MANDY WIENER: Madlanga, exiting grey list shows we are turning the corner

There is a great deal to be disillusioned about in the country, and the data points reflect this.

Unemployment remains extremely high, particularly amongst young people. Growth is weak. The Gini coefficient indicates deep structural inequality.

Beyond the economic indicators, the anecdotal evidence is also there. Targeted assassinations are on the rise, corruption is rife, and the extraction mafias are pillaging and looting the state. The sordid details being revealed about the capture of the police at the Madlanga Inquiry and the ad-hoc committee on policing are painting a vivid picture of how deep the rot was.

Political analyst Prince Mashele, speaking with my colleague Bongani Bingwa on 702 this week, described South Africa as a ‘Colombia’.

“You are very slow, Bongani. We are already a Colombia. Go to any municipality, and this is what you will find. The guys who get tenders from that municipality work with the municipal manager and the mayor, and the MMC. Everywhere across the country, the construction mafia has connections with the local politicians. We are already a Columbia, we are not becoming,”Mashele told Bingwa.

But I argue there are signs that we might be about to turn the corner.

Yes, the details emerging from the Madlanga Commission erode the confidence of the public in SAPS. We have learnt how cartel bosses were able to buy protection and how hit squads were carrying out assassinations at will to entrench these networks.

But the very fact that we hear about this and it is no longer hidden away in the recesses of the underworld is a good thing. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. With the SAPS laid bare, it is an opportunity to overhaul the practices of law enforcement, institute a culture of accountability and improve transparency.

Last week, it was announced that South frica has been removed from the Financial Action Task Force's ‘Grey List’. This is an important achievement and another sign of progress.

Business Leadership South Africa’s Busi Mavuso told me on The Midday Report this week that the FATF exit demonstrates what we can achieve when we combine political will, technical competence and sustained focus.

“It shows you that South Africa, when it comes to issues, when we need to come together, like we did with the energy crisis, we normally rise to the challenge.”

Mavuso also pointed to the Madlanga Commission as evidence of why we really needed the FATF grey listing to put interventions in place to rebuild our capabilities to fight organised crime and money laundering.

“When you look at this horror movie that is currently in circuit, called the Madlanaga Commission, it shows you just how much we really needed this. What happened with the FATF intervention was actually necessary because there was a serious, deliberate undermining of the commercial crime investigations and prosecution institutions.

“We see through the Madlanga commission how we had handed over; it’s not like the criminal syndicates had hijacked our criminal justice system. We willingly handed over our criminal justice system to criminal syndicates. So, this needed to happen. We needed to put interventions in place, we needed to rebuild our capabilities, to make sure this didn’t happen again. It was a necessary intervention.”

An enormous amount of work has been done behind the scenes to get us off the grey list, to improve state capacity, strengthen legislation and ensure sustained increases in investigations and prosecutions of serious and complex money laundering and terror financing. Systems were upgraded, technical work was done, and policies were changed.

We might not see it yet, but this is a real sign that we are turning the corner.

Also speaking to me on The Midday Report this week, Public Works Minister Dean Macpherson spoke about the progress that has been made to deal with the construction mafia.

“We’ve arrested 845 individuals and secured 260 convictions. That is a really big jump in prosecutions and accountability in just a year. In some construction sites, we have seen an 80% decrease in lost construction hours. It’s working,”Macpherson told me.

As evidenced by this week’s testimony at the Commission, much more work still needs to be done. But there are real signs of progress. Add to these that we have not had loadshedding in over a year, the digitisation of the Home Affairs Department's visa regime and the turnaround happening at Transnet and Eskom and there are some glimmers of hope on the horizon.

We’ve seen tangible progress in two of the three key pillars: loadshedding and infrastructure. The third, corruption, fraud and criminality, remains our greatest challenge. But if South Africans can continue to pull together as they have begun to, there is every chance we can turn this around.