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.”

• 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.

Posting numbered updates to this story is getting tiresome, so here’s a new post, freshly baked.

BizCommunity, which has been following the David Bullard affair comprehensively since it broke, has published well-known marketing writer Chris Moerdyk’s take on the issue. It is the clearest, most definitive analysis I have yet read.

With one reservation, I agree with his comparison:

Bullard clearly did not learn any lessons from the fate of Sowetan sub-editor Llewellyn Kriel who was fired by Sunday Times owners, Avusa, in November last year for criticising his employers in a blog published on a competitor’s website.

Kriel’s blog can be found on ThoughtLeader, where Moerdyk blogs too (as, in the interest of disclosure, do I). Wisely, Kriel has left the blog defunct since taking up his new position.

Kriel played the incident up as his martyrdom for free speech, but that was a suspect defence. An employer has every right to expect staff to protect the company’s interests in public, and has every right to axe staff who are not prepared to do so. His post was, I thought, rather ill-considered. In the case of a media organisation, a dismissal is not a denial of freedom of speech either, since the disaffected journalist could simply go to a competitor to tell the full story. He’ll surely find someone to give him a platform to disclose the facts, if the facts merit disclosing.

Bullard, ironically, has more claim to a free speech defence than Kriel did, because he was ostensibly fired over perceived racism in his Sunday Times column, and not over his criticism in Empire. It would have been far less complicated and controversial had Mondli Makhanya, the Sunday Times editor, simply acted then, on grounds of betraying the trust of an employer. Or even if instead of denying it, when asked if this was the real reason, he’d answered simply: “Well yes, we were none too happy with that either, and that alone would be sufficient cause for dismissal.”

The annual SA Blog Awards were handed out last night. This blog didn’t get any first prizes, but despite only having been launched in June last year, got a few merit badges for being among the runners-up in three categories. Sadly, those exclude the one I kinda wanted: best green blog.

Given the competition, many bloggers were unsurprised at the winners. As Bridget McNulty points out, there will be some griping in the blogosphere.

The overall winner, deservedly, was the Mail & Guardian’s online opinion project, ThoughtLeader. I’ll desist from gushing too much about the impact it has had in the South African blogosphere and its coming of age, since I also blog there, as it happens.

Peas on Toast snapped up two more awards to add to her illustrious list of accolades, for best post and best original writing. Well done, and well deserved, on both counts, I might add. Her best post sounded terrifically familiar: How not to buy condoms. I’ve had exactly the same experience, with the added embarrassment that a long queue was forming behind me, and a cute girl towards the back called out, “Hi, Ivo! How nice to see you!” There’s a reason I didn’t blog about it…

Matt Buckland deserves an honourable mention for being involved with three of the winners (and Vince Maher for two of them): Best overall and best politics blog, ThoughtLeader, best business blog at matthewbuckland.com, and best blog about blogging for aggregator site Amatomu. Well done, Matt and Vince. You host excellent braais — sorry, Bloggerati/Digerati events — too.

Other winners were the most popular blog in South Africa, Mark Keohane’s sport blog, Cape Town Daily Photo for best travel blog, best design blog for the felicitously titled Skinny Laminx, best tech blog imod.co.za, best foreign blog by a South African and best food & drink blog to the delectably presented Cook Sister, Peak Performances for best music blog, best personal blog to the perennial So Close, and best photo blog to Jenty’s Photo-a-Day, not to mention Urban Sprout for carrying the banner of the orthodox green religion. Newly added to my feed reader is the country’s best undiscovered blog, written by a young girl with cystic fibrosis, who has the sense of humour to title her blog about how breathtaking life can be Living Life Breathlessly.

