LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

PIC must be shielded from political interference and capture

The suspension of Patrick Dlamini as CEO of the Public Investment Corporation (PIC) (“How PIC officials dropped the ball in R400m payout for Lanseria“, July 16) raises disturbing questions about priorities at the PIC and the signals state institutions are sending.

According to reports, Dlamini was suspended after he appointed PwC to investigate the Lanseria transaction ― an internal step to establish whether malfeasance occurred in awarding payments. At almost the same moment, deputy finance minister David Masondo, also chair of the PIC board, referred the very same matter to the Special Investigating Unit (SIU). If the CEO sought an urgent investigation into suspected wrongdoing, why was that action punished while political grandstanding was rewarded?

We face an irony that should alarm every taxpayer and guardian of accountable governance: the individual trying to uncover potential corruption is sidelined, while the political apparatus loudly demands probes for public consumption. Which is the greater service to the public interest — an internal, evidence-seeking audit commissioned by the PIC’s executive or spectacle from Masondo that appears aimed more at headlines than at ensuring immediate, independent fact-finding?

There is a deeper institutional problem here. The Mpati commission recommended reconsidering the model that places politically connected figures such as a deputy minister of finance at the helm of the country’s largest asset manager. The PIC is too large and consequential to be manoeuvred by individuals with ambitions for higher office.

Entrenchment of political influence would not simply repeat past mistakes, but it could eclipse them. A captured PIC would dwarf the Guptas’ misdeeds in scale and consequence.

South Africans cannot afford another episode of state capture by omission or design. If the stated commitment is to root out corruption, independent investigations must be protected and not penalised. Whistle-blowers and executives who seek audits must be supported, not suspended.

The presidency, Treasury and parliament must demand clarity on what grounds Dlamini was suspended, who authorised it and why his proactive move to investigate was not treated as an act of fiduciary duty.

The public deserves answers and a firm recommitment to insulating the PIC from political capture, now, before the stakes become irreversible.

Andile Songezo

Johannesburg

Israel is not blocking Turkey’s EU hopes

In his recent column, Ismail Lagardien makes a compelling case that Europe has abused its Nato alliance with Turkey, by blocking Turkey’s entry into the EU and taking far more from the country than it has given (“Turkey serves Nato well, but Europe keeps the door shut”, July 15).

He rather ignores the country’s shift from secular republicanism to something that increasingly looks like theocracy under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but it’s a fair argument. As is his argument that European leaders are doing so because they see Europe’s enlightenment and “Judaeo-Christian” values as being incompatible with Turkey’s Islamic culture ― obviously a whole other can of worms, but rightly or wrongly, it’s not an unreasonable assumption.

What’s not a fair argument, though, is his assertion that it is, basically, all the fault of, who else, Israel.

With Lagardien seeming to hint at the usual canard of Jewish underhandedness in its influence on Europe, he asserts that Turkey’s hopes for European membership are being blocked because the EU does not want to choose between Israel and Turkey when the former, apparently inevitably, attacks the latter in its “strategies of the balkanisation and fragmentation of states and societies in Western Asia … that Israel could do to the people of Turkey what they’ve been doing to the people of Iran.”

Quite aside from ignoring Israel’s own complicated relationship with Europe, his entire argument is based on an intentional distortion of what’s happening in the Middle East. Over the past three years, Israel has not attacked a single country other than those that either attacked first or materially funded, supported and harboured Hamas terrorists — which, despite not being attacked, Turkey unabashedly already does. It’s about neither “balkanisation” nor “fragmentation” but about responding to direct threats to its citizens.

But it’s his exploitation of the Iranian people in this comparison that I find especially disgusting. When Iranian civilians have died by Israeli hands, it has been as tragic collateral damage in its war with the Islamic Republic. The systemic oppression and wholesale murder of innocent Iranians have not come from Israel but from that very same Islamic Republic whose entire raison d’être is the destruction of Israel. Lagardien clearly isn’t an idiot. He knows this but proceeds with this obvious moral inversion anyway.

The only reason Israel would attack Turkey is if Turkey does, indeed, become “the new Iran”, as former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett suggests. And I can think of no greater disqualification for membership in the EU than that.

Ilan Preskovsky

Via email

MK party welcomes ever more politically tainted figures

The article, “Zandile Gumede appointed MK party deputy convenor in KZN” (July 13), refers.

This is further evidence that the MK is a suppository for a growing number of tainted individuals, corrupt politicians, impeached judges and other deeply compromised former publicly appointed officials, many of them clearly involved in state capture.

That so many voters, particularly in KwaZulu-Natal, still show support for such compromised individuals, criminals, frauds, thieves and liars is a shocking reflection on our democracy.

Mark Lowe

Via Business Day online