1991
WHERE AND HOW DID the rot all start? And who can we say was responsible? Do we blame individuals, the liberation movement, South African society, capitalism, the world we live in, human nature, an unfathomable enigma? Is there something innate about the human condition which makes people susceptible to greed, the lust for wealth and power? Can such flaws be overcome, can temptation be resisted or at least contained by mere appeals to conscience, by whistleblowing, by tough regulations and penalties? The Chinese resort to the death sentence in cases of extreme corruption, never mind betrayal. In many countries, corruption is simply accepted as a way of life. Are measures and regulations, even extreme combative penalties sufficient, without eradicating the root causes of the problem? For these surely lie in the rotten environment in which the disease germinates and flourishes and out of which the perverse values and behaviour are generated.
It is illuminating to examine a prophetic article written by Rusty Bernstein, in 1991,1 three years prior to the ANC attaining political power. The article was titled ‘The corridors to corruption’, and its warnings about the pitfalls that lay ahead for the struggle generation were prescient and uncanny if we consider today’s South Africa.
Bernstein, a luminary of the Communist Party and liberation movement, key drafter of the Freedom Charter, and co-accused with Mandela in the Rivonia Trial, died in 2002. He was well placed to formulate his observations and concerns. Writing under his pen name ‘Toussaint’, Bernstein reflected on the failure of East European communism, and the role that creeping corruption had played in undermining the integrity of former dedicated revolutionaries in Africa and elsewhere. ‘I want to try to examine some of the forces that shape the behaviour of leaders of socialism,’ he wrote, ‘and try to establish whether it is their characters and personalities which determine the system – or, on the contrary, whether there are factors in the system which create their character and behaviour.’ He was able to spot the hazards as the ANC Alliance prepared to take power and wrote: ‘I want to draw on factors which can be seen in embryo in our own South African liberation movement … the subtle process by which the foretaste of power that corrupts seems to be creeping upon us unnoticed. We ignore the warning signals at our peril. Unless we can identify and eliminate the factors which have corrupted good honest leaders and organisations elsewhere, we could well repeat the experience of their decline and fall.’
Bernstein considered how a process that had corroded the moral integrity of revolutionaries after power was achieved could well be repeated in South Africa. He considered the metamorphosis from comrade to minister of the typical respected People’s Leader whose life had formerly been devoted to serving the poor and oppressed in an exemplary way. He imagined, sensitively and not without sympathy, how the new lifestyle – fashionable clothes; limousine with chauffeur and bodyguards; ministerial residence with a retinue of servants; champagne and smoked salmon; the demands of ‘protocol’ and ‘security’ – could come to take charge.
Despite these radical changes, the ‘Comrade Minister’, in Bernstein’s example, was determined not to be seduced and diverted from the desire to represent the interests of the ordinary people. The trouble, Bernstein continued, was that he or she no longer would really interact with the people: ‘He meets only other officials, or diplomats and businessmen wanting special favours from the government. He sees ordinary people from the windows of his car, and from the platforms of public meetings. But he no longer hears what they say or think or want.’
As for the aides in the ministerial office, only a few could be called ‘veterans of the struggle’. Most were former young activists, bright and specially trained for the posts, and supporters of the new government. But few of them were motivated, like their minister, by selfless idealism. They developed a style of work suited to a regular civil service career, where it was better to do nothing than make a mistake. Publicly they must be seen to toe the official line, and where they were not prepared to do so, they could resign from their jobs, or conspire secretly in order not to lose the confidence of the party leadership.
Bernstein, basing his storyline on the upheavals of East European communism, contemplated, along with the growth of corruption and failure to redress the needs of the people, a scenario of rising popular discontent. ‘Things are not going well for the new government,’ he wrote in 1991 about an imagined near-future. ‘The opposition has reorganised, and is obstructing the new government’s policies. There are even rumours of sabotage. Foreign investors are withdrawing. Prices are rising and jobs are being lost. The servants of state want to combat discontent and bolster the government. They want to show the world that things are not as bad as the gossip suggests. They have the best of intentions – to encourage investors, improve the morale of the government’s supporters, and dismay its opponents. Gradually they develop the habit of hiding the bad news, or “massaging the statistics” to make things look better than they really are. Only the good news must be allowed to get out.’
