Research conducted by the Arizona State University, working in conjunction with the archaeology department at Nelson Mandela University in GQ (aka PE), suggests that by the end of the last Ice Age, about 170,000 years ago, there were only roughly one thousand homo sapiens left on this planet and all of them had, by then, developed the resilience and survival techniques that enabled them to live on in the caves of the south coast of Africa and resiliently eke out their existence until the ice retreated and their descendants were able to colonise the whole world. Professor Curtis Marean of the Institute of Human Origins at ASU is at the forefront of this research which combines scratching around in ancient caves at Blombos and Pinnacle Point for artifacts and evidence with cutting edge DNA research worldwide for confirmatory evidence.
The equable climate, plentiful seafood and nutritious corms, roots and tubers of the fynbos growing on a plain, now below sea level, made it possible for the small band to survive when others did not. They used their brains (made sharper by the seafood) to hunt, gather and strategise in ways that gave them the edge over all other hominids, including the homo sapiens not as felicitously located as they were in the freezing conditions that made the planet so unfriendly to human habitation back then.
The research does not reveal whether our cave dwelling ancestors were corrupt or pure. The fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil did not grow on the south cape coast back then. It is however remarkable that in only 170,000 years, a mere blink of the earth’s eye, we have progressed to about 8 billion humans on earth from such a low base in what we now call the Southern Cape.
Some of the early survivors did not feel obliged to colonise, they remained in the Cape and their descendants are now the modern inhabitants of SA who like to call themselves “Bushmen” rather than Khoi and San of Khoisan. The urge to explore, to colonise and to keep moving appears to be a widely enjoyed propensity of the human species. The rest of the population have all been colonists at some stage in their history and they are currently involved in a process in which they seek to become united in their diversity. A diversity currently perceived by them but, according to science, illusory in the whole wide world.
The innocent prehistory of modern SA ends with the decision of the Dutch to set up a refreshment station in 1652 in what is today Cape Town, a harbour with plentiful fresh water. The earliest colonisation was quickly followed by the efforts of the French and the British. The object of all of these colonialists was to exploit the people, the natural resources and later the minerals of SA. Wars were fought over territory, access to mineral riches, attitudes to slavery and many other issues.
Other colonists, not from Europe, moved southwards in Africa toward the Khoi herders and San hunter-gatherers around the same time as those from Europe arrived in the Cape.
By 1910 the settlers from Europe had fought each other to a standstill in what are today called the first and second Anglo-Boer wars. A national convention was held for these inhabitants who only made up a quarter of the population but were prepared to ignore the majority of their fellow inhabitants of what is today SA to set up the Union of South Africa in 1910 as a dominium of the British Empire. In both world wars, 1914 to 1918 and then 1939 to 1945, SA fought with the British against the Germans and prevailed. SA helped to set up the United Nations Organisation after WWII and to present to the world, in 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a celebration of the victory of liberty over tyranny.
A new era for SA started in 1948 when the Nazi sympathisers in the National Party, which had voted for neutrality in WWII, swept to victory in the (white) parliamentary elections with a minority of votes but a majority of seats. Proportional representation was not practiced in the parliamentary sovereignty of the day.
The National Party remained in power, as a dominant party, until 1994, shedding splinter groups to the right along the way. It legislated racial discrimination is such unpalatable ways that the UN SA had helped to create eventually declared apartheid a crime against humanity and boycotts, sanctions, and disinvestment followed. Sanctions busting became a national pastime and corruption flourished.
After the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 and the dissolution of the USSR, the Nats saw an opportunity to end the pariah status of SA by unbanning the liberation organisations that since Union had promoted and later fought for the rights of those not included in the political dispensation of the Union until 1960 and the Republic after 1960.
Free and fair elections for all were held in 1994 and Nelson Mandela, the world’s most famous political prisoner, became president of a constitutional democracy under the rule of law in which human dignity, the promotion of the achievement of equality and the enjoyment of human rights guaranteed to all became the order of the day. SA became the darling of the world; the political breakthrough was regarded as a miracle and Archbishop Tutu’s “rainbow nation of God” took its first steps in the last years of the twentieth century.
Unfortunately the corruption of the apartheid era did not end with apartheid. Tutu himself wryly observed that the “gravy train” of government stopped at the station in 1994 only long enough to load new passengers.
In the first thirty years of liberation, SA has not been able to address poverty, inequality and joblessness largely due to the prevalence of corrupt activities in business, government and society at large. Looting the state diverts funds for the poor to the pockets of the corrupt.
The new ANC led government lost its innocence when the arms dealers of Europe descended upon the inexperienced civil servants and politicians who had succeeded the apartheid era apparatchiks. Arms SA did not need, to defend against enemies it does not have were bought with money SA had to borrow offshore (illegally so) at great expense. Offset deals did not materialise, they were in place to disguise bribes, kickbacks and commissions did not materialise. Scandalously, the 1999 ANC election campaign was paid for out of its ill gotten gains if credence is to be given to former ANC MP Andrew Feinstein. He has credibly made this claim and has not been sued for making it.
