Speaker 1:

When political leaders are not held responsible for their actions, democracy is at risk. Tonight, Special Assignment examines government's commitment to accountability.

Speaker 2:

It's seven o'clock on Tuesday, the 12th of September. You're listening to AM Live on SAFM 104 to 107, making news headlines. The AM scene on the Western Capes as Premier Gerald Morkel has failed the people of the province by not leading by example. The party was reacting to the...

Speaker 3:

Oh the comrades! Comrades, the President.

President:

There are many instances in Africa and elsewhere in the world which show what happens when on becoming a ruling party, a genuinely popular national liberation movement such as ours, loses contact with the people, and its leaders transformed themselves into a self-serving ruling elite.

Speaker 5:

Accountability is a cornerstone of democracy. Watchdog bodies like Parliament and the Public Protector are there to hold those in high office accountable for their actions. But they only work if government itself displays commitment to enforce their decisions. Sometimes the system works. Without political will, it doesn't.

Dr. Sebiletso:

We've challenged the industry to come up with a forum that will work for broadcasting. Mr. de Klerk.

Peter de Klerk:

And the announcement we make today is indeed a great step forward in broadcasting South Africa.

Speaker 5:

The Independent Broadcasting Authority was set up to promote democracy by opening the air waves that were once dominated by the state broadcaster.

Peter de Klerk:

It's led to the opening up of the air waves to new commercial radio entrepreneurs.

Speaker 5:

To do that, the integrity of IBA counsellors had to be above reproach.

Dr. Sebiletso:

Focusing on the information [inaudible]

Selby Baqwa:

When people get appointed to bodies like the IBA, they are appointed on the basis of the understanding of what IBA is supposed to do, but most of all, on the basis of integrity. You're talking about people who are well educated and respected in society.

Henri Kluever:

It's difficult, you know, to describe exactly how a thing like that goes wrong, but I think with the appointment of the IBA, they've had no administrative capacity, and no experience of administration. And the administration started going wrong.

Shauket Fakie:

And we started seeing some practises and things that's happening that's way beyond the normal public sector sort of practise. And the kinds of explanations that we were starting to get for those things were not satisfactory.

Gavin Woods:

By year three, we'd become alarmed. We wrote a strong recommendation which we had table with Parliament, and asked them to get their act together.

Speaker 5:

But when they didn't, the Auditor General was brought in to do a special investigation. Henri Kluever presented his report to Parliament. He documented a series of very serious problems in the IBA's financial affairs.

Speaker 6:

The Parliamentary Public Account's Committee has called on the Public Protector to investigate whether anyone should be prosecuted for financial mismanagement within the Independent Broadcasting Authority.

Henri Kluever:

The idea of the democratic system is to optimise the spending of the taxpayers' money. And well you must use public money. And that's basically a crime.

Shauket Fakie:

From the role that IBA's could have played, as a role model, and you've got people within that institution, even if it's 500 rand, it's not the value that's important, it's the principal that's important.

Selby Baqwa:

Even if we're in a society in transition, these are things that just shouldn't happen, you know. Because we're not talking of ignorance of rules and regulations. Simple, common sense things that people shouldn't do.

Peter de Klerk:

I don't believe that the inference of the Auditor General is that we can't be trusted with money. I don't believe the inference is that we've been abusing money. I think what he's saying to us is that we haven't had the necessary controls, administrative procedures, and systems.

Dr. Sebiletso:

We acknowledge that we have not paid as much attention to administrative matters to-

Selby Baqwa:

And that's the kind of thing that people have to understand, that if there's no policy, you have a responsibility to be accountable to do the right thing and so on. And this wasn't done in this particular case.

Speaker 5:

The scandal caused lasting damage to the organization's integrity. So much so, that it soon became difficult for the IBA to fulfil its function.

