Politicians Must ‘Mind Their Own Business’

THE accusations and counter-accusations that resurfaced this week with regard to the business empire of the ruling party raised crucial questions about political parties and commercial interests.

We do not want to dwell on the wrongs or rights of the present feud, which came about as a result of President Hifikepunye Pohamba’s claims followed by counter-claims as to who stole what on the part of those formerly involved in Swapo’s business arm, but instead to look at the dangers of conflict of interests that will frequently arise when (ruling) political parties have a share in commercial private interests and the effects when Government contracts come into the equation.In January this year, William Gumede, writing in the South African newspaper Sowetan, took the view that the African National Congress (ANC) ownership of shares was a conflict of interest. He maintained that it was ‘simply wrong’ for a governing political party to own shares in a commercial company, especially when such a company bids for government contracts.For the ruling party to be a shareholder in a private company that tendered for state contracts represented a clear conflict of interest, he maintained, and cited the example of the ANC’s financial arm, Chancellor House (our own equivalent presumably being Swapo’s Kalahari Holdings) which owned a 25 per cent stake in Hitachi Power Africa, which in turn had been awarded a contract by Eskom, the electricity utility, to supply and install boilers for power stations.The ANC’s stake in the deal, opined Gumede, was estimated in 2008 to be N$5,8 billion, and he added that ‘for the sake of transparency, accountability and clean governance there has to be a firewall between the ruling party and its leaders on the one hand, and state and private companies on the other’.Gumede’s view (which we share from our own Namibian perspective) is that it was ‘unlikely’ that when a company partially owned by the ANC bids for a government or parastatal contract, that such company would not be awarded the tender!We agree that clear lines have to be drawn, for as far as we are aware, such are not in place in Namibia.In fact any civil servant dealing with a tender in which the ruling party’s business arm has shown interest by bidding puts such a person in an awkward position because they might feel pressured to rule in favour of the ruling party.Also, if they do not give a tender to a company co-owned by the ruling party they could land in political mud while the party might not take the rejection of their tender kindly.A recent case in point was the hostel food tender where a company in which Swapo Women’s Council have shares was disqualified by the Ministry of Educations tender Adjudication Committee. The SPWC wrote to a tender committee in the Ministry of Education and reminded them about decisions taken at party level.As a result they got the tender.As Gumede says: ‘It would be a shame if the ANC leadership governs in a way that maximises its profits in its investments rather than maximizing the prosperity of the whole of SA Inc’.Indeed, conflicts of interest, nepotism, cronyism, patronage – all the words and phrases we know to be associated with corruption – become very obvious in scenarios such as the above.In the ANC case, Gumede rightly questions that since ANC is a major shareholder in Hitachi, which has been awarded a huge Eskom contract, how could South Africans accept that the ANC had applied their minds objectively with regard to the 35 per cent tariff hike proposed by Eskom, and which in turn would negatively affect the lives of, in particular, ordinary black citizens.We have our own problems with regard to certain commercial interests of Swapo and linked black economic empowerment (BEE) initiatives and conflicts of interest, and the country does need urgent regulation in this regard.