But, on to the gripes. ThoughtLeader was the Goliath that dominated the politics category. Competition from a site funded and promoted by a major weekly newspaper seems a little unfair to valiant pajama-clad Davids who are among my favourite blogs, such as Commentary South Africa, Politics.za and Alex Matthews’s AfroDissident. ThoughtLeader has at last count recruited over a hundred contributors to churn out copy. Despite such volumes its stated readership is only about 10 or 15 times my own meagre traffic numbers, which makes for an interesting object lesson in the law of diminishing returns. That none of us genuine bloggers — the solo kind — could cut it against a media-funded mega-blog is not entirely surprising.

Other categories saw similar scenarios. East Coast Radio has several corporate blogs, and between them, they swept all before it. Best new blog went to its NewsWatch site, best entertainment blog, most humorous blog, and best group blog all went to The BIG Breakfast Blog, and best podcast was snapped up by its Just Plain’s ‘On The Blog’. It would not surprise me if some bloggers feel a little put-upon to be routed by media personalities who get paid by their employers to blog, and who enjoy, for free, the promotional power of radio to boot.

To add to the confusion, ThoughtLeader, the best overall blog, was also a finalist in the group blog category, which ECR won, and despite having been launched in 2007 didn’t crack the new blog category. Ironic, not so?

It is true that, as one of the organisers explained to me, the ECR and ThoughLeader wins have a positive promotional spinoff for blogging in general. Their links to the winners could result in a traffic boost for runners-up, and it promotes blogging in general. I know I’ve discovered a few excellent blogs of which I had been unaware through participating in the awards.

Still, my solution would be to limit group blogs to the group blog category, so individual bloggers can’t go win the group category, and solo politics writers won’t have to take on entire armies in the politics category. Similarly, I’d establish a “commercial” category, for blogs that are funded and operated by commercial media organisations such as East Coast Radio. They’re not in the same weight division as regular bloggers who can’t hire full-time staff, so matching them up is going to cause bruises. If it seems unfair to ban a commercial blog from a particular category, perhaps the categories themselves should be split into amateur and commercial. The shortlist of nominated finalists in each category can then be halved, if organisers, judges and voters don’t want to face an overwhelming number of entries.

That said, I’m chuffed with my three merit badges. Armed thus, this nightwatch will stride resolutely onwards, putting barbarian heads on the spike as he valiantly defends individual liberty and market economics against pillaging socialists, fascists rulers and the invading green hordes.

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.

“Spot the difference”, I wrote above portraits of B.J. Vorster and Thabo Mbeki, in a post describing the bid for Sunday Times owner Johncom as reminiscent of the Info Scandal of 1978. Anton Harber, former political editor at the Rand Daily Mail, former Mail & Guardian editor and current professor of journalism at Wits University, says there is a difference:

In the Info Scandal, government money was secretly channeled to a sympathetic businessman, Louis Luyt, to try and buy the Rand Daily Mail, then a leading government critic, and when this failed, to launch The Citizen newspaper. The scandal lay in the secrecy, and the abuse of state resources to try and take out a vocal opponent of government.

This time around, it appears to be an open bid by a group of individuals who are entitled to do it in their personal capacities. What is unusual, however, is that a number of them are government officials, in key places such as the presidency and foreign affairs, and senior ruling party members. It seems they seek funding from the Public Investment Corporation (PIC), but this is what the PIC does it and as long as it gives them no special treatment, and makes a decision on solid business grounds, I cannot see grounds for complaint at this technical level.

Fair comment. Harber remains concerned, however, calling it a “very worrying development”. He notes some of the dangers, concluding:

Interestingly, ANC media policy currently highlights the need for greater diversity in our media, and no doubt some of them will argue that government needs a louder voice in the media and this is adding to the diversity. But they are wrong - media diversity should serve to give voice to the voiceless, those most distant from wealth and power, and not those who hold and wield the enormous authority of the state.

A few days ago, I expressed concern about the impliations of Tokyo Sexwale, a presidential candidate, owning the Sunday Times. This pales into insignificance against the prospect of members of the Sunday Times board actually sitting in government offices, like the Afrikaans media of the apartheid era.