Gavin Woods:

I think we had at that point gathered enough evidence to show that not only at the general level were they incompetent, and not delivering against the responsibilities that had been given to them as counsellors. But they weren't running the IBA and especially its financial activities in a way that they were supposed to. Dishonesty at the individual and personal level of particular counts for us, I think came into sharp focus.

Speaker 5:

The very next day, the three counsellors resigned.

Lyndall Shope:

As a counsellor, I take full responsibility for everything that relates to the running of the organisation.

Speaker 5:

Lyndall Shope-Mafole was appointed as ministerial advisor less than six months later. Today, she is the Minister's representative at South Africa's embassy in France.

Dr. Sebiletso:

I take responsibility for the fact that in terms of the management of the organisation, things didn't go well.

Speaker 5:

Just after her resignation, Dr. Sebiletso Mokone-Matabane was appointed as a consultant to the government owned company, Sentech. Today, she is the acting managing director.

Peter de Klerk:

As a counsellor, I must take responsibility, 'cause that's the way it happened.

Speaker 5:

Peter de Klerk still works as an advisor to the minster, an appointment made soon after his resignation. At a press conference three years later, the Minister publicly exonerated all three counsellors.

Dr Ivy Matsepe:

... is very important. I look forward to their continued contribution in the communications industry.

Gavin Woods:

At the end of the day, they weren't accountable for the generally poor way in which they managed the IBA.

Selby Baqwa:

Our investigations usually end at the findings and recommendations stage. Then we take it back to the official of the department concerned for implementation.

Speaker 5:

Despite all the recommendations, the Heath Unit cleared the counsellors on charges of corruption on a technicality. There had been no policies in place preventing the use of IBA credit cards for personal expenses.

Selby Baqwa:

Corruption doesn't get fought only when you arrest somebody, or when you make a finding against somebody in a commission of inquiry. Corruption is in the acts that you do, the messages that you are sending.

Speaker 5:

Literally from the day of his appointment as in Mpumalanga's Safety and Security MEC, Steve Mabona was controversial. But allegations of corruption could never be pinned down until a scandal broke around the fraudulent issuing of traffic licences.

J. Arenstein:

People were found to have been given licences without once getting into a vehicle, without sitting down doing the test. In fact one of the people who had been given a licence was found not to even know how to identify a steering wheel in a vehicle.

Speaker 5:

John Muller was the traffic cop in Mabona's department who brought the scandal to Arenstein's attention.

John Muller:

We found out that they had just stopped my salary. 'Cause Frieda went to draw some money and there was no money in the bank. In November, I don't know what, '96 I think it was. And then when we made inquiries, and nobody could tell me what this is story. And it went on like that for eight months.

J. Arenstein:

John Muller is a, rather outspoken, very opinionated traffic cop in Mpumalanga. With very curious ideas of his own of what is right and what is wrong. He clashed repeatedly with the senior management on issues that he felt were incorrect.

Frieda Muller:

I said ask him just be quiet, you know, you've got children growing up. I mean you need the job because I wasn't working at the time. And you use to just tell me off, "I won't forsake my morals. I can't overlook these things."

Speaker 5:

A traditional inquiry was launched into the extent of fraud and corruption in Mabona's department.

H. Moldenhauer:

We listened to quite a lot of witnesses, and then they were strong evidence pointing to the involvement of Mr. Mabona.

J. Arenstein:

We had traffic officers making confessions. "Yes, I'm guilty of nepotism. Yes I'm guilty of corruption. And yes my superiors knew about it and failed to act about it."

John Muller:

Some people make for, for the two months that I confiscated licences in Mpumalanga, I worked up and made an average of two million rand a month, selling driver's licences.

Actually Moldenhauer himself congratulated me and said, "You are very brave man to bring this out because everything you're gonna lose now."

H. Moldenhauer:

The finding of the commission was that Mr. Mabona as the political head of the department of Safety and Security in Mpumalanga, did not doing job properly. There was a lot of lack of control in the department, and we also found that he was aware of the lack of proper control.

