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Chapter One

The roots of public morality

in South Africa

SOUTH AFRICAN public morality rests on three distinct but interrelated roots which have shaped the moral fibre of our society. However, the three roots provide only a moral environment. They do not determine public morality, but rather they influence and shape it. The responsibility for moral choice still rests with individuals and institutions that make decisions through a process of situational selectivity.

The first set of roots comprises what could be termed informing philosophical traditions. These combine traditional African philosophies, including ubuntu, as the spirit that regulates social relations, and western moral philosophies derived from the Judeo-­Christian and Greco-Roman traditions. The grouping of African and the western traditions in one set is intentional because the two systems are fairly similar in terms of ontology, general outlook on public morality, and heavy reliance on the mediation of the supernatural in human affairs. The only differences are in the mode of articulation and ritual. To the extent that the politico-­legal system in South Africa is almost entirely western, public morality is informed by the Judeo-Christian ethos, the Greek logic of Plato and Aristotle, and the Roman philosophy of public serv­ice as espoused by Cicero, and later, Thomas Aquinas. The state concept, including the corresponding fetters and institutions such as the legislature, the executive, the judiciary and the bureaucracy, is premised on the specific relationship between the various functional organs and between those organs and the society or polity.

While the contribution from the west relates primarily to the structural and functional components that shape the institutional and politico-legal framework on which public morality rests, the contribution from the traditional African component relates to the form of expression of the social relations between public officials as the custodians of power including aspects of what Mazrui refers to as the monarchical tendency in African politics.15 Beyond the constitutional and the legal, there are behavioural expectations in the relationships between public officials and the general public.

The constitutional state was superimposed on an African political culture shaped by both the traditional African collective conception of being (umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu, i.e. a person is because of others or summons ergo sum, i.e. I am because we are: Mbiti, Khoza, Cardinal, Turkson, etc) hence the relationships among beings and, politically, the relationship between individuals and authority (inkosi, inkosi ngabantu bayo, i.e. a chief is because of his subjects). This philosophy both formed the basis of ubuntu, an expression of solidarity in the collective, and also determined the social relations between public officials and the general public. If inkosi was ‘inkosi ngabantu bayo’, corruption by an inkosi was a breach of this reciprocal relationship. An injury to the subjects, caused by a deliberate and intentional transgression by an inkosi as the custodian of values, defiled the office of ubukhosi (kingship) thus terminating the relationship. Inkosi could not continue to be.

Therefore, when Christianity came to Africa with its spirit of brotherhood in the body faithful, this incursion was made into fertile territory. The state enshrined the legal status of this relationship. The body faithful could not harm itself and the imago-­Dei concept in the creation of human beings ushered in the egalitarian aspect in the social relations between public officials and the general public. The Greek concept of democracy contributed to the civic culture or the participatory aspect while the Roman doctrine of service prescribed the relationship between public officials and the general public. The modern state has articulated these conceptions, i.e. the western and traditional African, in the language and ethos of the west, and also provided the rules of the game in the expression of the relationships in the public domain and between public officials and the public in general.

The second set of roots is provided by the long history of political and economic exclusion on the basis of race where access to political and economic power led to a superior state of social wellbeing in the insider group. In this instance, existential experiences in the outsider group gave rise to the belief that control of political power entails access to wealth and riches, and consequently to social wellbeing. Empirically, the quality of life of white people, who comprised the insider group that controlled both political and economic power, was demonstrated in better living conditions and a superior lifestyle: beautiful suburbs, large houses, massive commercial farms, plenty of material possessions including luxury goods such as cars and other artefacts of conspicuous consumption, private investments and control over the lives of their subordinates, mostly black. Besides, whites enjoyed better health, their children seldom died as infants and adults had a longer life expectancy.

