Is Afrika onherroeplik korrup? Oor God en Mammon

 Bob Madoff, mega-belegger.

Ek lees die onderstaande nuusberig in vandag se New York Times om te sien met watter perspektief buitelanders na ons kyk en met watter leesmateriaal oor Suid-Afrika Amerikaners gevoer word. 

 Die berig is nie lekker leesstof nie, al ken ons die verhaal al bietjie goed. Dit laat ‘n mens vra: Wat is verkeerd met die siel van ons land wat sulke grootskaalse bedrog verdra? En dit in ‘n land wat by die 80% Christene het.

Party van ons landgenote sal met sinisme en dalk ook 'n goeie skoot Schadenfreude beweer: "Ons het dit al die jare nog gesê." 

'n Paar ander kan dalk heel anders reageer: Hulle  sou die berig as Afrika-vertrapping kon beskou. Ja, sou hulle redeneer, die berig is weer een van daardie tipiese neerbuigende skrywes van die opperheiliges oor wat in die “donker agterplase” van die beskawing gebeur. 

En dit is sekerlik waar dat daar nog baie mense is wat met genoeë oor Afrika se mislukkings kraai, sodat ‘n mens by alles wat hulle skryf ‘n vraagteken moet byvoeg.

Sulke kritici sou egter nou verder kon vra: Hoe vergelyk hierdie bedrog in Afrika met die 150 miljard rand wat  die Amerikaanse mega-belegger Madoff van New York oor jare gepleeg het en waarvoor hy sedert 2009 150 jaar gevangenisstraf uitdien? 

Om nie te praat van die daaropvolgende skandale onder die voorste, hoogaangeskrewe firma’s op ons planeet wat hele nasies op die rand van bankrotskap gebring het en groot getalle mense se lewens verwoes het. In die hoogs beskaafde lande het korrupsie grenslose omvang aangeneem.

Die FBI  bereken byvoorbeeld dat witboordjie bedrog in Amerika die land elke jaar (!) 2400 tot 5280 (!) miljard rand kos? Hierdie syfers laat ‘n mens verbysterd en laat jou besef hoe geldsug en gierigheid die mens se siel oor die wêreld heen verteer.

Dit is inderdaad belangrike inligting om in gedagte te hou wanneer ‘n mens oor korrupsie in Afrika praat. 

Laat niemand, besef ‘n mens,  dus te vinnig vingers wys nie. 

Of dit in Afrika is, of in Amerika, of in die hoog beskaafde Duistland waar die innemende president van die land pas oor so ‘n geldskandaal moes aftree, die mens het ‘n inherente gierigheid wat hom of haar nie laat huiwer tot reusagtige vorme van misdaad nie.  

Is gelowige mense en die kerk sensitief hiervoor? Word mense in die Christendom genoeg uitgedaag om ook die neiging tot gierigheid en die geldsug wat in ons innerlike woed, te bedink en te bestry? 

Word daar genoeg gepraat en geskryf oor Jesus se woord dat ‘n mens nie God en Mammon kan dien nie? Wat beteken dit vir jou houding teenoor geldsake en besigheid wanneer ‘n mens in jou lewe deur die evangelie geroer word? 

Hoe kan ‘n mens vandag nog dink oor Franciscus van Assissi en, lank voor hom oor die woestynvader, Sint Antonius, wat die verhaal van die Ryk Jongman heel konkreet verstaan het?

En ook hier in die binnekringe van hulle wat glo, moet die oog nie te vinnig na buite, na die regering, na die samelewing draai nie. Die hand hoort in eie boesem, in die boesem van elkeen wat die bybel gereeld lees, maar ook in die boesem van gemeentes en kerke waar geldsake dikwels die belangrike items op die agenda van vergaderings en gesprekke uitmaak en die sukses van die geestelike lewe aan voorspoed gemeet word. 

Daardie balk, die balk – die groot kuns is om dit raak te sien. Sonder die ontmaskering van geldsug in die harte van alle mense sal die geestelike lewe nie groei nie.

Hier is die berig:

South Africans Suffer as Graft Saps Provinces

By LYDIA POLGREEN

TSHIKOTA, South Africa — When she moved from a cramped room in a boardinghouse to her very own bungalow on a speck of land here last year, Jeanette Munyai became one of the millions of South Africans given a decent home by an ambitious government program inaugurated at the end of apartheid.

Many of the homes are already crumbling and lack running water inside.

House-proud for the first time in her life, she immediately planted corn, pumpkins and tomatoes on a patch of her yard. Only two things were missing: running water and electricity.

“They told us water and light was coming, but we are still using the bush as a toilet,” she said. “We are waiting.”

Ms. Munyai and her neighbors are unlikely to get water or electricity any time soon. The provincial government is broke, and the dry pipes and powerless plugs have for her and many others come to symbolize the heavy toll graft and cronyism have taken in this impoverished northern province.

Corruption has long bedeviled South Africa, but the crisis here in Limpopo Province has pushed the common practice of doling out overstuffed government contracts to people with friends in high places to its logical conclusion: bankruptcy. Provincial officials overspent their budget by an estimated $250 million, much of it on questionable — or blatantly fraudulent — government payments and contracts with private businesses enjoying close ties to the politicians leading the province.

“There is evidence emerging that some of these service providers are politically connected, and many of them may have gotten those tenders in dubious kinds of ways,” said Kenneth Brown, deputy director general in the Treasury Department.

Dan Sebabi, leader of Limpopo’s branch of Cosatu, the powerful coalition of trade unions that is allied with the governing African National Congress, put it more bluntly.

