Tackling the endemic corruption in Joburg will be DA mayoral candidate Helen Zille’s priority if she is elected.
Zille conceded in an address to the Cape Town Press Club on Tuesday that such a campaign was not entirely safe given the murder of whistleblowers and witnesses of corruption, which is why the DA is insisting she have bodyguards.
She gave four examples of murders that had taken place, including that of Babita Deokaran, who had raised concerns with her departmental head about contracts at Tembisa Hospital, which suffered corruption amounting to billions of rand.
Others were engineer Armand Swart, who had raised the alarm about the exorbitant cost that Transnet was paying for spring components; Mpho Mafole, a young internal auditor at Ekurhuleni municipality who three days before his assassination had submitted a report to his superior about irregularities in a R1.8bn chemical toilets tender; and Joburg forensic investigator Zenzele Sithole, who had asked too many questions.
The chilling effect of these murders was to warn whistleblowers not to speak up, said Zille, the DA’s federal council chair.
This is what we are going to face — organised and syndicated corruption
— Helen Zille
She had been doing research into areas of corruption and cronyism in several departments in the city of Johannesburg, some of which had been identified by DA members when the party formed part of a coalition government.
Zille had uncovered the existence of cartel networks, multiple layers of collusion, threats, intimidation and violence.
“This is what we are going to face — organised and syndicated corruption,” she said, adding that dealing with the criminalisation of the state in the city would be an “extraordinary challenge” which would not be easy to turn around. “Unless we get that right, Joburg is unsolvable,” Zille said, noting that the corrupt networks had to be broken.
Corruption had moved from occasional incidents to its syndication and criminalisation involving a whole chain of connected people, which involved the ANC as a party, the ANC in government and the ANC in business, which funds the party in exchange for contracts.
One area where corruption was rife, Zille noted, was in the management of the Joburg debtors’ book, which involved the collusion of some legal firms.
“There are ingenious schemes I am discovering all over the place,” she said, adding that a proper, password-protected billing system with appropriate software was anathema to those benefiting from corruption.
Billing, property holding division
“One of the first things is to get a proper billing system, as that is where a significant amount of corruption takes place,” Zille said.
Another area of corruption was in the property holding division of the city, which moved out of its central offices in the city centre. The buildings were rented out at a pittance to connected people who rented them out again at huge rentals.
Maintenance was another area rife with corruption, with Zille believing the water crisis was partly due to sabotage so water tanker operators could do business.
Critical for a DA victory in the city, Zille said, would be to get many voters to the polling stations.
In the 2021 local government elections, the DA won 26% of the vote.
Also read:
Helen Zille cautiously optimistic, but MK has changed political terrain in Joburg
NATASHA MARRIAN: Zille gets rival parties scrambling
ANTHONY BUTLER: Ashor Sarupen a likely, and good, successor to Zille in DA council
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