on the 21st of January 2001:

AS public fears of a massive government cover-up of corruption in its R43bn arms deal grow, Patricia de Lille, the feisty parliamentarian who ripped the veil off corruption in the government’s shady multi-billion rand arms deal, has received death threats – and graft-busting judge Willem Heath fully expects apartheid-era style state raids on his office.

And the Natal Mercury on the same date:

Parliamentary committees start work on Monday with the trend-setting meeting of the select committee on public accounts, which will determine whether parliament and its committees will assert their independence and critical role or whether they will be cowed by pressures from the executive.

The committee, which took the lead in scrutinising the deal and recommended that the Heath investigative unit be part of a probe into the “murky” arms deal, has come under increasing pressure from the government to scale back its actions.

Its chairman, Gavin Woods of the IFP, has faced a harrowing time since the committee made its recommendations in November.

He has also received death threats and on Friday was visibly shaken when he revealed he had received a hostile letter from Deputy President Jacob Zuma.

Minister Nel, you said that “I don’t recall ever being “hostile” – openly or otherwise – to Mr. Feinstein.”

Perhaps you were not. Who knows. But put yourself in his position.

On the 29th of January The Star reported:

ANC MP Andrew Feinstein said on Monday that he was reconsidering his position in parliament and on its watchdog public accounts committee.

This follows a decision by party bosses to replace him as chairperson and spokesperson of the ANC’s study group on public accounts. “I am saddened by it,” he said.

Feinstein, who remains a committee member, did not attend the meeting of the public accounts committee, on Monday, which was addressed by speaker of the National Assembly Speaker, Frene Ginwala.

‘From time to time we have to make changes in the committee’

“I will need to reconsider my position on the committee and parliament,” he said. He was not prepared to comment further, saying: “I have been told not to talk to the media.”

And on the same day The Independent reported:

The African National Congress has dropped one of its most vocal and talented MPs, Andrew Feinstein, as chair of its study group on public accounts and replaced him with the party’s Deputy Chief Whip Geoff Doidge…

Neither Doidge nor Feinstein were immediately available for comment. Doidge fills a vacancy on the public accounts committee left by Serake Leeuw, who has become mayor of Welkom. ANC Chief Whip Tony Yengeni said Doidge’s appointment was aimed at “strengthening the study group because it has important matters to consider”. He did not elaborate.

Yengeni said other parties, including the Democratic Alliance, had also beefed up their representation on the committee. Other ANC MPs to join the committee include ANC caucus chairman in parliament Thabang Makwetla, and Percylia Mothoagae.

ANC MP Andries Nel – who chairs a special parliamentary committee on Public Protector Selby Baqwa’s findings against Justice Minister Penuell Maduna – has also been appointed to the committee.

The Nel committee has on repeatedly postponed its report – citing insufficient time to complete it. Nel said last year he hoped his committee would finally report back to parliament by February 28, 2001.”

Lefty academic Sampie Terblance said upon Feinstein’s sidelining:

“This is a constitutional crisis. It would be a sad day if this would be the first sign of presidential authoritarianism.”

Since then quite a lot has happened.

And slowly we have learned more and more about the arms deal. Unfortunately not from investigations from the SCOPA you were now part of. The SCOPA you were part of did not add much of substance to what we know now. That’s about the most charitable thing I could say about post Feinstein SCOPA. Others would call it an organ of a whitewash.

But none the less some journalists have been working tirelessly to get at the information. Here is a great example of how the Bribes for the Arms Deal were paid by the irrepressible Sam Sole.

Recently in an excellent article titled Expect No End to Dark Jest of Arms Deal Soap Opera Alistair Sparks summoned up what has transpired in our country and how we need to thank the tireless work of reporters:

“We know it all, thanks to the diligence and sustained energy of what must surely be the most remarkable example of investigative journalism ever undertaken in this country. We know who the crooks are. We know who paid and who received bribes. We know just about everything about how it was done. But this time the revelation of all these wrongdoings is not leading, as we journalists always believed would happen, to investigation, exposure and ultimately justice.

No, this time it simply moves on, endlessly, as in soapies such as Isidingo and Egoli , to a new series of weekly disclosures of more skulduggery, filled in each time with a little background about all the malfeasance that has gone before, but still not leading to any finite point. Never a conclusion. No charge. No trial. No judgment. No closure. A scandal without end.

It didn’t used to be like this. In older, uglier times, when we lived under a system that constituted a crime against humanity, things were paradoxically a lot simpler. We knew who the good guys were then and who George Bush would have called “the evildoers.” Moral judgments were a whole lot easier in those days.

However cynically we look to our benighted past, there was a clarity of vision then that we have lost today. The great crusade against the evil of apartheid is over and we are now in the uncharted waters where the distinctions between opportunity and greed, between entitlement and avarice, recompense and reprisal, are more difficult to distinguish.

And between crime and punishment. Think back to the great Information Scandal. Muldergate. A puny affair in both moral and monetary terms compared with the arms deal, but it brought down the Vorster government. John Vorster, he of the 90-day and 180-day detention laws, the creator of BOSS and the condoner of torture, the most feared man of his time, was kicked upstairs into a ceremonial presidency while his two cohorts, Connie Mulder and Eschel Rhoodie, were dismissed into obscurity. There was justice and closure in those evil times.”

That is quite an indictment I would say.

I hope when you read this you would look deep inside yourself and reflect. Perhaps you should have a chat with your father and compare notes.

I don’t expect you to do something about the Arms deal now. That would be a bit much to ask. It’s water under the bridge. Mbeki is gone and I feel relatively positive about our new president.

Kgalema Motlanthe warned at Polekwane that the ANC’s central challenge was “to address the problems that arise from our cadres’ susceptibility to moral decay, occasioned by the struggle for the control of and access to resources”.

Just this week Zwelinzima Vavi said the “big rush to be rich through whatever means possible” is derailing the revolution. “Crass materialism” is manifest in “patronage, abuse of state power and institutions, corruption, factionalism, back-stabbing, and the personal hatred of (some) comrades by others”.

So please, next time you have a chance to strike a blow for accountability and good governance. Give it your best shot. We want to be proud in and trust our government. We want the old Andries Nel back.

Related deployments:

1. Kameraad Mhambi responds to Kameraad Nel (Part 3)
2. Kameraad Mhambi responds to Kameraad Nel (Part 1)
3. Barbara Hogan is health minister (Video)
4. The cabinet: In the ANC loyalty pays big time
5. Kameraad Mhambi responds to Kameraad Nel (Part 2)