Cry, the Vervrotting Country

For non South Africans and non Afrikaans speakers, the "v" in Afrikaans words is pronounced like an "f", so the word in the title would be pronounced something like "ferfrotting", but with a more delicate accent than English tongues can usually muster. And if it was a word, but it's not. "Vrot" means rotten, so for the sake of this discussion let's agree that "vervrotting" means rotting.

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That's how our democracy feels today. This afternoon, South Africa sits on the edge of our collective seat and we watch as Parliament votes on a Motion of No Confidence - the eighth to date - in the President of the country and the President of the African National Congress (ANC), South Africa's governing party. Or as they like to say it, the ruling party. This is an important distinction in our young democracy because it is clear the ANC has left behind the people it helped to liberate through the struggle against apartheid in favour of staying in power at all costs, regardless of how poor the poor still are and how unequal South African society has become.

What's the vrot?

It's a bit like watching Game of Thrones meets House of Cards in real life. Where to start? Probably best with the horrifyingly fascinating exercise in "state capture", effected by the Gupta family in concert with President Zuma, his family and close circle. The amaBhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism has done extraordinary work in investigating this rot, and communicates it online and through an ongoing stream of media revelations as they work through the terabytes of data in the #GuptaLeaks, which you can read about, possibly for years to come, here.

The systemic vrot is fuelled by the political largesse which drives redistribution of wealth at the large scale level and in the informal township economies, as described so well by Anton Harber in his insightful book Diepsloot, reviewed here about one of South Africa's most desperate and yet vibrant townships (not so far from where we live in blissful suburbia, by the way). The centrist/statist ideology which the "ruling" party applies is incompatible with sustainable private sector led wealth creation. Ideally, in this way of thinking, all money magically goes into some central pot and gets redistributed fairly by a few wise redistributors who of course would never skim off the top or use the power that entails to their advantage.

Uh-oh, State Owned Enterprises

This vrot is supported by the systematic co-option of State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) in Energy, Transport and Defense, to name a few, by the methodical replacement of board members with members hand-picked by the Gupta family and willingly placed by Cabinet ministers who had everything to gain for themselves and their families in terms of power, influence, position and money by going along with the process. Gaining control over the governance of SOEs has given the string pullers the means to then secure lucrative contracts for themselves and those close to them.

What sort of scale are we talking about? Just one recent random example is the whopping R5.3bn (about USD396m at current rates) that a Gupta-linked company, Tequesta Group, collected as a 21% cut of every deal that a subsidiary of China South Rail (CSR) managed to score. The most discussed of these deals was a tender won in 2014 to supply 359 locomotives to Transnet, one of South Africa's largest SOEs, which describes itself as "the largest and most crucial part of the freight logistics chain that delivers goods to each and every South Africa". The former Finance Minister, Pravin Gordhan (we won't go into his story here, but it's extraordinary), recently estimated that at least R100bn (call that USD7.5bn, nice change if you can get it) has already been siphoned off the South African economy.

The culture of corruption and graft has filtered through to all levels of society as South Africans have, like the proverbial frog in a pot of water being slowly brought to the boil, gradually adjusted their own moral compasses as happens when vrot sets in. When rot is tolerated and promoted at top leadership level, graft and petty corruption thrive on the street.

Secret ballot

In a surprise announcement yesterday, after taking legal advice, the Speaker announced that parliamentarians would carry out this vote under a secret ballot. There are those who believe that means the ANC members who are disgusted by what their movement has become will vote with their conscience.

The ANC instructed its members to vote against the motion, mainly on the basis that voting for it would be to support the opposition's venal attempt at regime change. The opposition was united in saying that sure, they want to eventually remove the ANC from power, but today is about removing Jacob Zuma from power.

At least one courageous ANC member who committed publicly to voting with her conscience rather toeing the party line received well-documented death threats against her and her family.

While I was writing this

I got caught up watching the debate, the voting and then the outcome. So the answer is, to I hope nobody's surprise, that the President has survived his eighth no confidence motion.

So what incentivises politicians?

This is another interesting experiment in human behaviour, at the other end of the scale from my musings yesterday on why people don't kill pointsmen at intersections.

The writers of the American political drama series, House of Cards, are reportedly reeling from the unintended predictions they made in Season 5, which has eerie parallels with current political developments in the US. And oddly, in the Reputblic of South Africa.

In episode 58, just after his wife Claire, recently sworn in as President of the United States, warns the Democratic Cabinet members that if one state decides the election, "A lot of (your) incumbents will be in danger of losing their seats. And there it is", the main character, Sleaze-in-Chief Frank Underwood (played brilliantly by Kevin Spacey) looks to the camera and says : "Look. Look at them. That is the look of contemplating loss. Loss, the only constituent that anyone in this room really listens to."

So our struggle movement is reduced to struggling for a chance to keep eating at the table. And holding onto power. The only constituent they're listening to.

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With apologies to Alan Paton for bastardising the title of his book "Cry the Beloved Country".