Now why would anyone want to think South Africa is in deep crisis? If yesterday’s open letter to Jacob Zuma by Alec Hogg wasn’t enough to convince you, how about a deadly shootout between opposing police forces?

It appears there is now open warfare between the South African Police Service (SAPS) and the Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department (JMPD). The former is the national police, run by fat-cat gangsters. The latter are a bunch of glorified traffic cops, most related to each other, who spend their days getting fat, extorting bribes, and beating up girls in bars.

Writes the Sowetan’s Mfundekelwa Mkhulisi:

Members of the South African Police Services (SAPS) fired rubber bullets during a stand-off with their Johannesburg Metro Police Department (JMPD) counterparts on the M2 Highway in Johannesburg last night.

“Metro police blocked the flow of traffic on the M2 and when police intervened they fired live ammunition and police returned with rubber bullets,” police spokesman Julia Claassen said.

The entire city centre came to a grinding halt, as bystanders fled for their lives and hid under their cars. The Times reports that a police spokeman couldn’t get to the scene, and couldn’t get a report on the gun-battle because police officers had switched off their cellphones. Its coverage, by Werner Swart and Thabo Mkhize, also says one cop may have died in the stand-off:

Protesting Metro police caused chaos yesterday when they sealed-off the Johannesburg CBD, preventing thousands of motorists from leaving the city centre and sparking a deadly clash with the South African Police Service.

The violence may have resulted in the death of one metro officer, but the SAPS were unable to confirm this last night. Seven metro officers were injured.

The clash came after hundreds of metro policemen, in full uniform, blocked access to highway on-ramps and off-ramps ringing the city last night, in protest over a salary dispute with their employer.

SAPS officers fired rubber bullets to disperse their unruly metro colleagues, said spokesman Supertintendent Eugene Opperman.

He said the metro officers returned fire with live ammunition. The police are now investigating cases of attempted murder against the metro police officers.

Terrified motorists told The Times how officers had threatened motorists and brought traffic to a standstill. At some intersections, officers used concrete bins to block the path of motorists trying to make their way home.

Here’s the Mail & Guardian Online’s take on the story:

Protesting metro police officers fired live ammunition at South African Police Service (SAPS) members in Johannesburg on Wednesday.

SAPS Gauteng police spokesperson Superintendent Eugene Opperman said the police had been forced to fire rubber bullets at metro police members who had blockaded the city, causing traffic gridlock.

Seven metro police officers — three women and four men — were injured during the police action, Opperman said.

The exchange occurred in the Eloff Street/M2 highway area.

The protests were triggered by complaints over salaries and nepotism. Strikers said they would not return to work until their grievances had been addressed.

Major roads and highways were blocked, causing traffic havoc.

Said Opperman: “The SAPS deplores the conflict-seeking type of protest by the Johannesburg metro police.

Come foreigners! Come football fans! Welcome to our fair land, and bring your euros with you! (Dollars can be exchanged for real currency or a flack jacket upon arrival at OR Tambo International Airport. Even Metro cops won’t accept dollars for bribes.)

If I were an honest cop in that department, I would resign in disgust, today, and publicly announce this fact. Anyone who doesn’t, deserves the stigma of being a Johannesburg Metropolitan Pig Thug.

More than that, this appalling behaviour calls for the immediate disbandment of the Metropolitan Police. Arrest anyone who took part in the protest, and lock them up. Make sure they never work in a position of responsibility again, lest innocent companies (such as private security firms) accidentally hire disgruntled homicidal maniacs.

The concept of a Metro police force is a good one. A national force isn’t very good at local policing, traffic management and by-law enforcement. After all, they have police commissioners to catch. But when local police start shooting at national police, something appears to be somewhat wrong. I don’t mean to whinge, you understand, or sound pessimistic, but perhaps someone over at SA Rocks can explain how else one should feel about this sort of thing, or exactly what we should do about it. Other than grin, bear it, and send Nelson Mandela birthday wishes.

I’ve sent him a wish. It read, “Sorry, Madiba, that you had to live to see this.”

Considering specific corruption cases in isolation may provoke outrage, but it’s a cop-out. It’s a defence mechanism against despair. Because a full litany of the depth of the crisis in South Africa makes depressing reading. Alec Hogg, the editor in chief of Moneyweb, writes such a litany in his open letter to ANC president Jacob Zuma, prompted by the finding in a recent survey that nine of every ten South Africans consider corruption to be a way of life.