On the contrary, the quality of life of blacks, who comprised the outsider group, was demonstrated in the opposite: poverty expressed in poor housing in urban ghettoes and slums, poor and expensive transport and subsistence living conditions in rural areas, an absence of infrastructure, multiple diseases, infant mortality and a short life expectancy. There could not have been a better demonstrable effect to the equation that political power plus economic power equals social wellbeing. Since access to these two pillars of power entailed unjust means, war and conquest, exploitation and continued oppression of the outsider groups, a culture of entitlement, where moral considerations became irrelevant, developed within the outsider group. This is one dimension of the second root; the other dimension, operated through co-optation – a process of differential incorporation of blacks into the structures of political power albeit within their own affairs.

The politics of co-optation as practised by the apartheid state brought intellectual and moral mediocrity into the structures of political and, consequently, economic power. The leadership at the territorial (homeland) and local (council) levels were not necessarily the cream of black society as had been the case in the liberation movements, hence the reference to intellectual mediocrity. Moral mediocrity refers to the act of collaboration which is, indeed, morally questionable.

Not unexpectedly, the collaborating elites soon demonstrated how access to political power was a gateway to economic power and the resultant wellbeing. They became a leadership of amassment, owners of supermarkets and bottle stores, suppliers of services and entrepreneurs in other small businesses within their territorial ambit simply by virtue of exercising control over the allocation of business and trading licences. The plunder of the Transkei and the Ciskei by the Matanzimas and the Sebes, respectively, is testimony to this thesis on a grander scale, and was not limited to the two homelands. At the local level, town councillors did exactly the same. It was a lesson that the new political and bureaucratic elites were to remember very quickly, and they have revived the practice despite democracy.

What has complicated the issue is the pragmatism of CODESA together with the broad church concept of the ANC where both organisations integrated the apartheid elite into the new state thus introducing, if not augmenting, the seeds of entitlement and corruption. Admittedly, while it is generally accepted that governments and public officials in most countries are corrupt, what is remarkable in South Africa is that corruption by public officials is not accompanied by any moral anguish. It has become business as usual. The response by the outsider group to the public morality and the social wellbeing of the insider group has been in the form of utilitarian consequentialism whereby the end justifies the means.

Another complicating factor was the reaction to the political emasculation by the subordinate groups who regarded the law as merely an expression of the power relations between the rulers and the ruled. The moral consequences of legality gradually disappeared. Disobeying and breaking the law became expressions of defiance leading to the anticipated emancipation. What exacer­bated this position was the tendency by the apartheid state to over-­legislate in order to contain opposition to its policies and laws. With a plethora of repressive legislation to contend with, breaking the law not only became common practice, it was also encouraged as an act of overt display of resistance. Only the might of the repressive state apparatus prevented the system from degenerating into complete anarchy.

These developments had severe consequences on the national moral psyche. The law lost its moral authority after the demonstration that laws are, firstly illegitimate and, secondly, breakable. In a recent conversation, Allister Sparks, a veteran anti-apartheid journalist and an incisive analyst, reminded me that even professionals deliberately broke unreasonable laws. However, with the demise of apartheid, agents of transformation and especially government have been slow in developing programmes and with them a culture of respect for the law.

The third set of roots derives from the liberation movements and constitutes the most articulate part of the moral discourse. Liberation movements articulated the social relationship between the rulers and the ruled, provided the moral power and organisation for opposition to racial privilege, developed the vocabulary and syntax of political opposition and, finally, shaped the Constitution and consequently reflected the transformation of society. In most cases, liberation movements drew their energy from the first root of public morality in order to change the social relations and hence the existential experiences described in the second root. This could only be achieved through the destruction of the second root itself and the reconstruction of a new society in the ashes of the old. The message of political liberation was therefore emancipatory and drew its liberatory vigour mainly from the intellectual texts of African and Afro-American heroes including other notables from the African Diaspora. The texts carried two types of messages: liberation from the yoke of colonial oppression and a Pan African drive to unite descendants of the African Diaspora. Leading local intellectuals of emancipation included Tango Jabavu, John Langalibalele Dube, Rubusana, Pixley Ka Isaiah Seme, Sol Plaaitjies in the first generation and Anton Lembede, Mda, Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela in the second. They were all more African than Pan Africanist intellectuals although the two political traditions had much in common at the philosophical level, differing only on accent at the methodological and organisational levels.