It emerged in debate in the House of Commons in the UK that warplane manufacturer, British Aerospace, set aside 200 million pounds to pay what it delicately called “commissions” to middlemen and felt well-pleased when it emerged that only 115 million pounds were needed. Nobody told the SA negotiators that in the arms trade the “commissions” are higher than in other forms of government procurement.
Grand corruption went from bad (in the arms deals) to worse (in procurement generally) until a solid but shameless attempt at the capture of the state was made during the tenure of the presidency by Jacob Zuma. This led, after a preliminary investigation by the Public Protector, Thuli Madonsela, to her requiring the appointment of the Zondo Commission which has completed its work on state capture in SA.
President Ramaphosa has, correctly so, described the ANC as “accused number one in state capture” the Chief Justice has found the ANC guilty as charged and has recommended that about one hundred ANC bigwigs be investigated criminally. A further 1400 or so individuals have been identified as suspects in the crimes of state capture. The notorious Gupta brothers have fled the country and the prosecution authorities, kept under-resourced, unskilled, short-staffed and sabotaged, are proceeding at glacial pace to do what they can, given their gutting during state capture, to keep the rule of law out of the ICU in which it finds itself on life-support. (Imagery used by NDPP Shamila Batoyi as recently as September 2023).
The ANC was punished at the polls in May 2024 when its majority of seats (57%) was slashed to 40% and it became obliged to call for a government of national unity (GNU) in order to retain the presidency and the power that comes with that office.
Ten of the eighteen political parties represented in parliament now form a government of national unity; how long it will last will depend on the attitude of the ANC to two private members bills which the DA has promised to place before the seventh parliament within 100 days of its commencement. Those 100 days started on the birthday of Nelson Mandela, when parliament was opened . Delivering a carefully crafted speech, the President said little that is new. He avoided the detail that is needed if the promises of the Constitution are to be met by the GNU. The state has an obligation to respect, protect, promote and fulfil the human rights guaranteed to all in the Bill of Rights. It will be unable to do so effectively and efficiently if its coffers continue to be looted by the corrupt.
Moletsi Mbeki has observed that in colonial times the colonists exploited the people, the living natural resources and the minerals of SA. Apartheid apparatchiks replaced the colonists in this process and they, in turn, were replaced by the deployed cadres of the national democratic revolution as exploiters of the land and its people. This revolutionary zeal is used as the excuse for the criminality involved in enjoying what is called, by the comrades “our turn to eat”.
Corruption is a zero sum game; at its worst it kills the poor, it disadvantages progress, it corrodes the institutions of the state and it threatens our future as a nation. The Constitutional Court put it best when it said on 17 March 2011 in the case now called Glenister 2:
There can be no gainsaying that corruption threatens to fell at the knees virtually everything we hold dear and precious in our hard-won constitutional order. It blatantly undermines the democratic ethos, the institutions of democracy, the rule of law and the foundational values of our nascent constitutional project. It fuels maladministration and public fraudulence and imperils the capacity of the State to fulfil its obligations to respect, protect, promote and fulfil all the rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights. When corruption and organised crime flourish, sustainable development and economic growth are stunted. And in turn, the stability and security of society is put at risk. This deleterious impact of corruption on societies and the pressing need to combat it concretely and effectively is widely recognised in public discourse, in our own legislation, in regional and international conventions and in academic research.
The oft expressed commitment of the GNU to the rule of law and the Constitution obliges it to put an end to the lacklustre efforts to comply with the orders made in Glenister 2. The court requires of the state that it put effective and efficient anti-corruption machinery in place. It has not done so in any way shape or form since 2011. The closure of the Scorpions dealt a mortal blow to anti corruption activity and the hollowing out of the prosecution service during state capture and beyond has done nothing to ameliorate the situation.
There is a welcome stirring however, in part of the GNU. The DA has its private members bills for a new Chapter Nine Anti-Corruption Commission at the ready. It is the business of parliament to debate the bills, refine them, if necessary, and adopt them diligently and without delay. Doing so will lend credence to the expressed commitment to the rule of law that is the guiding principle of the GNU.
Not doing so, will bring the GNU crashing down and will lead to an early fresh election in which the ANC will lose more support. Its 40% represents only 16 % of those eligible to vote. Many who did not vote in May 2024 will surely seize the opportunity to see off the corrupt on the next occasion on which it is possible to vote. The local elections due in 2026 will be instructive in this regard.
The long journey from the caves of the Southern Cape to the GNU is now on its first lap since 1948 without a dominant party in place in SA. It is to be hoped that the lap will include a celebration of the victory over the corruption that is depriving the poor of their most basic human rights while threatening peace, progress and shared prosperity in SA.
Paul Hoffman SC is a director of Accountability Now. He was lead counsel in Glenister 2.