The letter is worth reading in its entirety, if only to be reminded of the weight of evidence against individuals involved in public and private corruption in recent years — some of whom remain unmolested by public reproof or legal censure.

I’m doubtful whether it will have much impact. The fact that Hogg feels the need to resort to transparent flattery, and to gloss over Zuma’s own proximity to, tolerance for, or involvement in corruption, suggests that he knows the letter will not find a sympathetic ear. Nonetheless, it is a letter that had to be written, and should be read. Widely. Well done, Alec.

• This column was first published in Maverick magazine last month. If you haven’t come across it, it’s fun to write for and fun to read, and most importantly, those who read it pay for my writing, so go ahead and get yourself a subscription.

Time to scrap BEE

As contrary as it runs to a fair and free economy, black empowerment was fully justified in the New South Africa. But the justification is withering, and the arguments against it are mounting.

The Sunday Times revelation a few weeks ago about the millions siphoned to the ANC as part of the BEE deal involving Saki Macozoma, Stanlib, Standard Bank and Liberty Life, is most instructive. It seems to be a case of accidental corruption. When political bribery can happen unintentionally, and there appears to be nothing illegal about it, something is deeply wrong with our country.

What happened was that the large empowerment consortium fell victim to a minor participant who dropped out and was replaced by an outfit headed by Nicholas Wolpe. You may recognise the name if you hung out at the “palace of patronage”, as Mail & Guardian editor Ferial Haffajee aptly described the “network lounge” at last year’s ANC conference in Polokwane.

Wolpe’s participation was small enough — R9 million — to attract no attention from Macozoma and his board-level colleagues, who had vetted other participants in the deal. Macozoma said the deal was not material. I’m quite willing to take his word for it that he didn’t know, at the time, about Wolpe’s connection with Chancellor House, which the ANC has admitted is a funding vehicle for the party.

Corruption House, as I prefer to call it, has been involved in two humungous Eskom contracts, from which it stands to gain several billion rand, at least some of which will end up in the ANC’s strongbox. Not bad, for political fundraising.

Macozoma rightly says that R9 million is immaterial in the context of a R1.5 billion deal, but it isn’t much less than the R11 million that was involved in the “Oilgate” scandal, during which PetroSA paid upfront money to Imvume Management, which the latter promptly sent to the ANC to fund its 2004 election campaign. PetroSA ended up having to pay again for what it was supposedly buying from Imvume, and the ANC was silent (but grateful) about its windfall.

Though these cases are all slightly different, each of them is troubling. The first looks like a case of buying political patronage. If the ANC benefits from an empowerment deal (or indeed, any other deal), it is likely to favour future tender offers from that company. The second is a case in which the ANC abused a necessary public-sector contract to create an automatic kickback to the party by awarding part of contract fee to itself, via Corruption House. The third is a more blatant case of fraud aimed at topping up empty party coffers.

In considering these cases, a couple of points need making.

First, black economic empowerment was fully justified, even if it runs counter to the principles of a free market involving a free people. It was necessary to rapidly correct at least some of the disparity in economic participation between black and white. The alternatives would be far more unpalatable, both morally and in practice.

However, several factors make this justification less convincing as the years go by. It can for obvious reasons not be fair in perpetuity. Few past injustices can be elegantly and fully undone by applying such corrective policy. A restitution policy should lay the foundation for long-term justice.

As time passes, more and more young people and young companies are caught up in paying for the supposed crimes of their fathers. Few would dispute that it is just to force Sanlam or SA Breweries into an empowerment deal, but is it equally just to demand the same from a white kid who matriculated in 1996, graduated in 1999, and founded a company in 2004 in competition with his black classmate?

Another reason empowerment’s justification is decreasing is that substantial progress has been made. Many major companies sport BEE credentials, these days. A significant black middle class is emerging. A black South African finds himself on the Forbes dollar billionaire’s list. The list of black movers and shakers is ever-growing. Nowadays, BEE seems to make the rich richer far more often than it actually empowers anyone. Macozoma himself is one of about half a dozen empowerment magnates, and about two dozen empowerment vehicles seem to be involved all major deals.