J. Arenstein:

Mabona was found, was recommended to be removed from office urgently because he was found not to be fit for a position of public authority.

Steve Mabona:

There was a recommendation that states, I have failed to run the department and stop corruption. That's what Moldenhauer said. But I said to this man, "Where does it come from?" Because all the things I told them I did, even document, it was not even in the whole report of [inaudible] five pages.

J. Arenstein:

The commission report which this is the report over here, it's quite bulky, simply verify what is already known at that stage.

Steve Mabona:

I never respected data reports. And I will never respect it.

Speaker 5:

Before the findings of the commission were even made public, Mabona resigned. But he remained a back bencher in the provincial legislature. After the 1999 election, when a new Premier took over, Mabona was reappointed as MEC for Safety and Security.

N. Mahlangu:

It is indeed, the Premier's constitutional prerogative, to appoint this candidate. Even without consulting as [inaudible] in this country. I think that message should be very clear to us all.

Steve Mabona:

I mean, everybody, it seems to me Justin Arenstein, everybody, they are trying to blame me.

J. Arenstein:

Mabona's one of the more difficult people to investigate because people are truly, truly physically afraid of the man. He's a very outspoken person, very large, and very in your face. And he's not adverse to making public threats.

Steve Mabona:

I have never, never, threatened anybody in my whole life.

J. Arenstein:

The fact is that this is a man in position of authority. A man in a position of public trust and he appears to have violated the public trust.

Speaker 5:

Mabona was even assigned an additional portfolio, that of public works. Muller's life, has been destroyed.

Speaker 22:

You know, our parents are having so hard ...

Frieda Muller:

[inaudible] Don't worry about it, it will come [crosstalk]

Speaker 22:

Yeah, like you always say.

John Muller:

My job was to investigate. I investigated. Where did it get me?

J. Arenstein:

I think it's an incredibly bad example to other officials. I mean what are we basically saying to the public. Yes, do something wrong. If you get caught, we'll demote you. We won't fire you. We'll demote you. You'll continue earning a salary, and we'll keep quiet until we think people have forgotten and then you're back in office. In fact more powerful than before.

John Muller:

We all have a responsibility towards each other. And my responsibilities were to the motorists. And if I can't make that out, save it for the motorists, then I will gladly do it again tomorrow.

Speaker 5:

On the 11th of May, 1994, IFP President Mangosuthu Buthelezi was appointed Minister of Home Affairs in the government of National Unity. Straight after the country's first democratic election, relations between the ANC government and the IFP were delicately balanced. On the 22nd of December, 1998, in his hometown Ulundi, Buthelezi walked into the First National Bank carrying checkers bags stuffed with money.

Paul Kirk:

First found about it when someone from First National Bank [inaudible] to find me, to say that a friend of his had been imprisoned at First National Bank when the Minister of Home Affairs asked to see the bank manager, was led into the bank manager's office, and explained that in exchange for what he had in the checkers packets, he wanted a check for a million rand, a bank check. When the Minister emptied the cash all over the desk, the guy realised that we're talking a fairly serious sum of money, and called a number of people to help him count, count this cash out. It took some time, I understand it took well over an hour or so to count this money out. The total was a little over two and half million rand. That money was separated out. One million rand was given to the bank, who in exchange for that cash gave out a bank check. The rest was put back into the checkers packets and the Minister of Home Affairs walked out.

Speaker 5:

On the third of March this year, Kirk published an article detailing these events.

Speaker 24:

What happened after the article was published?

Paul Kirk:

Absolutely nothing. There was no investigation. This is a Senior Minister of State. The Minister of Home Affair, walking around with checkers packets full of fifty and hundred rand notes.

Speaker 5:

Buthelezi said the money had been raised for the second general election, and that he strongly rejected any suggestion of impropriety. But why did the Minister convert the cash into a check before depositing into the IFP account?

