The flesh is weak and the spirit flagging

Not a week passes without some ANC luminary, of manifestly pure heart and clear conscience, promising in soulful soliloquy to the news cameras that the government will not tolerate malfeasance an instant longer.

This week it was the turn of the Minister in the Presidency, Collins Chabane, who railed against the “scourge of corruption”, in response to Sipho Pityana of the Council for the Advancement of the SA Constitution’s statement that corruption had pushed the country to the brink of becoming a “dysfunctional state”.

But, when there is misconduct, it is a case not only of the flesh being weak but the spirit flagging. ANC MP Jonas Sibanyoni provides an instructive little vignette and the villains are not only the ANC.

Public Protector Thuli Madonsela last week briefed a special session of the justice portfolio committee, of which Sibanyoni is a member. She described the unauthorised raid by senior cops, acting without a warrant, who tried to browbeat her staff into handing over documents relating to the Protector’s investigation into a R500-million police tender scandal.

The ANC committee members generally found the raid a bit of a giggle. Sibanyoni was particularly patronising and dismissive when Madonsela said her staff had felt intimidated and remained frightened and uncertain.

The Protector’s staff could only have felt traumatised, Sibanyoni said, “because they were still thinking of apartheid, when police instilled fear in people”.

It seemed odd that Sibanyoni, a lawyer and on the coveted justice and constitutional development committee, was so cavalier about the raid and its implications. Google provided a putative answer: In 2008 the previous Public Protector had investigated Sibanyoni and recommended that Parliament address his “improper conduct” in soliciting an “unlawful and irregular” donation from Kungwini municipality for his constituency office.

Admittedly, the sum, a mere R25 856, is small beer by South African standards of impropriety. Nevertheless, an embarrassment for a lawyer, one would think, especially in an administration so stridently committed to good governance.

The speaker was to implement the Protector’s ruling, as well as take steps to ensure that no MP committed the same transgression in future. One might then expect at least a slap on Sibanyoni’s wrist and some career slippage for him. Maybe also a short course for MPs on the differences between private, party and public funds, a concept that many of them seem to struggle with.

But the speaker did nothing. The matter “slipped between the cracks” says an official and, needless to say, Sibanyoni didn’t jog anyone’s memory.

Democratic Alliance shadow minister Willem “Dozy” Doman, who made the complaint, also did nothing. He snoozed through the follow-up phase.

The Protector did nothing. No one in the Protector’s office actually checks whether rulings are obeyed.

The Gauteng ANC did nothing. Sibanyoni ranked high on its 2009 election slate.

The ANC parliamentary caucus did nothing. Upon re-election, Sibanyoni was placed on the powerful Justice portfolio committee. Extraordinarily, he also served on the selection committee for the new Public Protector, Ms Madonsela.

Most bizarrely, he is the ANC-appointed co-chair for the committee that is compiling an ethics code for High Court judges. When it’s about conduct unbecoming, Sibanyoni’s the go-to man.

Since no complaint was received, the Gauteng Law Society did nothing.

The media did nothing. A piffling R25k of misspent public funds is hardly worth diarising for follow-up in a harried newsroom which, in any given week, is trying to track stories involving hundreds of millions of rands.

The dirt-poor Kungwini Local Municipality whose ratepayers’ money it was, did act, in a fashion. The Protector had ordered that Kungwini, which serves the “somewhat underdeveloped” area around Bronkhorstpruit, discipline those involved and recover the funds.

An official was given a final warning. Kungwini does not know whether or not the money was ever repaid.

The mayor involved, Obed Maila, resigned following an unrelated forensic investigation that uncovered fraud, corruption, tender rigging and nepotism. The amount involved dwarfs the puny indiscretion with Sibanyoni, a meaty R147-million unaccounted for.

Simple events can illuminate big truths. At the kindest interpretation, the Sibanyoni little “impropriety” lays bare the administrative breakdown that seemingly bedevils every government good intention. At worst, it shows not only are some parliamentarians ethically challenged, but also that no one is particularly surprised or perturbed by this.