[Debate] (Fwd) ANCorruption: Vavi speech at CorruptionWatch launch

[Patrick Bond]

  Corruption spreading like a wild fire in the veld - Vavi

Zwelinzima Vavi
26 January 2012

COSATU GS says the launch of Corruption Watch is a dream come true

*COSATU General Secretary Zwelinzima Vavi's Speech at the Launch of 
Corruption Watch, Constitution Hill, January 26 2012*

Programme Director, Xolani Gwala, Mphephethwa
Honourable Minister Jeff Radebe
The steadfast Public Protector Thuli Madonsela
Distinguished members of the Corruption Watch Board
President of COSATU and members of the COSATU CEC
Ladies and Gentlemen
All Corruption-Hating South Africans

Members of the Media

In this historic year when we celebrate the centenary of the oldest 
liberation movement in Africa, in the 18^th  year of our democracy and 
after 26 years of COSATU's existence, we gather at this historic 
Constitutional Court - a court which is vested with the responsibility 
to ensure that our Constitution is upheld at all times and that all 
South Africans benefit from the rights enshrined in it.

We are extremely honoured to witness the successful implementation of 
another critical resolution of COSATU and civil society, the official 
launch of the long awaited Corruption Watch (see here 
<http://www.corruptionwatch.org.za/>). A dream has come true - a dream 
to empower our people so that they may play a more meaningful role in a 
battle to combat the scourge of corruption.

Unless we can successfully mobilise and empower ordinary people, 
strengthen and build a people-centred developmental state, led by honest 
men and women, build independent state institutions that battle against 
corruption daily and transform the judiciary and media, we will not 
succeed in our quest to defeat this fast advancing enemy. Corruption is 
growing like a wild fire in the veld, threatening to engulf and destroy 
the future of a country that has so much potential.

The launch of Corruption Watch is a critical intervention. There is not 
a single day without newspapers exposing corruption of a government 
worker who extorts money out of the poor, driving schools and traffic 
police who collude to extort money out of our working class children who 
are desperate to acquire a driving license - which has become a 
principal requirement for getting a job in this country, how government 
officials collude with business to inflate the price of tenders and 
provide substandard housing to the poor.

We know only too well the devastating impact of corruption and on the 
lives of thousands and thousands of poor black South Africans.

The revolving door between public representatives and business has 
normalised a picture of public representatives living in mansions behind 
high-wall and electric fences whilst the surrounding townships they are 
supposed to serve reel under the misery of neoliberalism, poverty and 
unemployment.

Workers' pension funds being gambled away, leaving some workers to 
retire with only a pittance. We must leave no stone unturned to bring 
those who squandered R100 million of clothing and textile workers' 
pension funds to justice.

We congratulate SACTWU for the sterling job they continue to do in 
exposing this rot. Yesterday for the first time a commission 
investigating this scandal was held in a prison and offered an 
opportunity to one of those arrested on suspicion of embezzling the 
workers' pensions. Regrettably Mr Sam Buthelezi did not cooperate.

As trade unionists, we also know that unions are not paragons of virtue, 
immune from this contagious disease. Some workers complain that their 
leaders have been corrupted and that trade union officials are paid off 
by employers to turn a blind eye to their abuse. This type of corruption 
results in a situation whereby we have agents of the capitalist class 
within the workers' movement who labour day and night as conveyor belts 
for capitalist interests.

Ailing patients in public hospitals are subjected to eating biscuits 
because private companies providing hospital meals have not been paid; 
school children have to walk for painstaking kilometres to schools - 
negotiating their way through dangerous velds and deadly highways -  
because  service providers have not been paid on time; or young children 
are hungry because some corrupt officials collude with greedy business 
people to halt the crucial schools nutrition programme. All these 
stories have one common message - corruption is daylight theft from the 
poor.

These are the human stories behind the crisis of good governance 
plaguing the Limpopo Provincial Government, Gauteng Health department, 
Free State Roads and Transport department and the Eastern Cape Education 
department. They highlight colossal problem of mismanagement of public 
money, fraud, and corruption.

The crisis in Limpopo is not unique to that province. Auditor General, 
Terence Nombembe uncovered R20bn in unauthorised expenditure in 2010-11. 
Only three out of 39 government departments (down from six three years 
ago), and 106 out of 272 state-owned enterprises, had clean audits for 
2011 and only seven municipalities out of 237 received a clean audit for 
2009/10. The former head of the Special Investigating Unit, Willie 
Hofmeyr, has estimated that the government loses up to R30bn to 
corruption every year.

The loss of such huge sums of money has a devastating impact on the 
economy. Billions of rands which could and should have been spent on 
improving our healthcare and education systems, promoting economic 
growth and creating jobs and providing basic services to our poorest 
communities are being squandered.

This points to an appalling tolerance of mediocrity and incompetence, 
for which divisions and factions provide a perfect cover. The full cost 
of these divisions has still to be counted. The perfect cover that such 
factions and divisions provide is that even those caught with their 
hands in the cookie jar refuse to resign from their post as they enjoy 
immunity and guaranteed indemnity provided by their factions.

All this is wreaking untold damage on the moral fibre of the nation. We 
are moving towards a society in which the morality of our revolutionary 
movement - selflessness, service to the people and caring for the poor 
and vulnerable - is being threatened. If we do nothing it will be swept 
away by tidal wave of a culture of individualism, 'me-first' attitude 
and to hell with everyone else. Some argue that we are already a society 
where only the fittest survive and dog eats dog.

It is a culture which grows within the system of capitalism, but which 
is spreading fast from the private sector into the public service, as 
businesses are set up to corruptly obtain tenders from the state, some 
of them run by public representatives themselves or members of their 
families. That is why COSATU is insisting that people have to choose 
whether they want to pursue their business interests or serve the 
public. They cannot do both at the same time.

Our political life is also getting polluted; some corrupt politicians 
and officials build political support by bribing people to back their 
factions, which are no longer based on ideological differences but on 
who has the biggest treasure chest to dole out favours.

Leadership contestation is changing from being about the battle of ideas 
into battles for control of the public purse-strings. This will destroy 
the democratic traditions of our movement and lead to paralysis and 
disunity. Worst of all is the growing evidence that corruption is 
becoming literally a matter of life and death, as people are being 
intimidated or even killed for exposing and preventing corruption.

COSATU urges all its members and all South Africans to work closely with 
Corruption Watch to help to get rid of this fatal cancer within our society.

The idea of this institution can be summed up in the words of one famous 
musician - that "money and corruption are ruining the land, crooked 
politicians betray the working man, pocketing the profits and treating 
us like sheep, and we're tired of hearing promises that we know they'll 
never keep."^[1] 
<http://36ohk6dgmcd1n-c.c.yom.mail.yahoo.net/om/api/1.0/openmail.app.invoke/36ohk6dgmcd1n/9/1.0.35/uk/en-GB/view.html#_ftn1>

We appeal to all freedom and justice loving South Africans to join those 
of us who repudiate the notion that the poor must continue to feed off 
the discards of the rich and powerful. Let us together end this belief 
amongst some of our representatives that they are entitled to eat on 
behalf of the masses.

Viva Corruption Watch Viva

/Issued by COSATU, January 26 2012/
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