Since blacks are no longer excluded, perhaps it’s time to leave the economy to its own devices, without imposing growth-sapping contraints upon it to eke out those last few drops of restitution.

The second point is that political donations should be protected as a form of free speech. It is everyone’s individual right to fund political causes, and this right extends to company shareholders too. More importantly, a political party cannot campaign without money, so restricting its ability to accept donations curbs its ability to promote its message, which is a de facto limit on free speech.

That said, the combination of BEE and political donations makes for a dangerous environment. That there appears to be nothing illegal about Saki Macozoma’s deal must shock many observers. In many countries, such an arrangement would sink a political candidate, or lay a company open to public vilification, legal proceedings and possibly criminal prosecution.

An audit of Corruption House is said to be underway, and criminal action may be taken should it find evidence of crime. But it probably won’t, and that’s a problem.

The ANC has said in the past — over the Oilgate scandal, for example — that it is not obliged to reveal its donors. That is a problem too.

The huge size of our government gives it inordinate power in how it awards contracts. Because it uses this power to enforce BEE, this creates grave potential for conflicts of interest. If Macozoma can be caught in such a conflict without even knowing it, that’s clearly a problem.

The problems are clear. So what’s the solution? First, pass a law that requires political parties to disclose the sources of their funding. If patronage is going to be bought and sold, citizens deserve to know who is buying favours from whom.

Second, no political party, whether in government or otherwise, should be able to influence private business transactions, nor benefit from them.

Third, the same goes for public sector contracts. I’m no expert on the mechanics of the State Tender Board and related legislation, but if a party-political funding vehicle such as Corruption House can participate, repeatedly, in multi-billion rand public sector contracts, something is broken.

To be free and prosperous, this country needs a great deal more independence, a great deal more transparency, and a great deal more culpability for conflicts of interest in approving business deals or issuing government contracts.

A good start would be to abolish black economic empowerment as a mandated procedure. Remove it from the criteria that must be met for public sector contracts. This may need to be done gradually, and safeguards against losing BEE’s substantial gains might be necessary, but 14 years into our new democracy, the benefits of a contract process that doesn’t encourage political patronage and outright bribery trumps the benefits of continued black empowerment.

Most of all, we need a country in which private business transactions don’t lead to accidental R9 million donations to a political party, ruling or otherwise.

In a previous post I used a throwaway line about shooting a fleeing suspect in the back, as proxy for lazy, unprocedural, untrained, unconstitutional and in the end unacceptable behaviour by the police. I thought it would be obvious, but now it seems I was wrong about such behaviour being unacceptable, if I am to believe a foaming-at-the-mouth deputy minister of safety and security, Susan Shabangu.

The Pretoria News reports that she spent a good while whipping up a crowd in Pretoria West, with phrases like these:

You [police] must kill the bastards if they threaten you or the community. You must not worry about the regulations. That is my responsibility. Your responsibility is to serve and protect…

I won’t tolerate any pathetic excuses for you not being able to deal with crime. You have been given guns, now use them.

I want no warning shots. You have one shot and it must be a kill shot. If you miss, the criminals will go for the kill. They don’t miss. We can’t take this chance.

Criminals are hell-bent on undermining the law and they must now be dealt with. If criminals dare to threaten the police or the livelihood or lives of innocent men, women and children, they must be killed. End of story. There are to be no negotiations with criminals.

The constitution says criminals must be kept safe, but I say No!

Well, okay then. Right. That was exciting. It reminds a friend of mine of Sylvester Stallone: “I am the law”. It reminds me of the more expressive Al Pacino: “Hoo hah!”

First, we have corruption. Then, we have incompetence. Shabangu is right in pointing out that police are often slow to respond, reluctant to investigate and generally lackadaisical in the face of high rates of violent crime.

But is it really a good idea for a senior member of the government to stand before an angry crowd and blatantly undermine our law and constitution? Wasn’t it a serious scandal, and a major claim of human rights abuses, when apartheid-era police forces were suspected of shooting to kill first, and firing warning shots only afterwards? Doesn’t this sort of fiery rhetoric make vigilantes, kangaroo courts and lynchmobs look like the reasonable actions of concerned citizens?

