No Helen, corruption is easier than you think

In her Daily Maverick column premier of the Western Cape Helen Zille writes: “Why being corrupt is harder than you think”. “Honest officials must apply the rules without fear or favour. This is why I’m more than amazed at how people get away with corruption in South Africa.”

Zille, in my view, is one of the most disingenuous and sanctimonious politicians in the country.  She presents herself as omniscient and expert of all things governance, ethics and those matters she has little to no direct knowledge of, e.g., her oft-stated opinion audits of government departments is a hindrance to service delivery and must be changed.  When I disputed the last in a comment to one of her columns – when Daily Maverick still allowed comments – she replied I didn’t understand government audits (I was once a contracted auditor-general auditor).

To her credit, she’s often fearlessly, and at times inadvisably, gone against the flow of public opinion, mostly on Twitter, despite the irritation of the DA and others who wish she’d just shut up.  She’s undoubtedly one of South Africa’s brightest public officials in a country where mediocrity is supreme. But her failing is hubris and sanctimony that her supporters believe is evidence of her competence and excellence as a leader. 

While overweening arrogance is a requirement for politicians, I find it problematic in Helen because she’s not who she presents herself to be – saint Helen, the champion of all that is good and right.  She claims, especially in her articles, to require honesty, a corrupt-free and efficient government and duty and obligation to the people and law.  But this is not how it always is with her administration. 

In the Daily Maverick article she writes how an accommodation expense account of R76.90 for a Western Cape government official “triggered an investigation costing many times the amount of the alleged irregular expenditure, which had, in any event, been fully explained”, lasting six months and a report that had to be “read and signed off by no fewer than seven officials”. 

Despite her claimed horror at the waste of human resources “getting to the bottom of it”, as she would say, she “went through and read and two lengthy reports, page by page, to get a clearer understanding of how the system worked” and spoke to various officials.  Does she not have better things to do with her valuable taxpayer-funded time? 

A premier earns R2.2 million a year, and assuming she spent six hours on, by her account, nuisance matter, her unnecessary intervention and interference must have cost the taxpayer almost R5 000.  But she self-righteously complains about the waste the “ridiculous procurement system” causes.

She vents about this injustice and compares it to North West premier Supra Mahumapelo gifting a herd of cattle worth R1.5 million to Jacob Zuma using public funds. “So, knowing what I know which is actually very little about the procurement minefield [disingenuously; before now she wrote it was something she had studied], I am totally stunned that this sort of corruption is actually possible”, i.e., compared to the trifling amounts that she says is not even corruption alleged to have occurred in the Western Cape.

It’s an old trick of copping guilty to a small crime to avoid scrutiny of a larger one.  Everyone except the most anal accountant (disclosure: I’m a former accountant and auditor) agrees R76.90 is nothing to worry about and make a court case of.  But Zille doesn’t acknowledge more serious problems and allegations about her administration, e.g., she “pressurised officials to support her son’s business”, which she denied.

Recently she wrote how she and the Western Cape Health Department are preventing a Life Esidimeni-type situation occurring in the province and putting systems in place, and compliments she’s received about province’s public healthcare. But she doesn’t acknowledge failures in and complaints about the service, e.g., the Eerste River Hospital debacle in 2012, others since and those I brought to her attention last year including my late mother’s care at Groote Schuur Hospital.

In one article she wrote how she/DA selects the “best available fit at the top” for MECs and heads of department. But in another she spoke of “the inevitable tendency in bureaucracies for officials either to actively protect one another or at least to give each other the benefit of the doubt”.

I’ve used these quotes before because they illustrate Zille’s contradictions and dishonesty.  Or she has a short memory or two persons in one body because doesn’t remember instances of her government’s poor performance or her or her best-fit executives’ questionable conduct.

One example is in 2011 when her government pressurised CapeNature to change policy that had far-reaching consequences for the conservation and protection of the Western Cape’s predators including protected Cape leopard.  This is not speculation.  I requested CapeNature’s board minutes that proved the suspicious and irregular involvement of two MECs and agri-industry representatives, which was the beneficiary of policy changes, in what was supposedly private and confidential proceedings.  Their consensus and approval for the changes were obtained and recorded.  This was de facto regulatory capture. 

