Drumsticks roll asunder

The inside track on how South Africa’s political economy is headed for crises on all major fronts.

There are but few countries where illicit commando-type militias can roam around at will and, deploying deadly and significant ordnance, plunder, rape and murder at will. Believe it, that La Victoria ranks as a full-blown ghost town. Its final denizens fled last month when members of an irregular militia popped two of the village’s young men in broad daylight.

But the 1999 massacre in La Gabarra (when 40 people were slain by an irregular militia), remains one of the bloodiest single incidents against civilians in this country’s recent history. Another massacre two years ago left 34 farmers dead in the same hamlet.

These stories are set up near the Venezuela border in the north-eastern Catatumbo region of Colombia. The other country is South Africa, which this week released statistics showing that 18 545 South Africans were slaughtered in the year to 31 March 2006, equal to 51 people a day, holidays included. These numbers pale over La Gabarra, especially considering that Colombia has been in a war for four decades.

Colombia and South Africa have the highest murder rates in the world, but while South African leaders remain ominously silent on crime, Colombian president Álvaro Uribe Vélez recently appealed to all members of the UN General Assembly to support his country's security policies. Just as the UN has labeled Colombia as the worst humanitarian crisis in the Americas, the UN remains as silent on South Africa’s shocking crime problem as do South African leaders in the ruling party.

In Colombia, the fuel of violence is cash generated from coca, cultivated in the first step to processing cocaine, the champagne of the illicit drugs trade. Even then, Uribe has had the resolution to appeal for international help; “it is time”, he said, “for the international community to urgently call on violent groups to make peace without any more delays”.

South Africa is no small player in the global illicit drugs scene. Close to 100 000 cases of “drug related” crime were recorded by the police in 2005/2006. The big crime syndicates, which may well be protected in some or other way, somehow remain untouchable.

In a recent drugs bust in Alberton, near Johannesburg, some R250m of hashish and cannabis was seized. It was to be a single shipment. Several arrests were made but the kingpin of the syndicate (which imports hashish from the Middle East via cannabis-growing Swaziland and Lesotho, prior to re-shipment from South Africa to Canada and then Holland) is yet to be arrested, even when his identity is hardly a secret.

President Thabo Mbeki needs to clarify South Africa’s policy over illicit drugs, which play an increasingly important role in the economy. According to the latest UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) report, South Africa and its neighbours comprise one of the world’s biggest growers and exporters of cannabis. The drug is rated as the third biggest export earner for Lesotho; Swaziland exports cannabis to the UK, US, Netherlands, and Japan. In 2004, the Republic of Ireland reported that 99% of the cannabis consumed in their country originated from South Africa.

In both South Africa and Colombia, money generated from illicit drugs corrupts a swamp-chain of never-ending crimes, ranging from money laundering and illegal possession of firearms and ammunition to bribery and, where required, contact crimes. While Colombia has long had a narco-economy, South Africa has quickly developed and adapted a crime-economy, illustrated by the 2.3m crimes reported to the police in 2005/2006.

Crime is institutionalized in both countries. Uribe argues that the root of the problem in his country is organized violence under “fictitious political pretexts”. Afrikaans author Andre Brink this week wrote in French daily Le Monde that South Africa’s “new elite” are “directly related to the increase in violence in the country”. Their first priority, Brink argues, “is apparently to fill their own pockets and those of family and friends and to abuse their positions, even if they have to step on the victims of murder, rape and violence and telling those who dare protest to shut up or leave”.

For the optimists, there may be an innovative way to deal with South Africa’s burgeoning crime-economy, courtesy of an idea that cropped up at a recent conference in Kenya. The idea is that those involved in serious corruption cases should be charged with crimes against humanity.

Under international law, the most serious crimes include genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes of aggression. Those charged under such headings can be put on trial anywhere in the world. The conference heard that corruption drains Africa of about 25% of its GDP (gross domestic product), and that the collateral damage, universally recognised, is that corruption is a major cause of poverty.

Corruption hideously undermines the foundations and basics, never mind advancement, of human rights. The Registrar of the International Tribunal for Rwanda, Adama Dieng, was reported as saying that in poor countries economic crimes might be as damaging as the worst violations of human rights, as they may cause starvation of the citizens for whom funds were intended.

South Africa is rotten with corruption. Its public sector has been overwhelmed by financial mismanagement, which includes unknown elements and degrees of corruption. An analysis of 135 annual audits conducted by auditor-general Shauket Fakie on the 34 national government departments and public entities from 2001/2002 to 2004/2005 shows that just seven “clean reports” were issued. There were 35 graded as “qualified” or branded with “adverse opinion” or slammed with “disclaimer”; 128 had an “emphasis of matter”.

Qualified reports, adverse opinions or disclaimers from the auditor-general denote entities in a state of financial disarray and mismanagement. Those that received reports in these categories expended (in the 2004/2005 year alone) a massive R52bn, or 30% of the national budget. Reports of fresh dirty accounts are starting to roll out, as the 2005/2006 reporting season hits parliament. This week, for instance, home affairs again received a qualified audit opinion from the auditor-general, for the fifth consecutive year.

Below this mismanagement and its attendant corruption, poverty remains an insoluble problem. This week Statistics SA estimated that South Africa’s “population of working age” stood at 29,9m persons on March 31 2006. The “labour force” is defined as 16,7m persons; of this, 4,3m (25,6%) are officially defined as unemployed, while 3,7m (22%) are defined as “discouraged work-seekers”. A combination of the latter two groups means that close to 50% of South Africa's labour force don’t have jobs. Just 41,7% (12,5m) of South Africa’s working force population (29,9m) have jobs.

South Africa’s politicians, and new elite, are punching way above their weight on the international stage while their backyards develop into ever-deeper pits of toxic chaos. The chickens, vapid, starving and moth-eaten as they may be, are staggering home to roost. This year’s PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) global economic crime survey found that 83% of companies and entities surveyed in South Africa were victims of economic crime in the past two years, in comparison with 45% globally.

South Africa’s refusal to recognise its crime-economy is costing more by the second. This week, the country slipped badly in the ranking tables of the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report 2006-2007. High crime, poor levels of health care and primary education were cited as key reasons for South Africa being shoved down to the ranking of 45, five places lower than the previous year.

In the basic requirements sub-index, South Africa fell 12 places to 58. The country’s human development ranking, as measured by the UNDP’s Human Development index, has been declining since 1995 and South Africa now ranks only 103rd in the world for basic health and education.

Earlier this year, reports from the Stellenbosch-based Bureau for Economic Research and the World Bank’s International Financial Corporation graphically illustrated how the South African government clutters the economy with regulatory obstacles. A more recent publication, the Fraser Institute’s regulatory survey of 64 mining jurisdictions, placed South Africa a lowly 37th.

Next month, Tito Mboweni, governor of South Africa’s central bank, will lead a number of top business executives to major New York meetings “in the biggest bid ever to attract trade and investment”. What will he be saying?
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