She appears to labour under the misconception that the executive — the ministry in which she is the deputy — is the ultimate source of law. It would serve police officers well to grasp that this is not the case, before they take her advice and find, inexplicably, that “her responsibility” is of little use when a court decides to “worry about the regulations”.

I’ve written before about suggestions for improving policing in South Africa, noting in particular a piece by Jim Harris of the Free Market Foundation that argues despite high crime numbers, actual numbers of criminals are comparatively low, so well-motivated, well-trained forces, private if necessary, should be able to find and squash them.

Given the hamfisted and abusive record of the police, however, I’m not entirely convinced that Shabangu’s incitement is a good idea. The crowd she addressed, however, gave her a standing ovation. So now we have Keystone Kops with a licence to kill and orders to shoot on sight, with a baying, bloodthirsty crowd at their backs.

Would someone please fire the dangerously irresponsible deputy minister, before she gets someone innocent killed? With that speech alone, I suspect she’s broken so many laws, surely even the Keystone Kops can make charges of incitement or conspiracy stick.

Hoo hah, indeed.

Updated at 12:50 on 12 April 2008: It is deeply disturbing that Jacob Zuma, the president of the ruling ANC and presumptive next president of South Africa, agrees with Shabangu: “If you have a deputy minister saying the kind of things that the deputy minister was saying, this is what we need to happen.”

No wonder he’s all put out about corruption investigations, when that’s his view of the authority of the executive and the origin of law. It is true that politics is among the few careers for which no formal qualification is required (journalism being another). It is true that, “owing to his deprived childhood, Jacob Zuma did not receive any formal schooling.” I’d suggest, however, that an introductory basic course in Political Science might be in order for senior politicians. Nothing fancy, you understand. Just to get an idea of who does what in a constitutional democracy. Perhaps a special extra session on basic budgeting might be added in Zuma’s case. It may come as a surprise to our unschooled lord and master, for example, that neither his nor the deputy minister’s word is law. If she wants to change the law, she’s welcome to table a bill in the legislature, where it can be debated, examined by the Law Commission, and voted upon. In supporting her advice to the police to simply disregard laws and regulations, Zuma is gravely undermining the rule of law in this country. Not that he’s shown much regard for such quaint concepts in the first place, I guess. Now at least we know how literally he takes his campaign song: “Bring me my machine gun”.

Nothing like a national crisis to expedite quiet crony deals on the side, is there?

Not long after a R20 billion power station contract for the planned Medupi plant in Limpopo was awarded to Hitachi, 15% of which would end up in the slush fund of Chancellor House, a company that exists solely to fund the ruling party, the Mail&Guardian reported on Thursday that another huge deal went the way of the ANC cronies.

This week it emerged that Eskom subsequently awarded the Hitachi consortium a similar contract, this time for “Project Bravo”, a second new coal-fired station. Bravo will be built near Eskom’s existing Kendal power station in Mpumalanga.

The Bravo contract was awarded without a further tender process. Earlier, Eskom justified its intended departure from standard procurement rules on grounds, among others, that it would save time.

Eskom has made no announcement about the Bravo contract, but construction giant Murray & Roberts let the cat out of the bag in a JSE regulatory announcement on Monday, saying it had “secured the construction contract to Hitachi for both the Medupi and Bravo boiler contracts”. Murray & Roberts is the Hitachi consortium’s construction subcontractor.

On Thursday a member of the Hitachi consortium, who asked not to be named, confirmed that Eskom and Hitachi had already signed the Bravo contract on December 14. The member said the contract was worth about R18,5-billion, slightly less than the Medupi contract but with similar arrangements.

Neat, guys. We’re proud of you. With all the raised eyebrows and corruption allegations, you never batted an eyelid. With supreme disdain you forwent even a token tender to hide your shame, but simply forged ahead with another fetid feat of, frankly, theft. Bravo, bravo.

Perhaps Naomi Klein should come visit South Africa (did you know we have splendid weather?) to take some lessons in “disaster cronyism”. See how it really works, and who really exploits whom.

A lot of South African politicians and public officials can take a lesson from Peter Hain’s resignation today. According to Sky News:

Cabinet Minister Peter Hain has resigned after the Electoral Commission announced it had referred the issue of undeclared donations to his deputy leadership campaign to the police.