She denied it at the time but given that she apparently micro-manages her administration, she must have been aware of or even approved the MECs’ involvement and outcome. 

Another example is the head of the Western Cape Health Department cancelling a health inquiry without basis in law and (using Zille’s words) actively protecting an underling and giving her the benefit of the doubt before having the facts and applying her mind to them. Zille was later guilty of it too in the same case (see below).

A more egregious occasion was in November when she instructed a senior advocate in her government to nose around an ongoing police and Cape Town Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) investigation into my mother’s death at Groote Schuur Hospital last year.  

I had asked her to investigate my mother’s care as hospitals and health departments are required to do in terms of the National Health Act, which she promised to do.  It would have been from the medical/healthcare perspective.  Hospitals and health departments do it all the time.  The exception in our case (I‘m sure there are others) was they were at first very reluctant to do it, and then cancelled it without a proper explanation (see above).

When he called, Advocate X represented he was acting under his legislative “oversight” authority over the police. I took him at face value. He said he had already spoken to the police and DPP.  I was curious, though, because provincial governments have no jurisdiction over the National Prosecutions Authority. From his comments, including that he had worked at the DPP, I gathered he had been given much information about the case.

My suspicion turned into alarm when Zille’s chief of staff, no doubt thinking they were doing me a favour, emailed me about the “cooperation” the police and DPP gave Adv. X.  She ended the email, without irony, saying they couldn’t interfere in a criminal investigation, after they had already done that.

X made enquiries as the legal representative of the respondent/accused in a criminal matter.  They gave him information they had not given me.  A few weeks ago the DPP denied wrongdoing and insisted they gave him and Zille’s legal office – before they told me anything – merely a “status report” and not “documents” from the docket.

A week after Zille’s chief of staff’s emailed me, the commander of Woodstock’s detectives sent me an unsolicited email, three months after they had had the docket (while they had the case they had been unobtainable) offering redundant case status information. I gathered he contacted me only because of X.  But he said they “did not discuss the case with anyone”, which is not what X and Zille’s email said. 

I understand if the police were misled because I was too.  But the DPP should’ve known better.  While they may not have provided information out of the docket, as they claimed, they gave the Western Cape government an idea where the case was headed, including possibly they were waiting for a medical negligence opinion (“the medical file”) from the pathologist, a government employee. 

I’m speculating, but had that happened, it would have compromised or influenced the direction of the investigation like I said and created a possible conflict of interest for the pathologist. 

In January when I heard they had asked him, I informed the DPP I was concerned about the pathologist’s independence from the situation they put him in.  It’s one thing for a pathologist to give his expertise based on the evidence of a post-mortem and another to wear the hat of a consultant in the same case and give an opinion that might implicate his employer, in this case the Western Cape government, who are also the respondents that had access to the prosecutor’s office. 

My suggestion to the DPP to consult an independent expert was ignored. 

Last year the pathologist told me he could not provide an opinion on my mother’s care, only the post-mortem findings.  Why he agreed to the DPP’s request after telling me he couldn’t is a question they’ve not answered.

I don’t know exactly what the DPP told X and thus Zille.  But the pathologist’s finding there was no negligence despite various irregularities in my mother’s care including lack of informed consent (assault) bears my fears out.  Even if there was no interference, it bears probing why the respondent and their lawyers got preferential treatment and why they were given (“status”) information before the complainant.  But the DPP dismissed my concerns.

I went off on a tangent.  This is an article about Zille’s hypocrisy.  At the beginning of her article she said, “Honest officials must apply the rules without fear or favour”.  But this is not what she and her officials have done and are doing.  In our case they allegedly manipulated the process to actively protect one another and subvert the spirit and/or letter of the law.

Politicians and most people think corruption is only about money.  But it starts with a premeditated intention to break the law to benefit oneself or confer a benefit on associates.  Zille says she’s amazed how easily it is to get away with corruption.  Why should she be?  It’s closer to home than she has wants us to believe.

Footnote: on April 24 I laid a criminal charge of crimen injuria and interference in an ongoing investigation. The case is with Woodstock police.