Crisis of 9/12 was turning point for SA

In SA’s public discourse, the word "crisis" has taken on an amorphous meaning. But according to the word’s Latin roots, a crisis is a turning point.

In that sense, a crisis is the proverbial rock bottom from which the only way is up.

In what has become known as "9/12" — the day, exactly a year ago, when President Jacob Zuma fired Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene and replaced him with an unknown backbencher — might go down in history as the date of SA’s post-apartheid crisis in the true sense of the word.

This might seem perplexing when one considers the impact of other moments said to have been crises — revelations about the arms deal, the recall of former president Thabo Mbeki and the Marikana massacre, to name a few.

But these moments did not trigger a change of trajectory. They were part of several events that suggested the gap between the country envisioned in the Constitution and the country in reality was set to remain, if not widen further.

The 9/12 event was different. On that day fears about what the firing of Nene and the appointment of Des van Rooyen as finance minister signified spurred a broad cross-section of society into action.

That day sounded the wake-up call that the state plays a pivotal role in all citizens’ lives, and that any threat to its integrity and ability to function imperils the country’s post-1994 ideals.

The Treasury in particular has evolved to occupy a leading role in the post-apartheid governance framework.

The institution sets fiscal policy and co-ordinates the intergovernmental fiscal framework, so its actions as an institution ripple throughout government, the economy and society. For this reason, the Treasury is seen as the glue that holds the state together, and is often the site of fierce ideological contestation.

There have been claims, for instance, that the Treasury’s pivotal role in the state was the result of a black bourgeois intellectual project to centralise power and advance this group’s interests, as opposed to it being the outcome of a bureaucratic process to create a coherent and progressive governance framework from the fragmented and inequitable machinery inherited from the apartheid regime.

More recently, others have said the fiscus stymies free education because of its neoliberal bent rather than any real concerns about spending priorities and fiscal sustainability.

This is not commentary on the veracity of these claims, but the contestation does highlight the importance of the Treasury in everyday life in SA. Because of this, any move to reconstitute the institution fundamentally, including changes to its political and administrative leadership, should be transparent and subject to public scrutiny.

The decisions surrounding 9/12 were anything but transparent, hence the subsequent groundswell of activism focused on state control and the functioning of public institutions.

Most recently, this new activism has found expression in Save SA, a broad coalition endorsed by civil society, business leaders, faith-based institutions and many prominent figures. United by the goal of "holding government leaders accountable to the Constitution and the values they have pledged to uphold as representatives of the people", the movement is trying to serve as a platform for citizens to engage, outside of the confines of formal political party structures, on what the state is, what it should be doing and how it should go about it.

This is a much-needed discussion in SA, where invocations of the state are often based on a poor grasp of how public institutions function in reality. A better understanding of state institutions and the difficulties people within them face can help ideologically disparate social actors find enough common ground to work together effectively. It can also help counter the simplistic narrative that all civil servants are corrupt, which in turn will allow social movements to act in solidarity with the many state employees who remain committed, often under difficult circumstances, to performing their duties ethically and professionally.

Better understanding and common ground can also bridge the markedly disparate views that exist on corruption.

The polarised nature and lack of nuance in the debate on what corruption is, and who is responsible for it, threatens anti-corruption initiatives and efforts to build a state that is capable of steering SA towards the society envisioned in the Constitution.

Some argue, for instance, that anticorruption work has been too focused on the state and black-owned businesses, with too little scrutiny of large, white-owned corporations.

Others say the state should be the focus, because the more insulated it is from capture by private interests, the greater the likelihood that the fight against corruption will be won.

Research by the Public Affairs Research Institute suggests these are simplistic, false and unhelpful binaries.

The distinctions between which transactions are deemed corrupt and which are seen as permissible is deeply ideological. They are grounded in normative views on morality, economic development and state building; views that are then embedded in policy, law and enforcement mechanisms.

One view is that patronage — supported by mechanisms such as cadre deployment, incentive programmes and preferential procurement — is necessary to transform the state.

Another, which is at odds with the former, is that the state should be a neutral referee in society and the economy.

To respond effectively to corruption, the rationale behind these views and critique need to be understood, or the views need to be reconciled from an informed position.

If 9/12, which coincides with International Anticorruption Day, is indeed to become a watershed moment in the fight against corruption, these are the informed discussions that need to take place in the public domain in the coming months

There are generally two sides to state corruption: a private individual or entity as the corruptor and a state agent as the corrupted. Both make a pact to transact outside established regulations or laws. The corruptors vary from large corporations attempting to influence the outcome of state procurement unduly to citizens paying a bribe to get out of a traffic fine or expedite service delivery.

At a recent anticorruption workshop, one participant expressed concern that a parent presenting a principal at a public school with a thank-you gift might also be a corruptor-corrupted relationship, if the gift curries favour enough to have the principal treat that parent’s child better.

In contrast, consider the recent discovery that US president-elect Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner was admitted to Harvard University after his parents gave the college a $2.5m endowment, a fairly common practice in the US college system.

Such examples illustrate corruption is contextual. It is systemic, rather than focused on a specific sector, and it is not the sole domain of a particular set of individuals.

The examples also illustrate that people often live and work under such constraints and incentive structures, which makes it difficult, if not impossible, for them to remain "clean". In the example of the principal’s gifts, parents who choose not to participate in this form of patronage could be risking their children’s education and futures — a righteousness few can afford.

If 9/12, which coincides with International Anticorruption Day, is indeed to become a watershed moment in the fight against corruption, these are the informed discussions that need to take place in the public domain in the coming months.

The dangers of continuing to hobble along with discordant views on what a state that works for all South Africans should look like, and how to build it, are too great to let this opportunity pass unnoticed.

• Buthelezi is the research manager at the Public Affairs Research Institute.