Corruption, a crime born out of greed and vice, is a blight on our society. What's worse is that people get away with it.
And they don't get away with it because they've somehow learnt to take advantage of the system. They get away with it because there is no appetite politically to finger and punish comrades.
The PPE tenders looting spree should come as no surprise. It's by design and not by accident.
Political parties, in general, and the ANC, in particular, are complicit in creating and reinforcing a culture of impunity for this crime.
When rent-seeking and corruption continue with little to no consequence, the perpetrators only get emboldened and their crimes more brazen.
The "hyenas" did not become so because they are stealing Covid-19 funds meant for a health crisis. The hyenas have made a business of using their political connections to prey on state coffers taking from hard-working citizens and vulnerable people.
The tender system is meant to enable the government to widen access to state procurement opportunities, especially to previously disadvantaged people.
When applied as it should be, the system is a good vehicle to support black entrepreneurs who would otherwise have been excluded from opportunities to grow their businesses.
However, the reality is that it has been hijacked to channel undeserved rewards to fraudsters, while eroding the capacity and resources of the state to meet the pressing needs of society.
Reflecting on how weak internal party mechanisms to discipline members who have stolen from and defrauded the state, professor Tinyiko Maluleke suggested that citizens look beyond party and government structures and consider private prosecutions.
These proceedings could be financed through crowd funding, he proposes. It sounds like an innovation that puts power back in the hands of citizens who thus far can only watch, despairing and despondent, while looting goes on unabated.
However this proposition is no more than asking citizens to pay an additional tax. Why should law-abiding citizens need to turn to private means to derive a public service that they are already financing?
The underlying problem Maluleke is grappling with is how we should address the entrenched culture of impunity when it comes to rent-seeking and corruption.
The point is simple: If political parties and law enforcement agencies are not going to act swiftly and decisively against graft, citizens need to explore alternative paths to accountability for wrongdoers.
The setting up of a cabinet sub-committee to investigate PPE contracts is not a boon for combating graft. What makes this committee more impartial and competent than independent state institutions such as the NPA, SIU and Hawks?
It is an addition to the growing diversionary industry of commissions, inquiries and investigative processes that yield little by way of prosecutions, trials and convictions.
How can cabinet ministers investigate their own comrades and think it can somehow convince the nation that something substantial will come out of this?
South Africans of every race were willing to take to the streets after the sacking of former finance minister Nhlanhla Nene. The Covid-19 PPE looting spree is surely as worthy of an outcry as that moment of crisis in 2015.
Perhaps this is an issue that citizens can pour their energy into. The PPE tenders looting warrants another rallying call to "save SA".
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