Pan Africanism had its champions in W E B Dubois of the Unites States, George Padmore of the Caribbean, Marcus Garvey of Jamaica, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Leopold Senghor of Senegal besides others. Later, South Africa had Robert Sobukwe in the late 1950s and Steve Biko in the 1970s.

The African National Congress (ANC) was founded over a century ago, in 1912, and became the torchbearer of liberation. Its principal message was emancipation from the shackles of colonialism and racial oppression; its composition, non-racial, and its policy and methodology, non-violent resistance. Leaders of the ANC were well-educated mission school graduates who emulated western gentlemen and, later, ladies prided themselves in western political morality without abandoning their proud African ethos of probity and respect. None would have pinched a penny from the public purse.

Since the ANC operated equally in urban and rural areas, it developed a cohesive operational and moral ethos. The good relationship between political elites in the liberation movement and traditional elites in the countryside facilitated the development of a uniform set of values and moral precepts. That the ANC espoused non-racialism and in practice operated as a non racial organisation was an added factor in blending traditional African with western Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman values which shaped the relationship between public officials and the general public. The persecution of the liberation movements by the South African state added a new concept of sacrifice to the liberation movements. The leadership and its identified supporters either went into exile or were sent to jail by the South African authorities. Political activism became the cleanser and activists became martyrs.

During the latter half of the 1960s, Black Consciousness took over as the new internal political ideology. It drew much of its texts from Pan Africanism but emphasised that blackness was an ideological rather than a colour conception. It sought to liberate black people from the disease of inferiority, so it accentuated and glorified black culture and its attendant values. This, in a sense, was a radical departure from the ANC, which, although conscious of its African traditions, looked to the west for moral recognition and acceptance. Service and sacrifice remained central to the ethos of Black Consciousness, firstly, as ideological creeds, but, secondly, because the state persecuted Black Consciousness, just as it had persecuted the ANC. Political activism accorded de facto and legitimate leadership to the activist among the oppressed who looked up to the activist to articulate their existential experiences. The 1980s were to demonstrate how existential hopelessness can compromise the leadership and in the process destroy the moral foundations of a society.

The role of the ‘lost generation’

The year 1976 was the turning point not only in South African politics, but in public morality. It was the year that saw the concept of gradual evolution completely abandoned in favour of instant revolution. The youth took over in politics and this has had a profound impact on public morality. By the mid 1980s, social analysts had introduced a new concept into the South African lexicon – the lost generation. But how did this impact on public morality? The answer is not hard to find. In a revolution, ethics are abandoned in favour of the expedient, but it is the cultural residue that post-revolutionary societies have to live with. And there is the rub.

The revolution of the 1980s collapsed not only structures of local government but the concept of accountability as well. Above all, it compromised moral leadership. From ‘making the country ungovernable’ to ‘liberation first and education later’ the youth were on the ascendant. In general, in areas that experienced intense turmoil, parents completely lost control over their children. Sacred occasions such as funerals, which marked the union between the here and now and the hereafter in both traditional and Christian observances, became platforms of political rhetoric dominated by the youth. While adults might have disapproved, as in many instances they did, silently, they had to acknowledge the dawn of a new era. Rejecting the new era meant accepting apartheid and its consequences; accepting it entailed a compromise between the tumultuous transition and liberation at the end of the tunnel. And the compromise prevailed.