Shauket Fakie:

I would try to find an explanation as to why that trans- and there's always sometimes good reasons, practical reasons as to why someone does that.

Speaker 5:

Questions remain, but who should ask them? When approached for comment, First National Bank declined, citing client confidentiality.

Shauket Fakie:

There is a requirement currently with the bank, where if they do find any transaction that looks suspicious, that's material, et cetera, et cetera, they have a duty to look into that firstly, and to report. Now who they gonna report it to, I'm not sure.

Paul Kirk:

Who should investigate it, I don't know. The matter wasn't reported to the police. I established that. So certainly First National Bank never thought that there was a crime committed there.

Selby Baqwa:

It's just a matter, as far as I'm concerned, that would raise an eyebrow. But unfortunately it's a matter in which I can't do much about.

Speaker 5:

The fact is, the Public Protector does not have the right to ask questions because it wasn't public money. But as government Minister, is Buthelezi not accountable to the public? Do we not have a right to know why a Minister has two and half million rands cash in checkers bags? When approached for comment, Buthelezi declined. He said even after six months, he might still take legal action against Kirk.

Paul Kirk:

He wouldn't be the first person to praise an act of scandal. Especially not in this province.

Speaker 5:

Penuell Maduna returned from exile in 1990. A constitutional expert himself, he became a key player in writing South Africa's new constitution.

Penuell Maduna:

We will absolutely have to go back to negotiations but those must be very serious negotiations aimed at democratising this country.

Speaker 5:

Later he was appointed as Minster for Mineral and Energy affairs. As the first ANC Minister in this department, Maduna had to transform this controversial institution. He suspected irregularities in the Strategic Fuel Fund, the sanctioned busting, government owned company that buys and sells oil. Convinced that there was corruption, Maduna launched his own inquiry.

Mungo Soggot:

An oil company involved in sanctions busting, that was always, you know, that's always something a journalist would wanna look at. And the fact that the Minister was interested in finding something, you know I was, you know, fascinated to pursue it.

Speaker 5:

As a prominent watchdog body, it's crucial that the Auditor General's office is above reproach. They were responsible for auditing the Fuel Fund's books and detecting possible irregularities.

Henri Kluever:

There's no possibility of any irregularities. We even did inspections of well stock piles.

Mungo Soggot:

After several months and nothing happened, you know, the story started to shift towards, you know, whether or not this was a witch hunt. And you know, we wrote a few stories suggesting that perhaps there wasn't sufficient evidence to warrant this investigation that the Minister had launched.

Speaker 5:

Placed under pressure by these press reports, but without sufficient evidence, the Minister exploded in Parliament. He accused Henri Kluever of covering up the theft of 170 million rand.

Mungo Soggot:

The phrase was, the Auditor General will have to explain, you know, how a 170 million rand's worth of oil went up in smoke. That was the phrase he used. And we obviously now, we know that he was confusing the [inaudible] real loss, and an accounting loss. He'd stumbled upon a piece of paper that one of his investigators had given him. Which, you know, would refer to a loss of 170 million rand and [inaudible] for an accounting loss.

Selby Baqwa:

The unfortunate part is that during the cause of doing his job, he lapsed at one point, in allowing himself to go public on something that he was not understanding properly. And, which impacted rather negatively, on the General's office.

Shauket Fakie:

It cost the office an excess of six and half million rand to defend, to defend that statement.

Penuell Maduna:

For me, the integrity of the Office of the Auditor General is uppermost. I want the [inaudible] to go out, to undermine it. But I shall never cease asking questions when a particular situation I find myself in as Minister, begs questions. Am I wrong? And if I am wrong, I will accept it.

Henri Kluever:

For a member of the Executive to attack the Auditor General is also, it's not acceptable from a democratic point of view.

Selby Baqwa:

He not only engaged, the Auditor General's office in a speech, or speeches he made in Parliament, but I mean even in a press conference. You know, and didn't go to the Institution as the Constitution directs.

