— 02/20/2008 An hypothesis about state funding of the ANC
HOW THE ANC IS FUNDED: A THEORY
Paul Trewhela
From almost as soon as the African National Congress took office in South Africa in 1994, in my interpretation, the arms deal was the occasion, not the cause, of radical dysfunction in government. As soon as it took office, the ANC in government had the option to buy the more suitable and cheaper armaments then preferred by the Defence Force, but rejected that option in favour of a far bigger cash cow. What really drove ANC decision-making in this and other matters of state, in my view, was a party decision to find ways of ensuring state funding for the ANC itself, and only for itself. Direct funding from the taxpayer via the Treasury would have been too blatant. (If that route had been taken, other parties would have demanded state funding too).
State commercial deals with suppliers (foreign and otherwise) were in this interpretation both a means and a disguise. These suppliers secretly funded the ANC, submitting a grossly inflated bill to the South African state, to be paid by the taxpayer and also by the people through loss of potential service provision from the ANC in government. In so far as the state funded these purchases through borrowing (both foreign and local), capital and interest on this debt were then to be funded over time by the taxpayer too.
Hypothesis of party-funding as a single guiding thread
The superiority of this hypothesis is that it provides a single guiding logic connecting the arms deal (funding the ANC for the 1999 election), the Imvume Oilgate deal (helping to fund the ANC for the 2004 election) and the Chancellor House coal supply deal (to fund the ANC ahead of the forthcoming general elections in 2009 – a matter related also to the current electricity supply fiasco, brought about partly by diversion of coal supply from Eskom's previous stable suppliers to new suppliers including the ANC itself, through Chancellor House). At every stage, of course, one would expect that individual politicians and state officials drew personal benefit from the scam.
A Right by Destiny in favour of the ANC?
This hypothesis of the key function of hidden, secret, state funding of the ANC has other explanatory advantages too. Mbeki was central to the arms deal, but has so far not been suspected of having derived personal corrupt advantage from it. As a politically-driven man, personal corruption of Mbeki is not a necessary factor in my interpretation of the arms deal, any more than it is a factor in understanding, say, Stalin, or Hitler, or many other politicians. But secret state funding in perpetuity of the ANC!
There one has a single thread uniting the arms deal, Imvume and the Eskom scandal with Mbeki, probably also with Mendi Msimang (as former Treasurer-General of the ANC: a possible source also of Mbeki’s extraordinary underlying connection to his failed Health Minister, Dr Mantombazana Tshabalala-Msimang, the wife of Mendi Msimang), and possibly also with the new deputy president of the ANC, Kgalema Motlanthe (through the Imvume deal). What may have been regarded as beyond the pale in that milieu in terms of personal self-enrichment may very well have been considered as a Right by Destiny on behalf of the ANC.
A history of state funding of the party
This explanation has unity, simplicity and consistency in a historical dimension too, since in its three decades in exile the ANC was above all a state-funded body. Direct subvention from the budget was the normal way of funding of the ANC by Sweden and the USSR. State-funding may well then have continued to be regarded by party leaders as its normal mode of funding once in office (funding from other states having supervened in the interval 1990-94), the only difference being that once the ANC had its hands exclusively on government from 1994 it would have been logical for it – by this hypothesis - to fund itself from its 'own' state and not rely upon the 'generosity' of others. There are further compelling arguments in support of this thesis. It is likely that the ANC cannot hope to fund its huge staffing/income/control needs from the subscriptions of its members, or even also from donations. Yet to satisfy this dependent client base is crucial for survival as the ruling party.
It is probable that the ANC sought state funding for itself as the ruling party, in the same way that the general revenue of the state funded the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which ran the USSR as its private fiefdom. There is evidence of this approach even in the funding of a single faction of the party, the formerly dominant faction under President Mbeki. It seems likely that the book by Ronald Suresh Roberts, Fit to Govern: The Native Intelligence of Thabo Mbeki (STE Publishers, Johannesburg, 2007) was commissioned, written and published so as to appear last year in time to help ensure Mbeki’s re-election as ANC president at the party conference at Polokwane in December. If so, it was a ludicrous miscalculation. The fact remains, however, that the second-in-command of Mbeki's faction, his exile comrade Essop Pahad, used a civil servant in his department as Minister in the Presidency to secure funding for the book from a bank in receipt of substantial state business. This was most likely done in expectation that the book would raise Mbeki’s profile in relation to his party rivals ahead of the December conference. If propaganda for a single politician could be funded in this way, through abuse of the authority of the state, why not state funding for the whole party?
Follow the money, follow the party
The huge (and to some degree, righteous) indignation of the new ANC president, Jacob Zuma, is that he was made to be the fall guy for the party, by its then leading faction, headed by Mbeki, which initiated the arms deal when he was not even in government. Many underlying tensions concerning party/state corruption now centre on Zuma, as he prepares for trial in mid-year on charges of corruption, fraud, racketeering and money-laundering. It may well be, however, that Zuma is a minnow while the big sharks swim free. I agree with the nostrum: ‘Follow the money’. In the case of South Africa, however, rival parties should make it a primary principle of political accountancy to follow the paper or electronic trail of corrupt payments to the ANC itself. In the big picture of South African government, by this interpretation, individual personal corruption is a blinder and it is government and the ruling party that are corrupt.
[Note: An effective way in which readers may keep updated on developments in the arms deal scandal is through the Arms Deal Virtual Press Office on www.armsdeal-vpo.co.za, an extremely comprehensive site. After the Party. A Personal and Political Journey inside the ANC, an account of investigation into the arms deal by the former ANC MP, Andrew Feinstein, which was published in South Africa by Jonathan Ball last year, will be launched in Britain at Foyles Bookshop, 113-119 Charing Cross Road, London WC2 on Thursday 28 February at 6.30pm. - Ed]