There were other factors inherent in the revolution of the 1980s that compounded the public morality of liberation. Liberation movements are by nature broad churches that accept diverse characters into their congregations. There are no rigid entry criteria to the fold, although the ANC in exile tried to develop control mechanisms in an effort to prevent if not limit infiltration by agents of apartheid. The absence of selection criteria did much damage to the discipline in the internal resistance movement as ‘comtso­tsis’ and agents of apartheid infiltrated internal organisations. It is not clear even to this day who the inventors of the horrible ‘death by necklace’ were. However, both ‘comtsotsis’ and apartheid’s secret operators were generally very powerful actors, who quickly ascended to local leadership positions in the cells and shaped both the tempo and direction of activity. It was the hegemony of the ‘lost generation’.

A new political culture, therefore, developed from the 1980s onwards, which minimised if not trivialised important attributes in the old system. Various factors contributed to shaping the new revolutionary morality. First, the glaring material inequalities between those in and those out of power, predicated on exploitation and emasculation of the oppressed, encouraged a diffuse myth of repossession. Whereas the old tradition had emphasised reclaiming the land, which by definition would have entailed negotiation and legalities, the nascent culture was triumphalist and demanded immediate transfers not only of the land but of material possessions. As a result, protest marches often culminated in the looting of shops, businesses and other material goods that the revolutionaries could get their hands on.

Revolutions and wars do admittedly carry a looting element but in this instance the enemy was diffuse and at times included the very people to be liberated. Since security forces were regarded as agents of apartheid, the first victim in this vicious cycle was the rule of law. In the townships, street committees replaced the state security apparatus and at first were generally effective but, in a number of cases ,they were soon infiltrated by comtsotsis and by agents of the state. A number of them soon turned upon the very communities that had created them in trust.

While the lost generation reigned in organised chaos and near anarchy, a parallel development in the labour movement gravitated into organised normlessness. If liberation movements were a broad church, the labour movement was a miscellaneous congregation. The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) was and still is an amalgam of shop floor workers and other employees who, in conventional Marxist conception, could not be regarded as producing surplus value. These include professionals, such as teachers, nurses and other allied workers in the education and health sectors, united only by the common rubric of employee. Such surface solidarity was bound to bring in both contradictions and moral problems. This could not be demonstrated more fully than in the strikes by the public sector unions in 2007 and 2010, where “groups of strikers evacuated pupils from schools including pupils writing examinations, wrenched oxygen tents including intravenous drips from very sick patients and managed to close down schools and health institutions.”16 And these were children of working class parents, and working class patients since the elite patronise private institutions where workers were not on strike. The problem with all formations starting from professional organisations down to worker and civic organisation is that mere lip service is paid to the concept of democracy.

Protest marches have always entailed a measure of coercion on those not willing to participate and often have been accompanied by violence, looting and other forms of undemocratic behaviour. Once out of control, the organisers put the blame either on unruly elements or on the third force, thus avoiding moral accountability.

During the 2007 strike by public servants, columnist Christine Qunta wrote an article entitled “How quickly they turn violent”, questioning the trade union movement leadership’s apparent condoning of violence, including the use of abusive language by strikers. In the final analysis, just as the lost generation has contributed to the general state of moral decline in South Africa, the organised trade union movement has played its part in displacing the moral authority and accountability of individuals and locating it in an amorphous movement. The result is that no one takes the blame for the wrongs committed yet the organisation takes the glory for victories won.

Earlier in this chapter my thesis was that democracy is the best system of governance to ensure an equitable allocation and distribution of finite and scarce resources. Over the past few years, the media has published a number of articles describing apparent transgressions by public officials, in which they have gone beyond the norm in apportioning the public goods to themselves or have blatantly engaged in acts of corruption. Surprisingly, despite the fact that South Africa is a protest-ridden society, there has been no visible protest against the apparent and actual transgressions by public officials. However, there have been murmurs, as when Vavi, general secretary of COSATU, declared that the trade union movement could not sit by and exercise restraint simply because the country was going through an economic recession while members of cabinet were buying expensive vehicles using the public purse. In August 2010, Vavi questioned the self-­enrichment by the political elite and coined the term, “predatory state”.17

