Geordin Hill-Lewis is the Mayor of Cape Town, South Africa's best run city, and the leader of the Democratic Alliance, the country's largest liberal party which is facing local government elections this year.
In this article he does something which is not commonly done when talking about South Africa: he describes the nature of the corruption machine and compares it to previous episodes of corruption in a major city in the developed world. He does so with a sympathetic understanding of how patronage systems evolve, even if he condemns the corruption clearly.
This is not how people usually talk about South African corruption. Instead they place the blame squarely at the character of the individual, specific ANC leaders, and suggest that voters are only voting ANC because they are too nostalgic for the legacy of the liberation movement or too uneducated to even notice problems. Corruption is seen as something uniquely South African, and there are often racial overtones in diagnosing corruption ("this is Africa", "becoming like every other African country").
The ANC patronage machine destroyed the party and has destroyed countless municipalities across South Africa. It has destroyed lives. But ending it will never be just about arresting one big fish or even many. It requires a structural solution. Many anti-ANC people don't want to hear that. They want a moralistic crusade going after "the bad guys" who make bad choices. They want people to go on talk radio and ask "How can someone do that?!" in a bewildered way.
I'm extremely encouraged to see Hill-Lewis using a different tone, and I thought it would be interesting and relevant to this sub because it deals with corruption, city governance and the prospects for a liberal party with a real shot at gaining more power in the upcoming elections.
However, I think Geordin Hill-Lewis needs to be skeptical of his own party's ability to resist corruption. He correctly identifies structural drivers of corruption in terms of how appointments are made. He properly highlights that there are laws and systems in place to use them, but that there is a lack of political will. But at the end of the article he differentiates the DA not in terms of its political structures but in terms of the character of its leaders and parties. That may be true today, but what is it in DA structures that will stop the party being corrupted once the ANC is gone?
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Posted by Top_Lime1820