Mr Hain said: “In view of the Electoral Commission decision today, I will be resigning to clear my name.”

The Prime Minister has accepted his resignation. […]

Sky News Political Editor Adam Boulton said: “Peter Hain has had to come back repeatedly and correct what he has been saying.

“At best he has not been on top of what is going on in terms of fund-raising, at worst, he has been less than frank about what is going on.

“That is what appears to have convinced Gordon Brown, or indeed, Peter Hain himself, that his position is untenable.

“This is a serious blow to the Government.”

He claims innocence, citing mere administrative oversights. He was a respected member of cabinet, in charge of a large, important ministry, and politics was his life.

Yet he didn’t wait for the police investigation to start. He didn’t wait for formal charges to be filed. He didn’t wait to be found guilty in a court of law. He didn’t wait to be fired by the prime minister. He offered to resign, on the spot. No ifs, buts, or maybes. And they still call it “incompetence, economic turmoil and political sleaze”.

Here, sleaze is the order of the day, and an honourable resignation seems to be the last thing on the minds of our gravy train passengers.

Granted, were its members to follow the example of the corrupt British captalist imperialist pigs, the ANC National Executive Committee would be sorely understaffed. The South African cabinet would be gravely depleted. On the other hand, imagine the many new job openings the government could claim credit for creating!

I share Junior’s sentiments over at Ibhubezi: “Quite honestly I am getting tired of the Selebi saga now.”

It’s surprising to see the date on which the impending arrest of Jackie Selebi, South Africa’s police commissioner and chairman of Interpol, on charges of corruption and worse, was first mooted. It was more than three months ago. Days later, troubling signs of presidential interference designed to protect Selebi began to surface.

As his arrest neared, the chief of the investigation in the case was dramatically arrested, but all charges were later dropped, prompting renewed fears of political interference to protect Selebi, whether by agents in the turf war between the regular police and the special investigations force (the Scorpions), by intelligence agents who appear to have little to do other than serve as political attack dogs in this country, or by the president himself.

Selebi has now finally stepped down, and has resigned (to use the official term) as chairman of Interpol, while the prosecution appears set to go ahead.

Ibhubezi continues:

Quite honestly I am getting tired of the Selebi saga now. Every-time one opens a newspaper you find something new that the man is alleged to have done.

We now know that he has been granted extended leave from his position as head of police and he has quit Interpol. A question that jumps to my mind is why this man was not fired? Jacob Zuma was sacked as Deputy President before he was found guilty of anything, in fact he has still not been found guilty of anything.

Jackie Selebi faces charges of corruption, fraud, racketeering and defeating the course of justice.

I know one is presumed innocent until a court finds you guilty, but for a man in Selebi’s position, this is a disgrace. When he was appointed to head Interpol it was a massive honour for the country as a whole. That honour has now turned into a disgrace.

One cannot help wondering if political appointments in such high positions within the SAPS is the way to go. Whatever happened to working yourself up from constable to Commissioner. This country needs a real cop heading up the police services.

The crime situation is getting worse, the cops are leaderless, the criminals are the only ones laughing.

Quite so. Selebi should have done the right thing months ago: request leave from the president to stand aside, and ask him to institute an investigation to promptly clear up a matter that taints the commissioner, the police and the reputation of the country. That he hasn’t done so suggests that such an investigation would have found at least some of the allegations against him to be painfully true.

US vice president Dick Cheney, before entering office, resigned from oil services company Halliburton and ringfenced any remaining shareholding interests he has in the firm to ensure that he could in no way personally benefit from (or be financially hit by) the company’s performance. The company has since won services contracts, worth at least $1.7 billion, from the US Department of Defence. Most of them involve the reconstruction of post-invasion Iraq. Calls for impeaching Cheney or Bush or both haven’t got far, mostly because it couldn’t be shown that anybody in the Bush administration stood to gain by the contracts in any way.

But this isn’t the end of the story. It has now emerged that members of the Republican Party, including its treasurer, play an active role in managing a company that owns a 25% stake in Halliburton. Worse, senior Republican Party officials have admitted that the sole purpose of this vehicle is to fund the GOP itself. So, the Grand Old Party has grandly profited from the reconstruction contracts awarded after the invasion of Iraq.