Despite the strong stand taken by COSATU, the strikes are about wages and conditions of service and not about the profligacy of public officials. Could the complacency that has characterised the public response thus far be interpreted as tacit approval, an acceptance by the general public that such actions are expected and therefore condonable? Public officials have responded rather amusingly to criticism, citing government polices and the rule books in their defence. It reminds me of Eddie Murphy’s movie Coming to America in which the queen of Zamunda confronts her husband over an ancient custom. In sympathy with the prince who is in love with an American commoner but is prevented from marrying her because of the law in Zamunda, the queen declares, “He loves her”. The king responds, “It is the law. Who will change the law?” to which the queen retorts, “I thought you were the king.” In our case, if the parliament of a democratic state cannot change inequitable policies and obsolete rule books, who will?

Finally, how have the three roots of public morality cited above conspired to construct the new public moral order in South Africa? The first explanation is premised on a breakdown in the ethical continuum when the logic of both Christianity and ubuntu was replaced by a secular morality of politics and power. The culture of entitlement generated in the first place by colonialism and then by apartheid, where political elites instantly became economic elites, gave rise to a culture of self-enrichment. Politics and power became synonymous and these were demonstrated in the lavish lifestyles of those who had access to them. State power became a gateway to economic and material wellbeing. Hated as the apartheid elites were by the general public, they were envied for their material possessions and soon became material although not political role models. They presided in local functions and in most cases by invitation from the very public that detested them for their collaborationist stance. Accusations of impropriety did not work as apartheid political elites were devious operators. They suppressed opposition including enquiries into their misconduct. After all, they were in control and enjoyed the protection of the state apparatus. Apartheid did not mind the moral reputation of its collaborators as long as they could control the masses.

The breakdown in the ethical continuum was not limited to apartheid’s machinations. Forces in the liberation movement were themselves disparate, thus encouraging a form of distorted liberation ethics tempered with lawlessness and disorder particularly emanating from the incoherent lost generation. There was another subtle factor that could easily be distorted. Liberation itself sought a state of social and material wellbeing. The movement away from a negotiated settlement to the armed struggle entailed dislodging the oppressors. In war, the end justifies the means. Since the liberation forces were thus united by an ideology of moral consequentialism where, especially in the 1980s, the ultimate prize was liberation irrespective of the means, a form of licentious tolerance developed where moral transgressions were overlooked as long as they contributed to the ultimate objective. This was “ungovernability” in operation. At an organisational level a strong sense of solidarity among the forces of resistance developed, but given their disparity, a coherent discipline did not develop. Discipline and ideological coherence were ‘comforts’ or a convenience that the internal liberation movement could sacrifice on the altar of unity and solidarity in struggle. “An injury to one is an injury to all” – so went the slogan. The issue of solidarity was not limited to the internal forces of liberation. Externally, liberation movements were forced by the existential conditions of exile to develop a strong sense of solidarity, otherwise they would perish. The first response to any perceived threat was, therefore, a reflex defensiveness culminating in the closing of ranks. Under such circumstances, moral considerations tended to take a back seat. The result was an absence of an ideological moral cohesion on the part of the liberation movement as a collective. This was exacerbated by the movement’s accommodation of the political elites on its unbanning and their return from exile. Public morality thus comprised a strange hybrid dictated by pragmatism and the politics of survival. The broad church concept was at play.

The second explanation is based on the nature of politics itself. It is almost axiomatic that politics is an exercise in entitlement morality where various sections vie for hegemony in the allocation of finite resources. The public behaviour demonstrated in this process is of course a different issue and concepts such as moderation and excess become expressive of the political culture. Thomas Hobbes articulated entitlement morality aptly in his Leviathan. According to Hobbes, man was by nature selfish and rapacious and had to be restrained from this tendency by an absolute ruler, the Leviathan, otherwise there would be a bellum omnes contra omnes, a war of everybody against everybody. States, including democracies, have incidentally accepted the Hobbesian philosophy and have proceeded to institute risk prevention mechanisms through systems of accountability. The question is: are these systems effective in South Africa?