Some will argue that this is just a transaction by some individual exercising their rights in a free market. Well, it is more than that and it has consequences and implications we cannot ignore. If these individuals want to show that they are not doing it as party officials, they should resign from government and party so that they are not conflicted between their political obligations and their business/editorial ones.

“The press is a machine, it doesn’t have any freedom. Freedom belongs to the people, they have a right to make choices.” — Dali Mpofu, CEO of the state-owned South African Broadcasting Corporation, quoted in the Mail & Guardian.

More funnies in the same story, from Snuki Zikalala i’Afrika, the government spin-doctor turned SABC news director who has undisclosed information on the dipso klepto health minister that differs from everyone else’s, and Ronald Suresh Roberts, the presidential hagiographer who thinks journalists harbour subversive fantasies involving baked beans and trespassing on the body of said minister.

Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, is visiting our fair land. Ever observant, she reportedly spouted some politically-correct non-sequiturs at a climate change research centre:

Climate change is already happening in South Africa, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Saturday during a visit to a biodiversity centre in Cape Town.

Uhm, yeah, duh! Climate changes. Deal with it. It always has, it always will; saying that “it’s happening” is as dumb as expressing surprise that the sun rises in the morning. In fact, it’s probably because the sun rises in the morning.
Read the rest of this entry »

What a great comment thread for the item pictured alongide: Flux Capacitor + FREE SHIPPING!

More seriously, what a nifty marketing idea for Neo, the online shop in the UK that sells this widget.

For those of you who don’t know what a flux capacitor is, may I refer you to Wikipedia. Yes, I know what I said tomorrow on Thought Leader about citing Wikipedia. I’ll find a more authoritative source last week.

(Hat tip: Graeme Scala)

As per my previous post, the Mail & Guardian Online has invited me to blog for their new opinion section, called Thought Leader. This is my second post:

Thabo Mbeki is quite right

The elevation of axed deputy minister of health Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge to heroine status is a little farcical. The president has every right to relieve members of the executive of their duties, for any reason, or indeed for no reason whatsoever.

It is true that she has been publicly hostile towards both the Minister of Health, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, and President Thabo Mbeki in the past. If that isn’t enough, Mbeki certainly has the right to fire her if the member in question disregarded protocol or acted against direct instructions, one of which is almost certainly true. Besides which, flying to Spain accompanied by her son, on business class, at a cost of seven RDP houses, is among those profligacies that the opposition and the media have consistently — and most aptly — criticised before.

So why not be consistent and welcome Mbeki’s prompt action? After all, Madlala-Routledge is a member of the Communist Party, so she hardly deserves loyalty from the classical liberals in the Democratic Alliance. Mbeki was quite right to fire her, and setting her up as some kind of saint smacks of shortsighted partisanship.

You can read the rest of it here.

Along with a few dozen other writers, the Mail & Guardian Online has invited me to blog for their new opinion section, called Thought Leader. Not sure about the leader bit, but I sure have a surfeit of thoughts. What follows is an extract from my first post, which went live last week during beta testing:

The upside of an unfree press

Like the charred oak of a toasted wine barrel, an acute struggle for liberty imparts rich vitality to an oppressed media. The all-enveloping mix of peace and violence, calm and trauma, relief and fear, elation and despair creates in reporters a sense of history, and of the role and responsibility they have in its unfolding.

During the last days of South Africa’s own fight for freedom, the then Weekly Mail and the ill-fated Vrye Weekblad were both famous for their fearless, fresh, and gritty reporting. At these papers, many a young reporter learnt the rigours of research, the importance of accuracy, the grave duty to be unbiased.

There are distinct echoes of these papers to be found in The Zimbabwean, a weekly newspaper aimed at the estimated 25% of that country’s citizens who live in exile. On sale in South Africa for just R4 an issue, it puts many of today’s South African newspapers to shame. …

Read the rest over here. Do comment, rate posts and browse around on the site. It’s a pretty cool evolution of the opinion/editorial page idea.