This, surely, will put the final nail in the coffin of the Bush Administration? Surely, in any civilised democracy, such a government must fall?

Except… none of this is true. At least, this picture isn’t true unless you change a few names.

Substitute ANC for GOP. Change Halliburton to Hitachi Africa. Let state-owned utility Eskom play the role of the Department of Defence. Replace reconstructing Iraq with upgrading South Africa’s neglected and decrepit power generation infrastructure. For the Republican Party treasurer, insert the name of ANC treasurer, Mendi Msimang, and for the senior Republican Party officials, substitute the name of Kgalema Motlanthe, the ANC’s secretary-general.

The value of $1.7 billion, however, is just about right. That’s roughly equivalent to the 60% share of the R20 billion contract that Hitachi Africa will handle to build six utility steam generators for the Medupi power station. Medupi, in the Limpopo province, is the first new base-load station to be built in two decades. The contract in question is the largest slice of the R80 billion project and is also the largest contract Eskom has ever awarded. By comparison, the largest arms deal component, for the Gripen jet fighters and Hawk trainers, was worth less: a trifling R16 billion and change.

And to match the final detail in the picture sketched earlier, Hitachi Africa has a 25% shareholder in the form of Chancellor House, which has been described by none other than Kgalema Motlanthe, the ANC’s secretary-general, as funding vehicle for the party. This is according to the Mail & Guardian’s exposé on the deal, written by veteran corruption-busters Stefaans Brümmer and Sam Sole. The paper also wrote an editorial explaining why the use of public money to fund the private political ambitions of the ruling party is a problem.

This, surely, will put the final nail in the coffin of the Mbeki Administration? Surely, in any civilised democracy, such a government must fall?

The growth of state corporatism and the corrupt cronyism it breeds is a very troubling development in South Africa. I’ve argued before why the notion that it’s okay for politicians to own interests in media companies needs revisiting. Perhaps it goes too far to argue that they shouldn’t have any private interests at all, but if they are permitted to own and operate private businesses, surely they should not benefit from juicy government contracts paid for by taxpayers? Even when such deals are not intrinsically corrupt, the scope for embezzlement and political gain bought at the public’s expense should be cause for alarm.

I’m surprised this case has received so little media coverage in the ten days since the M&G first broke the story. But the silence of the usually strident media may be a blessing in disguise. The ANC could take the moral high ground and hand out leaflets to its members at its national congress explaining the difference between outright corruption and mere crony capitalism. It could even stage an informative public debate: Jacob Zuma and Thabo Mbeki could each take a side, and explain why their version is the more honest and defensible way of spending taxpayers’ hard-earned money.

Today, news broke that Mondli Makhanya, the editor of the country’s biggest Sunday paper, the Sunday Times, and its deputy managing editor, Jocelyn Maker, are to be arrested to face charges over the provenance of source material used in a recent article alleging that health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang is a thief and a drunk.

In response, Justice Malala, one of the country’s most respected journalists, a columnist, political analyst and former newspaper editor, wrote a column that inspires tears for the beloved country.

I am angry and I am afraid. I am deeply afraid for my country.

The sound of silence has fallen over our country while the government of President Thabo Mbeki, in its anger and its shame over its numerous failures and acts of deceit, uses state security apparatus to go after every man and woman who dares to speak truth to power.

… The question has to be asked: is this the South Africa of Nelson Mandela and Albert Luthuli? Did the heroes of June 1976 and the veterans of the fires of the ’80s lose out on schooling and normal lives to be in a country where journalists are prosecuted as happened under apartheid?

The Mbeki regime has been an unmitigated disaster from the onset.

But ineptitude — ranging from the failure to deal with HIV/Aids and rampant crime to consorting with criminals such as Robert Mugabe — is different from pure, unadulterated corruption such as we see unfolding today in the Pikoli saga and now the persecution of Makhanya and Maker.

These are steps into the worlds of Mobutu Sese Seko and Mugabe. Only 13 years into our democracy, Mbeki’s Stalinist learnings are fully on show: journalists and editors arrested and jailed; opponents jailed on trumped-up charges; everyone in government living in fear that they are being followed, watched and bugged.

… I am angry and I am afraid. But mostly I am ashamed. Ashamed and embarrassed to call myself South African. Ashamed that in this country we all keep quiet while evil is so routinely perpetuated by a bunch we ourselves put into power.