The answer is that constitutionally and legally they are, but in practice they have so far left much to be desired. On the positive, there is the Auditor General who audits public systems including transactions and procedures, and there are courts of law that deal with legal infringements. Theoretically, and in a number of practical cases, Parliament has oversight over the activities of cabinet and state departments. There are the state’s investigative forces to bring offenders to justice, and procedural justice upholds principles of fairness including the dictum of Audi alterem partum – hear the other party. Further, there are Chapter Nine institutions such as the Public Protector, the Commission for Human Rights and others to deal with cases falling outside legal jurisdiction.

There are negatives as well and it is to these that we wish to direct attention, or our democracy suffers. The role of Parliament in exercising its oversight is increasingly being questioned. Regarding the operation of the rule of law and the effectiveness of Chapter Nine institutions as complementary structures, practically it takes an official source to give a directive for the investigation to commence. But between this stage and the investigation itself, much happens. In the following chapter it will be evident that this is a problematic area given the experiences in Oilgate and the Parliamentary episodes to name just a few. It took eight years between the Strategic Defence Procurement Programme (The Arms Deal) and the call for a Commission of Inquiry into the apparently messy process. The government has alternately been silent on the issue or has categorically indicated its unwillingness to engage in the process. This is an issue of public accountability which is aggravated by the existence of a numerically weak opposition and a system of proportionate representation where the party list system places party dissenters at a disadvantage vis a vis the party that placed them there in the first place. Further, the opposition itself suffers from its own moral weaknesses including the residual culture of entitlement, a remnant from apartheid as the second root in the construction of political morality. The public is thus dismissive of the calls for accountability especially from the Democratic Alliance and other opposition parties that conveniently vote with the ruling party when recommendations for a huge hike in the salaries and allowances of members of parliament come before the house, but cry foul when officials in the ruling party transgress the expected norms.

The collusion by political parties in parliament, including significant opposition parties, over the recommended increase in the salary packages of parliamentarians was a clear demonstration of a political morality of entitlement and of the distance between public representatives and the electorate. The unity over pay packages for parliamentarians was contrasted by glaring politicking when the opposition castigated government when doctors and paramedical personnel went on a national strike because their remuneration packages were relatively low by national norms. I use the term relative because in market conditions the cost of living is primarily a function of supply and demand. Raising remuneration packages in one sector, for instance among parliamentarians, raises consumption and, in turn, demand, thus affecting the cost of living. Doctors and paramedics went on strike over pay packages because they were being grossly underpaid when taking into account their qualifications as well as market forces. The question is: what market forces operate in the selection of politicians? Surely politics is not a scarce skill in South Africa, considering that there are no objective qualifications required for the job. We are now nineteen years into democracy and the democratic parliament has not once considered a revision of the job evaluation system in the country, hence the huge differences in remuneration across operations in the public sector. Has anyone asked why?

There is an asymmetry in the response of political actors across parties to moral issues, firstly, because of the inherently selfish nature of politics and, secondly, because of the elevated position of politics in the South African psyche, a psyche generated by the specific historical experiences of South Africans in general and black South Africans in particular. The resultant perception is that access to public office is an opportunity for material and therefore social wellbeing. Despite the long history of a political struggle led by a liberation movement with impeccable public moral credentials, mediating factors such as the politics of co-optation and the politics of compromise gained the ascendancy. In the process, it is public morality that has suffered with the electorate as the ultimate loser.

