Practice What You Preached!

Sometimes people use terms such as good governance without knowing what it means. If it is incorrectly used in a conversation, it is still forgivable but when it is used as a campaign strategy and you are transgressor of that value system (good governance) it is plain stupid.

Two of the candidates who are running for University Council through the Convocation are using good governance and academic excellence as their campaign strategy. This is to infer that the current leadership of UWC do not adhere to the principles of good governance and academic excellence.

However, before they point to anyone else they must have a look at what they have been doing the past nine years as the Convocation leadership. They must ask themselves whether they adhered to the principles and norms of good governance.

Central to good governance is openness and transparency. Since I joined this institution in 2007 I never saw them adhering to these principles.  For example, never before did they inform members of the UWC Convocation about the workings of the Convocation.

They also neglected to inform members of Convocation that two members of Convocation can be elected to the University Council. Never before did they explain the election process for both Council and for the Executive of Convocation. 

They have rather kept the information to themselves which placed them in a privileged situation. Good governance is a liberal democratic ideal which advocates for access to information. Something they neglected.  

With regards to academic excellence I have never heard of a campaign or programme by the Convocation that focuses of academic excellence. In actual fact, I did not hear of any campaign in the past 8 years that was projected towards the student population. Surprisingly the people who are campaigning for academic excellence are the same people in power for the past nine years and have put themselves up for re-election.

Now please tell me how you can preach good governance but you are also a transgressor of the same value system. Please tell me how is it possible to hold academic excellence dear if you never valued the UWC student population.

And for those of you who are wilfully to be misled by these individuals please go ahead and follow them, protest on their command, drag your names through the mud on their command and maybe just maybe, will they give you a job once you completed your studies. However, I will not count on it.

The ANC and the myth of the Money Tree

I do not think members and leaders of the ANC know where public money comes from. This is clearly visible in how they have been defending the ANC since the 2014 election campaign started.
Firstly, it is visible from the rhetorical responses of party members. For example, if someone said the party has meant nothing for them since 1994 the defence of party members would be by pointing out all of the services that have been delivered since 1994 and to make matters worse they do it in an arrogantly manner which imply that you need to be grateful. What they normally forget is that they are not doing South Africans a favour they (the ANC led government) is just fulfilling the social contract they signed-up for. The social contract works like this. Citizens elect a government who will use their money (the public money/taxes) to deliver services citizens need. The ANC and its members usually see it the other way around. The ANC promises certain services and in the process not just only denying the social contract but also make it as they are doing citizens a favour, which is all wrong.

Secondly, it is visible in how the ANC led government spend public funds. Every year the Auditor General is reporting about the increasing number of wasteful expenditure that amounts to 100s of millions of Rand. Once elected into government they starting to living the life they always dreamed of - the life of the Kardashians. They spent public funds like it grow on a tree somewhere in the garden of the Union Buildings or Nkandla which is protected by the SANDF.
Thirdly, it is visible in the way they (the President included) defend Nkandla and other corruption scandals. So far the total cost of the security upgrades to Zuma's private residence Nkandla are sold to the public as the President did nothing wrong. They also have the attitude as they do not know what the big fuss is about and that it is only over R240 million. One ANC member on Facebook even said that we think the President's house must look like that of our fathers' and if it was a white president there would have been no fuss. The issue they clearly miss is that it is R240 of public money; money that was collected in taxes from working South Africans; the ones who wake up every morning at five o'clock, who have to take two trains just to get to work on time and that for less R6000 which in the end of the day is taxed. It is heart breaking for any tax paying South African to see that kind of ignorance.

Their ignorance is based on their level of understanding - they really do not know where public money come from and what people have to go through just to make their contribution to a better life for all.

In their defence I do not think they have a clue where this money came from. I have to be honest it took me a whole semester studying public finance to fully comprehend this. For those ANC members reading this (please share this with the President), it normally works like this. We elect a parliament which is a representation of ordinary South Africans who is responsible for collecting and spending taxes. Sometimes some of these duties are delegated to more technically equipped institutions like SARS and the National Treasury. Based on the plans and the needs of the people tax targets are set every year. This is where things get interesting. The target will determine how much tax each South African must pay. SARS is tasked to collect these taxes. The task of the National Treasury is to provide Parliament (who is supposed to represent us) with a forecast of expenditure over the next couple years. This usually take place in October. Once Parliament is satisfied with the forecast it will task the National Treasury to draw up a budget for the next coming year which is usually tabled in February during the budget speech. After the speech, Parliament will look at the budget, debate it and approve it. It is only after this that public money can be used (which was collected the previous year) towards the services planned for in the budget.

Thus, it is time for us to re-orientate ourselves. It is time to place us at the receiving end of the social contract which is called democracy. We elect a government because we want them to spend our money so that it benefits us and not them. The ANC and no other political party can claim the right to that money, it is not theirs, it is ours. If the ANC want money they must plant a money tree in Luthuli House or Nkandla and harvest it every year. They can ask the MK veterans to protect it.

What if Zuma ...

The leak of the Zuma Nkandla report came too sudden. It also raises question the legitimacy of the security cluster and the integrity of the Public Protector. If a report in the possession of the security cluster is leaked then it indicates their ineffectiveness which has broader security implications. One of South Africa's prides is their security cluster. They are ranked amongst the best in the world and for evidence we do not have to look far. The America's are paranoid when it comes to the security of their president and will not take any risks. Yet, all US Presidents since 1994 have visited South Africa.

The Public Protector over the past couple of years has worked very hard on her reputation and that of her office. In my opinion it is the only Chapter Nine institution that is functioning with integrity and not influenced by the NEC of the ANC. Her leaking the Nkandla Report will flush all that she worked for down the drain.

Hence, at first it seemed that some ministers and people within the NEC of the ANC are dissatisfied with Zuma - some disunity, but the more I made sense of the leakage I started to ask the following question: what if Zuma (representing the interest of the NEC) leaked the report?

It was then that I realised that it is of strategic importance for Zuma to leak the report now, because the information in the report will inevitable come out and it will be more damaging closer to the 2014 National and Provincial elections.

So, the best time for the information in the report to come out is now; when people are distracted and it is at least a month before the January 8 statement. I have a feeling that the ANC will launch their manifesto with the January 8 statement and kick off their election campaign. If this is the case then it would have been damaging and it will give the opposition parties more fire.

The best, therefore, was to leak the report now and let the public get the information and they deal with it. It also now make sense why the security cluster opted for an interdict, as it was the ANC's first tactic - stalling. If they succeeded in the court application they could have stalled the release of the report until after the election, but we all know that failed.

Apart from this, it also gives them an opportunity to tarnish the image of the Public Protector. Their argument would be why would they leak a report that is damaging to the ANC and the only other person that has a copy of the report is Tuli.

I must congratulate the one who came up with this strategy, it is brilliant, and it was able to fool the public, the media and the hundreds of so called analysts. Well done.