Rusty Bernstein believed that the East European experience, first of crisis then of fall, could happen in the new South Africa. We South Africans, he wrote, need to learn from what had happened in Eastern Europe. Those events of 1989–90 could provide several different storylines, all ending in much the same way. From his close experience and study of the socialist bloc up to the time of dramatic collapse in one country after another, he offered the following scenario as a possible example: ‘The opposition to the government grows stronger and more active. Some people are said by “Security” to be planning a coup or uprising. The Security chiefs might be right, or they may be exaggerating the danger. They may just be building up a case for demanding a larger departmental budget and wider powers. Who knows? Who, even in the government, can any longer distinguish between what is being alleged by officials and what is actually happening in the country? Dare any Minister oppose the Security Department’s demand for a State of Emergency? Detention without trial? Suppression of opposition parties or newspapers? Should public meetings be prohibited and new elections postponed indefinitely? Should strikes be made illegal to protect the supplies of food and power? The Ministers are not reckless men. They know the whole future of the country depends on their decision. If they could trust their own instincts against the whole weight of “Security’s” assessments, they might turn down the demand for emergency powers. But if their judgement should be wrong, all will end in disaster. They decide to be safe rather than sorry. Reluctantly they decide to accept special security measures. Democracy is buried, and replaced with rule by emergency decree. This marks the end of all the high idealism with which the people’s government set out.’
Bernstein stressed: ‘My story is not either totally factual or totally fictional. It is not the story of a particular country or a particular party. But I believe it is a fair example of the real tragic story of socialism’s decline and fall almost everywhere in Eastern Europe. It contains within it … the separation of the leaders from the people … that separation lays open even the most honest and dedicated comrade to irresistible pressures in high office. It explains, in part at least, what they do – and what they fail to do.’
Bernstein did not hold the view that power must inevitably corrupt, but he argued that we must understand that the ‘trappings of power’, passed on from generation to generation, from system to system – if unchanged – kept the policymakers separate from the people, underpinned existing power relations and insulated them from the forces of change. In reference to the Freedom Charter, he reminded us that ‘the ending of white supremacy … requires the total overturn of the status quo’ of which the existing apparatus of the state was an essential part. ‘Since the trappings of state power serve to uphold the status quo,’ he argued, ‘the trappings of protocol and privilege which surround apartheid power must be essentially hostile to our cause.’ And he continued: ‘They are incompatible with our aim of transforming society to ensure equal rights for all, and contradict the democratic spirit of our programme.’
While not wishing to suggest that the only cause of failure should be ascribed to such mechanisms of power, Bernstein averred that the case studies provided much evidence for the conclusion that the existing trappings of power were incompatible with the social transformation of society. ‘In Eastern Europe,’ he continued, ‘attempts were made to take over the trappings of capitalist power, complete with all their diplomatic usages and privileges, and use them to serve the cause of socialist power. The results have been too disastrous for us to ignore.’
As a dedicated Marxist, Bernstein subscribed to the fundamental proposition that every social system divided into classes rests on a material base or foundation, consisting of the means of production of goods and all other forms of wealth and the production relations between the classes involved. The objective of a social revolution was to transform the economic foundation of society, but he went on to stress ‘that it is equally necessary to change the whole superstructure of the system’ arising from that base.2
Bernstein explained: ‘Eastern European socialists generally followed that teaching. They made sweeping changes on a wide canvas – some critics say too wide. They changed institutions and customs of all kinds – parliaments, administrations, armies, factory managements, schooling, religion and social relations. They acted on the conviction that all former social institutions had to be changed if they were to serve the building of socialism. But surprisingly not in respect of the trappings of power and its diplomatic modalities. These were simply left unchanged. Whether this was because they were simply overlooked, or whether they were given a low priority until they were too well established to be altered, or whether they were deliberately preserved is unclear … Whatever the reason, the fact is that the trappings were not changed … they kept the old trappings, worked within them, and were undermined by them.’