“You have leaders who are politicians by day, businessmen by night,” he said.

Graft and wasteful spending have sapped the government’s ability to tackle inequality. Only 3 of 39 government departments were pronounced clean in audits by South Africa’s auditor general last year. Only 7 of 237 cities passed muster the year before.

“We thought that South Africa could be different from the rest of the countries that came before us on the African continent,” said Gilbert Kganyago, leader of Limpopo’s branch of the South African Communist Party. “But at the rate that things are happening, we have actually caught up to the African scenario quite more quickly than we might have thought.”

A recent report by the auditor general found that in the last fiscal year, government officials and their relatives won $15 million in contracts for work with the Defense Department, the Tax Service and the Department of Home Affairs, among others. And that does not come close to accounting for the many millions of dollars quietly awarded to friends and other associates, experts note.

Almost from the moment it was elected to govern in 1994 after decades of fighting to end apartheid, the A.N.C. has struggled with allegations of graft. Jacob Zuma, the current president, took office only after corruption charges against him were dismissed amid accusations of prosecutorial misconduct.

But corruption has become so entrenched that it is eating away at the nation’s soul, said Zwelinzima Vavi, secretary general of Cosatu, to announce the formation of an antigraft organization, Corruption Watch.

“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,” Mr. Vavi said. “If we do nothing it will be swept away by a tidal wave of a culture of individualism, a ‘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.”

Corruption is a particularly serious problem in provincial governments, which are responsible for delivering many of the services needed by the poor. Many powerful regional politicians use their offices to enrich their friends, forming a coterie of wealthy elites reminiscent of the tribal chieftains the apartheid government used to administer the tiny, nominally independent bantustans where blacks were forced to live.

Limpopo has the nation’s second-highest proportion of people living in poverty — 62 percent, according to the SAIRR. The average unemployment rate for the province is 40 percent, but it is much higher for blacks and young people.

Signs of waste and fraud are everywhere. Pipes that were supposed to bring clean drinking water to parched, impoverished communities were laid improperly and burst, requiring the whole job to be done again, according to local officials.

Tiny government houses like the one in which Ms. Munyai lives are crumbling only months after being built. Since she has no water, she uses her toilet as a storage closet and has to walk several blocks to a shared pump several times a day. Roads paved a year ago are already covered with potholes.

 “This road is not more than two years old,” said Geoffrey Tshibvumo, a local councilor from the Congress of the People, a party that broke away from the A.N.C., as he bounced along a rural road in the province one afternoon. “They spent millions on it, and it is already spoiled.”

The crisis here has been brewing for some time. Late last year, the province ran out of money and asked the central government to lend it about $130 million. But the central government balked at handing over such a large sum without first taking a close look at the province’s books.

A quick survey of its accounts showed that the state treasury was in chaos. State officials had made $360 million in unauthorized payments, and millions of dollars’ worth of contracts had been awarded without competitive bidding, the central treasury said.

The Education Department had 2,400 more teachers on its payroll than it was budgeted for, and 200 “ghost” teachers, who drew salaries but did not actually exist. The department had overspent its budget by almost $40 million even before ordering textbooks and other supplies for the coming school year.

In the Health Department, more than $50 million worth of goods had been improperly ordered, leaving almost nothing for salaries for government nurses and doctors. Public works contracts showed evidence that they had been manipulated, the Treasury Department said, to increase the cost of projects — and presumably the profits of the contractors. Consulting fees ate up a quarter of the infrastructure budget.

Big contracts tended to go to a small handful of companies, many of them run by close associates of the province’s top politicians, according to provincial government documents.

Some officials had been warning that the province was headed for a crisis. One whistle-blower in the Health Department sent a memo to a senior official in February 2011 outlining major problems with a contract for medical supplies. The prices for bandages and dressings had been inflated, the whistle-blower said, and the department could not possibly use the quantities ordered.

In addition, officials ordered more than $30 million worth of items in the last days of the fiscal year, most of it “labels and forms that are not critical or lifesaving drugs,” according to the memo. Prices for other items were wildly inflated. The national attention to the crisis in Limpopo is in no small part a reflection of the politics of the province. It is the home of Julius Malema, the polarizing leader of the A.N.C.’s youth league, who was suspended from the party for five years for his incendiary remarks and harsh stance against the president, Mr. Zuma. Limpopo’s provincial leader, Cassel Mathale, is a close political ally of Mr. Malema.

But many other provinces face a lesser version of the same crisis, analysts say.

“It is not unique to Limpopo — it is all over the country,” said Moeletsi Mbeki, a political analyst and businessman. “It is a general form of self-enrichment by the politically connected.”

Mr. Brown, the deputy director general at the treasury, said that politics played no part in the decision to intervene in Limpopo. The crisis threatened the country’s financial reputation.

“If you are sitting in New York and you are an investor in South Africa and you see a provincial government that cannot pay its teachers and nurses,” he said, “what does that tell you about South Africa?”

En, net so ten slotte, hier is ‘n binne-kykie in die gevolge van korrupsie, soos blyk uit die verhoor van Madoff:

Nine victims, some choked by sobs or swiping at tears, told the court of the damage he had caused, describing him as a psychopath and a monster who had destroyed their lives.

“It feels like a nightmare that we can’t awake from,” said Carla Hirschhorn, a physical therapist who said her daughter was juggling two jobs in her junior year to help pay for college expenses that their lost savings were supposed to cover.

Michael Schwartz, who said Mr. Madoff had stolen money set aside to sustain his disabled brother, expressed the hope that “his jail cell will become his coffin.”