Putting shadowy government decisions under a bright light

OWN CORRESPONDENT

How would you describe yourself?
At the moment I am neurotic and excited. Excited about the possibility of a genuine democratic revival in South Africa. Neurotic about the obstacles that remain. I would like to say that I am a writer but what I am, really, is a fundraiser and an administrator. I do a lot of swimming to help manage the gap 🙂

What was your reason for launching PARI?
In the early 1990s I worked for a remarkable organisation called Planact that did high quality research in the service of the struggle against apartheid. After 1994, circumstances had obviously changed but I thought that model of engaged research was important in the post-apartheid world.

Moreover, by 2010, everyone was talking about government (usually in terms of service delivery failure) but there was little research about how government was actually working. I wanted to change that, to produce high quality research about government so that we could understand how to get departments etc. to work better. Given the legacy of apartheid, the future of the country is tied to the capacity of the state. 

What was your aim in having a Public Affairs Research Institute?
PARI is an academic institute linked to Wits (and now to UCT too – a major, unprecedented coup), and claims to produce research-based knowledge of government with a view to inform policy, but also to partner with public servants to help solve intractable governance problems. 

Until this report, what has been your proudest PARI moment?
I think our first big contract. We were commissioned by the South African Revenue Services (SARS) to do a major study of corruption in the organisation. The study helped us hone our methodologies, made us realise that corruption was not simply about immoral people stealing money – and it helped build our reputation. We also got to see what a genuinely remarkable and capable organisation SARS was then.  

What drew you to the research into “the Betrayal of the Promise”?
For several years now PARI has been working in government departments and agencies at all three levels, national, provincial and local and all around the country. What we find runs counter to so many conventional stories about government and public servants: that the majority of people are “unskilled” and “incompetent” and “corrupt”. These are often racist myths.

What we often find are committed people working in impossibly complicated environments. What PARI does is to try to understand this complexity so that we can develop strategies to simplify working environments. We have come to have a good understanding of what drives corruption.

In particular, corruption usually happens in institutional contexts that allow it (usually unwittingly). Moreover, it is more often than not justified in political terms. In other words, there is an ideology associated with it. As reports of looting in the state owned enterprises (SOEs) broke, we wanted to see if there was something about the structure of government that facilitated it and if it was more than a criminal enterprise. 

What did you hope to find?
We found that the structure of the SOEs and, in particular, their ability to procure goods and services without adequate public scrutiny, made corruption possible. Illegal activities were justified by an ideology of “Radical Economic Transformation” that saw the Constitution (and the National Treasury) as obstacles to change.

What did you hope you wouldn’t find, but did?
We found the complicity of Jews. 

What was the most distressing find for you, personally in this research?
Especially the breaking of impressive state entities and the purging of talented and honourable officials. 

You speak of “Kitchen Cabinets” in your research. What do you mean by that?Essentially, that a shadow state is emerging where key decisions of government are being made in shadowy, often ad hoc and sometimes fleeting spaces/networks. 

In the report, you warn of South Africa facing the danger of a “silent coup” by a rotten dangerous and expanding powerful elite around President Jacob Zuma, which has been allowed to flourish under an immoral government. How did we get to this point?
We succumbed to an argument that real development and economic change is not possible within the Constitution. 

What can we do to stop this going any further?
Oppose this narrative and help reassert the sovereignty of parliament and of government processes. Recognise that there do have to be major, structural changes to the SA economy – to make it more inclusive and produce more egalitarian outcomes. For as long as democracy is associated with massive inequality, the dangers of elite populism will continue to threaten the fabric of the State. 

What do you think Jewish people and particularly Jewish business leaders can do to help?
We must show that development and democracy can be reconciled and we must clamp down on those among us profiting from illegal and unethical practices.