More power to Malala’s pen. This is indeed a dark day for journalism, media freedom and political liberty in South Africa.

Dene Smuts, the official opposition party’s spokesperson on communications, sure knows how to get quoted. Witness:

[Minister of Communications Ivy] Matsepe-Casaburri is simply not implementing recommendations. She seems to act as a law unto herself and an unguided missile. I intend to ask the committee to attend to this. The department is expected to appear before us this month and I intend to use this as an opportunity to tackle the matter and take it forward.

This was in response to the minister’s reported statement that said a Public Service Commission report which found “sufficient evidence” of several irregularities in the appointment of staff in her department was “incorrect”, and that she would take no action on its recommendations. This report lends support to recent allegations about fraud and corruption in the hiring practices of the Department of Communications (DOC).

The most elegant solution to these problems would be to fire the minister — you could pick from a smorgasbord of reasons — and merge her portfolio with that of the Department of Trade and Industry. Then require all current employees of the DOC to re-apply for positions in the new department. Two birds, one stone.

It has emerged that acting head of the national prosecuting authority, Mokotedi Mpshe, who stepped into suspended boss Vusi Pikoli’s shoes, succeeded in having the arrest warrant for Jackie Selebi cancelled. He failed, however, to get a related search and seizure warrant withdrawn. This strongly supports the speculation that Pikoli’s suspension by president Thabo Mbeki was not because, as Mbeki claimed, because of a breakdown in relations between him and the justice minister, Brigitte Mabandla, but because he obtained, and refused to request the recission, of warrants against Selebi. The political interference has prompted Cosatu’s Zwelenzima Vavi, the Independent Democrat leader Patricia de Lille, and the United Democratic Movement’s Bantu Holomisa, to join the Democratic Alliance’s urgent appeal for Mbeki to take the country into his confidence on this issue. The longer he remains silent, the worse things get. By now, everything points to executive interference in the operation of the judicial branch of government. Obstruction of justice by the president of the country would precipitate a full-scale constitutional crisis. Presidents have been impeached for less.

Recent, decent coverage:

• A good analysis: Tell Us the Truth, Mr President! — Sunday Times, 7 October 2007
• A scathing column: Lavatorial milestone flushed away by horror of SA dream in tatters — Mondli Makhanya, Sunday Times, 7 October 2007
• More reporting: Police, NPA in for a ’shake-up’ — Cape Times, 8 October 2007

News is emerging that four warrants had been issued for national police commissioner and chairman of Interpol, Jackie Selebi, one of which was for arrest. However, all four have reportedly been withdrawn, which raises an entirely new set of troubling questions for the conspicuously silent president Thabo Mbeki, suggesting as it does political interference in potentially embarrassing investigations by the national prosecution authority. Opposition parties are trying to obtain copies of the warrants.

Separately, the case against Agliotti, over the murder of prominent businessman Brett Kebble, and the investigation into what role, if any, Selebi played, is said to be unravelling.

Update: The last story in particular suggests an alternative explanation for the suspension by Thabo Mbeki of Vusi Pikoli.

Pikoli’s fitness for office is now the subject of an inquiry headed by former parliamentary speaker, Frene Ginwala. It would surprise me very much if he were found to be fit for office and reinstated. Perhaps this inquiry is not just about the relationship between him and justice minister Brigitte Mabandla, as Mbeki originally claimed, but about something a lot more serious. Such as obtaining judicial authorisation for arrest warrants without first building a prima facie case. The warrant in question appears to have been issued, but then withdrawn. Some ongoing investigations by the national prosecuting authority, which Pikoli headed, are now subject to review. Agliotti, facing trial for the Kebble murder, rather curiously refused a plea bargain that would involve giving evidence in the investigation against Selebi. This might indicate that he had nothing to offer. All of this points to the possibility that Pikoli may have played at inter-departmental politics, or worse, at presidential succession politics, instead of seeking impartial justice no matter how high the trail of evidence led. In that case, Mbeki would be perfectly in the clear. Better yet, he’d be able to claim the moral high ground for preventing abuse of institutional power against a political rival, Jacob Zuma.

But if so, why doesn’t Mbeki simply make a clear and forthright statement to that effect?