Henri Kluever:

Well he never he asked us to explain. I don't know who he asked.

Douglas Gibson:

If he'd done what any normal person would have done, to say, "Please explain it to me, so I understand it," we would've saved him all this embarrassment, the government all the embarrassment.

Speaker 5:

The matter was referred to a committee that found that Maduna had in fact transgressed the rules of Parliament.

Douglas Gibson:

Instead of standing up in Parliament, apologising, and withdrawing, what he did was to exercise his right to have Senior Council and Junior Council appear on his behalf. And this went on for a year.

Speaker 5:

The matter was also referred to the Public Protector. He was asked to make a finding on whether the Minister had acted unconstitutionally.

Mungo Soggot:

An Auditor General run an institutions which is, you know, pretty well protected by the constitution, a section of the constitution, which protects those kind of independent watchdog institutions from attack by other organs of government.

Speaker 5:

At the height of the crisis, with a Public Protector's findings still pending, Maduna was appointed Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development.

Selby Baqwa:

Well I made a finding that, in that regard, he had acted unconstitutionally, not following the prescripts of section 41.

Henri Kluever:

Anybody who holds public office must surely hold the constitution dear. And that's not happened in this case.

Selby Baqwa:

All I'm saying is that if we're dealing with the supreme law of the land, then we must show that we respect it.

Speaker 5:

What government is left grappling with, is a Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development found to have acted unconstitutionally.

Mungo Soggot:

Baqwa report makes it quite clear that apart from a few, you know, a few minor accounting anomalies, in face Kluever comes out pretty spotless. And the oil company, amazing, the state oil company under Apartheid, comes out clean.

Speaker 5:

A few days into the Baqwa inquiry, Maduna actually admitted that he had made a mistake, but there was no turning back. His allegations against the Auditor General had been so serious, and cost such doubt on the integrity of the office, that the investigation had to run its course. It was a simple mistake, but a very costly one. The investigation lasted a year and cost around 30 million rand in legal fees.

Henri Kluever:

That's a lot of money. It can buy a lot of clinics and buy a lot of school books.

Shauket Fakie:

Whichever way, wherever you look at it, at the end of the day, it's gonna come out of the pockets of the tax payer. Whether it's my cost, the six and a half, or whatever the total process has cost, coming out of SFF, it's gonna come out of the coffers of the taxpayer

Speaker 5:

The Public Protector can only make findings so the matter was referred to a parliamentary committee under the chairmanship of [inaudible] Nel. The committee had to recommend a suitable sanction. Its judgement  was supposed to be quick, but months later, it is still pending.

Selby Baqwa:

It is within, or on the table, of this honourable committee of Parliament, to ensure that the sanctions that are attached to the provisions of the constitution. Because if that doesn't happen, the constitution is not worth, with the respect the paper is written on.

Penuell Maduna:

It would, I want to say, and being an abuse of that institution, to censor a person who says, "But look at the problems."

Selby Baqwa:

When a Minister, for anybody for that matter as, there should be a consequence.

Gavin Woods:

And so we're hopeful that the now commission, doesn't in any way, downplay, the Public Protector's findings and report.

Mungo Soggot:

We've called for his resignation several times in editorials. You know the newspaper has.

Gavin Woods:

I think there should at least be a very public reprimand, from the President.

Mungo Soggot:

And the main thing you're supposed to do as a Minister is to exercise judgement  and take advice properly and he hasn't, he hasn't quite done that.

Henri Kluever:

Yes, that's, that is strange isn't it?

Selby Baqwa:

It has been said, even during the former President's time, Mandela, that we need an RDP of the soul. That's a reference to the moral regime that we're trying to establish in this country. The sooner our political leaders also realise that you know, we got a good governments. But in regard also to how we want to grow our children. The sooner they realise that the better.

Speaker 1:

Join us again next week for another Special Assignment. And if you have any comments or suggestions, you can email them to truth@sabc.co.za.