The third explanation is found in what Parish refers to as “value pluralism” as propounded by Max Weber. Value pluralism implies that “The various value spheres of the world stand in irreconcilable tensions to one another.”18 Weber believed that “these and other values bear some relation to one another, certainly, but they cannot be cashed out into a single common currency, as Mill had believed as true of utility, nor can any standard be given comprehensive priority over rival elements as Kant had thought true of the superior standard of beauty.”19 John Stuart Mill had argued that “the full explanation of the rightness or wrongness of an action or policy depends exclusively on the consequences for human happiness which that action tends to produce,”20 termed a utilitarian or consequentialist notion of morality, a notion akin to the dictum that the end justifies the means. Arguably, this notion is riddled with problems. For example, who decides what constitutes human happiness? A large Gini co-efficient? And what of instances where the happiness of individual public representatives is at odds with that of the general public? The list can go on indefinitely.

In contrast, Immanuel Kant’s position was that “only those actions done from a motive of moral duty can be considered truly valuable from a moral point of view.”21 According to Kant, principle was primary in making moral decisions, and this did not necessarily render the purpose worthless for the purpose is part of the facts factored into the decision. Only it should be subjected to the bounds of moral permissibility. It was, therefore, the principle rather than the nature of the problem at hand that prevailed, hence the label “deontological morality”. Value pluralism would thus most probably find reconciliation in the consequentialist version of morality, but how different would this be from expediency, realising that what is of value would itself be contested? And what does this say to South Africa’s public morality?

South Africa is not only a plural society; it has a singularly unpleasant history as well, where racial superiority and the attendant prejudices were superimposed on the plural formations. Further, the struggle for political and economic emancipation was predicated on this plurality where antagonisms were constructed along racial lines despite the non-racial conception of the ANC as the leading component in the liberation struggle.

At CODESA this pluralism was recognised in the number and type of organisations that participated in the negotiations. The result was an electoral system that gave recognition and acknowledgement of this plurality, a system loaded in favour of representativeness, the party list system or proportional representation.

Evidence from political science research suggests that though policy decisions within this system reflect preferences of a broad spectrum of voters, it is weak in accountability as voters have no power to remove office bearers whose performance they deem unsatisfactory. Further, the negotiations culminated in a diluted form of a presidential system of government where the electorate has no direct influence on the election of the president of the country. Political science theory postulates that where the president is directly elected by the electorate, the ensuing presidential regime “leans towards accountability because it concentrates executive powers in a single office directly accountable to voters and provides checks and balances through a clear separation of executive and legislative prerogatives.”22 This was not to be the case in South Africa.

Political science theory further posits that where public officials rely less on the electorate for their positions but more on the party, they become less accountable to the electorate and that, because of this, proportional representation encourages political rent extraction by public office bearers. This lack of accountability to the public is demonstrable in South Africa in that corruption among public elites has become common place. South Africa’s corruption perception rating dropped by 20 points from 34th position in the world in the year 2000 to 54th in 2008, according to Transparency International, an international research body on corruption.

Thus a combination of historical, cultural and political variables backed up by a favourable electoral system have conspired to produce ideological and political conditions that have provided the ANC, as the leading actor in government, with an indefinite period to negotiate a new public morality. Official inaction over allegations against public officials are often brushed aside or dismissed either as a continuation of the erstwhile rulers to undermine the integrity of former subordinates, or as pronouncements by reactionary or counter-revolutionary forces. The same rationale is advanced against critics of government performance who are easily labelled as being against transformation where the politics of transformation has created a new moral hegemony where the principals cannot err in the name of the sovereignty of the masses. This immediately puts critics on the defensive since they do not wish be seen as counter-revolutionaries acting against transformation. The result is silence.

The value pluralism has different and disparate sources all drawing influence from the three sets of roots and all operating from different conceptions of entitlement. Within the ruling elite from whom a majority of public officials are drawn through the party deployment process, there is a specific morality of restitution derived from their social standing and past experiences. It is this culture of entitlement that results in contradictory moral poles. We thus have, among the ruling elite, some government ministers buying expensive vehicles on grounds that it is policy, thus bringing into fruition a self-fulfilling prophecy. Despite this, the Minister of Finance from the same political stable pursues a line of moderation and opts for a cheaper vehicle almost half the price compared to that of his colleagues.

