ANC uses BEE as a license to loot – Zille
Democratic Alliance (DA) mayoral candidate for the City of Johannesburg and Chairperson of the party’s Federal Council, Helen Zille, says that the root cause of poor service delivery is “legalised corruption.”
“The African National Congress (ANC) has interpreted Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) as a license to loot,” Zille told Newsday.
“That is what has happened to almost every element of service delivery, to the point where corruption has become the system.”
Zille said that officials have “been too busy fleecing off money in various tenders and contracts that aren’t needed to bother about the main purpose, which is to keep service delivery going.”
She used the water situation in Johannesburg as an example of this in motion. Many areas across the economic hub are in a full-blown water crisis.
Non-revenue water (NRW) is the volume of potable water distributed for which the municipality receives no income, including through leaks from decades of underinvestment in infrastructure, among other things.
The target is less than 25% but in Johannesburg, it is 48.4%.
Neighbourhoods like Westbury, Ebony Park, and parts of Soweto have endured dry taps for weeks, sometimes even months, but the wallets of those hired to assist are overflowing.
“The water system, although old and frail, is often deliberately sabotaged so that cronies with water tanker businesses can truck in water instead of it coming through pipes.”
Newsday recently reported that the City has launched an internal investigation into allegations that staff members of Johannesburg Water (JW) and employees from some service providers demand payment for water delivered by tankers.
JW spokesperson Nombuso Shabalala looked to downplay the situation, telling Newsday that “at this stage, there is no factual evidence of a water mafia operating in Johannesburg.”
“What we are currently dealing with are isolated incidents and allegations of wrongdoing linked to a small number of individuals. As such, these are being investigated thoroughly.”
Another example used was debt collection schemes for service arrears, which she says are also exploited by officials.
“People inside the municipality have a hand in that and are also using it to cream off money for themselves at the top.”
“In any place you look, you’ll find the most ingenious forms of corruption you’ve ever heard of. And we’re going to have to eradicate that corruption root and branch to rescue Johannesburg.”
The DA has long linked corruption to the policy of B-BBEE, proposing alternative legislation to replace it entirely.
“The ANC’s BEE policy has failed. It has made a handful of politically connected individuals wealthy, while the rest of the country has been left behind,” said DA head of policy, Mat Cuthbert on 28 October.
“While a few benefit from inflated contracts and state tenders, the majority continue to pay the price for corruption and greed.”
In media statements, the ANC has indicated its willingness to engage in policy talks; however, it has maintained that it will not support any scrapping of B-BBEE.
Replace the heads of the snakes
“The good thing is that there are honest officials who are appalled at what is going on in Johannesburg,” said Zille, noting that it is terrifying for those who want to be whistleblowers.
Amongst other things, Zille plans to establish a forensic auditing system in the office, with safe systems of reporting corruption that protect whistleblowers from retaliation.
“We will have to have systems of enabling whistleblowers to speak that do not threaten them,” she said. “That is the absolute priority.” Otherwise, Johannesburg will never root out corruption and turn around.
“We will have to examine the most corrupt entities. We are going to have to replace the head or the heads of the snake, and we are going to have to clean up from the top down,” added Zille.
Apart from that, she said that, like her previous executive roles, she would “work very, very closely with the auditor general” to ensure that weak spots are picked up, fix them and hold people to account.”
She pointed to the city’s over R200 billion maintenance backlog, just under three times the annual budget of the City of Johannesburg, and blamed it on decades of neglect by previous ANC administrations.
“They’ve been too busy fleecing off money in various tenders and contracts that aren’t needed to bother about the main purpose, which is to keep service delivery going,” said Zille.
Zille said that her strategy focuses on financial stabilisation and targeted investments in essential services, including ring-fencing funding for the utilities, like water, electricity, refuse removal, and sewage.
This is “so that the money can’t be swept out of those accounts and into other projects because cadres want to find vehicles for looting.”
“We’re going to have to ring fence that money and we’re going to have to spend it on the services for which ratepayers are paying,” she added.
The ANC has continued to support the policy despite criticism, asserting that pressure from outside forces will not cause the party to abandon its transformation agenda.
The party has explicitly said in the past that it will not drop BEE. However, it did not provide a response to Newsday.
In August, responding to pressure from the United States, ANC SG Fikile Mbalula said that “the party will not abandon its transformative policies.”
“If it means we are going to suffer through sanctions, as leaders of the ANC, let it be. We will never back imperialists.”
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Been doing contract work for long on and off for a certain big semi state company. They contacted us again for certain work. But one hurdel was that we were not BEEE level one. We have honest partners that we work with that we have suggest to them. They refused. One suggestion was we sell our business to a “partner” and then get the contract, which was unacceptable. Next is they suggested a “partner” that we did not know. The “partner” suggested that we lower our qoute. That done, we got contacted by headoffice to urgently come and see them and explain certain things. It seems our “partner” took our qoute, inflated it by 50% and gave it to them. They would have done nothing. No work, no input, no say in any work. For doing nothing, they want an extra slice of 50% above the hard work we were suppose to do. We walked away and left a contract on millions. That is our experience with BEEEEE the last couple of years. And they want to keep it? We would have employed a couple of people to help us, so no job creation of benefit to anyone.