Bernstein concluded: ‘We can benefit now from the examples of those who have not tackled the problem in Eastern Europe, and in newly independent Africa. Their experience demonstrates the corrupting consequence of simply taking the trappings of capitalist power over into a new social order … we have the chance to seal off in advance the Corridors of Corruption, where others tried and failed … It demands that we debate the matter openly … it also demands that we measure ourselves against the standards of honesty, incorruptibility and dedication which we expect – and generally get – from our leaders; and that we understand the pressures that they will be subject to if we cannot find the right answers. The task is nothing less than setting the world of liberation and socialism on a new path, where dreams of power without the corrupting restraints of the old order can be made real. Real people’s power!’
It is worth repeating that these words were written in 1991, three years short of South Africa’s first democratic election which voted the ANC into power and at a time when Bernstein assumed that all potential ANC government ministers would aim to be selfless servants of the people.
What Bernstein did not focus on, or perhaps expect of the ANC, was the role of sheer greed and patronage, the immense desire for acquisitive wealth at all costs which quickly came to consume so many people, and which can spread like a cancer of corruption among those holding power or seeking it. Neither did he contemplate the extent to which a disease of corruption was already embedded within the apartheid state and the private business sector flourishing within the dark recesses of secrecy. Without sweeping radical changes and an open democratic system, the weak and susceptible were bound to fall prey to the virus that the activist Neville Alexander warned about. I have no doubt Bernstein would have been shocked at the level of predatory acquisition and theft that has become so prevalent within ANC circles and beyond. And would we not all be tested and tempted as we came to wield power granted to us by appointments to government office – by salary, by comfort, by gratification, by ego?
Soon after the ANC won power, President Mandela established a commission to consider the extent to which cabinet ministers’ salaries and perks should be reduced. Joe Slovo was his enthusiastic supporter. A group of veterans were, however, disturbed by this possibility. They approached me and requested I get Joe to back down. They pointed out that he should not talk since they believed he was well-off. They had nothing and needed similar salaries to those of the former apartheid political hierarchy. I spoke to my dear friend Joe and pointed out that the comrades, whether from exile or newly released from the prisons, had no property whatsoever; had never had a bank account in their lives; and had no savings to speak of. In the twilight of their lives, they generally had large extended families, all expecting to be assisted in one way or another. In the end Mandela thought better of reducing ministers’ salaries and the subject was never raised again. On the contrary, those salaries continued to rise and apply to a young generation that had barely served in the struggle: it was not as though they needed to be compensated for an entire life spent in the trenches. Those were the realities of life in South Africa. The initial pressure to acquire wealth in the new situation was simply to live adequately. But the opportunities arising for further enrichment were immense and for some became an irrestitable temptation. No doubt this was similar to what had taken place elsewhere, in Africa, in Eastern Europe, and in fact historically all over the world.
As Rusty Bernstein contemplated the dangers facing our movement and country in 1991, he asked what could be done at that transformative stage, with its opportunities and dangers. His suggestion was: ‘A public campaign by our movement against the entrenched trappings of power.’
We did not take notice when he urged: ‘We dare not wait until our leaders occupy the seats of power before we find alternative ways. We have the opportunity now to debate and reach consensus about alternative modes of behaviour and conduct which would be suitable for our own leaders in high places. Such alternatives might well offend against the existing behavioural codes of the hidebound ranks of today’s great and powerful. No matter. The offence given by such alternatives is less important than our need for new ways which will be appropriate to a new society based on social justice and equal rights. And inimical to corruption in high places.’