At the level of ordinary citizens, major fault lines exist with regard to the balance between citizen rights and obligations, with the balance tilted in favour of rights at the expense of responsibilities. This is nowhere more noticeable than in the culture of non-payment of rates and service charges, an indication of the disregard of civic responsibilities by the populace. As if this were not enough, town and city councillors are among the worst culprits, a demonstration of either immaturity or a lack of capacity on the part of political elites to appreciate the responsibilities of leadership and good governance. Ramphele refers to this phenomenon as the inability on the part of the formerly disenfranchised to own the freedom that they have won.23

Simultaneously, while the formerly disenfranchised have not fully owned the freedom they have won, there still exist some significant elements among those formerly enfranchised who have not fully accepted a shared citizenship based on common values. This is expressed through a peculiar residual social Darwinism typified by scepticism, among white people, regarding the ability of black people to function effectively in a complex modern society. Evidence of this is found in corporate, government and academic institutions where the old order uses oblique approaches to issues, creating the impression that norms are being flouted, when, in actual fact, they are sceptical of the ability of the new black leadership to lead effectively.

A demonstration of an oblique attack occurred at the University of KwaZulu-Natal when a section of academics portrayed conflict between the University management and themselves regarding the style of management as an attack on academic freedom. It would seem that this was to attract international attention since the bone of contention had nothing to do with what to teach, research and critique. Had the issue been reflected as it was, it would not have attracted international attention and the anticipated sympathy. Presenting it as an affront to academic freedom, a long-cherished value in the academic fraternity, achieved the intended objective.

Finally, the absence of a shared political vision between the formerly enfranchised and the formerly disenfranchised is evident in political organisation, which is mainly along racial lines.

What sort of public morality are we seeing during transition?

Evidently South Africa is going through a transition where public morality is contested terrain. Sufficient evidence of the emergence of a certain type of morality has steadily been building up and already labels have begun to populate the moral lexicon. Such labels arise from the behaviour of public officials responsible for the allocation and distribution of key state resources to society. Given the rich indigenous heritage in the philosophy of ubuntu, the overwhelming common thread of charity in Christian teaching and conceptions of justice and community in Judaism and in the teachings of Mahatma Ghandi, the founders of the ANC and other liberation movements, what then accounts for the lack of internalisation of these compatible concepts in the South African body politic? In other words, why doesn’t the first set of roots described earlier dominate in South African political morality?

Empirical evidence in the chapters that follow demonstrates the contradictions of a political morality displaying the dominance of the second set of roots where an exercise in political power acts as an avenue to material possessions and monarchical tendencies expressed in riches, profligacy and conspicuous consumption. Paradoxically, evidence depicts a state in which a self-enriching elite presides over a society characterised by alienation arising from a combination of relative deprivation and poverty on one hand while demonstrating electoral support for the very agents of their plight on the other. Yet within the same contradictions arising from gross social inequalities, a strong sense of respect for the institutions of justice and law enforcement prevails in the general public and from the political elite themselves thus demonstrating a strong compliance with the legal system.

It is these paradoxes that encourage the conception of contested registers where apparently competing moral systems exist side by side, with the positive morality of transformation making attempts to create a new value system while simultaneously a critical morality in the Kantian tradition backed by ubuntu, the Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman ethic and Ghandian principles act as counter-balancing forces. The existence of a plural society together with a highly developed civil society including the plurality within the elite itself – the tripartite alliance – act as mediating forces in the creation of a new moral order. Thus, despite the morality of the politics of greed, sufficient counter-balancing forces are at work causing constant anguish in the minds of what Vavi, the Secretary General of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), calls “a predatory elite” determined to use the state as an avenue of self enrichment.