A joint sitting of Parliament's two Houses. Picture: Nardus Engelbrecht.
Johannesburg - There’s a practice in corporate politics, known as malicious compliance. It’s pernicious. It’s doing something that has been asked for, but in such a way that providing that the service is either rendered irrelevant or sabotages the entire project.
Vital information for a report is the most common cause. The report cannot be completed without it; sending it as late as possible puts immense pressure on the compiler, potentially destroying the quality of the final product, without any blame being able to be pinned on the person who sent the information.
It's a little bit like the register of interests and gifts of our members of Parliament. This week, we were treated to varying accounts of the largesse that common or garden MPs received, all the way through to the Cabinet itself. It’s a constitutional requirement so that the public can immediately see if their elected representatives are voting according to the public interest or their sponsors.
The problem is that the register is as much an exercise in creative writing as the average mid-level manager’s vehicle log book to Sars every year but, in the case of politicians, it’s not mythical mileage but rather finding the most banal gifts to enter into the register.
This year, we have Gwede Mantashe receiving sheep. We don’t know how many, only that they were worth R5 000. We don’t know if he left them in his garden in the ministerial estate at Bryntirion or shepherded them off to farm(s) that he may or may not have.
Natasha Mazzone gets sponsored by a hairdresser ever month; her husband gets a similar treatment. The ANC’s chief whip Pemmy Majodina got a bottle of perfume from a friend, Julius Malema is a director of an agricultural company and received a set of tea cups and various books, and Patricia de Lille got two cigars, a bottle of rum and a bottle of perfume from Cuba.
Some politicians couldn’t even be bothered to declare anything and yet if you look at what some of them wear on their wrists, a Samsung Galaxy smartwatch (as declared by Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni) looks like serious underachievement.
The most vociferous champions of the people aren’t shy; Rolexes, Patek Phillipes and Breitlings, all costing multiples of their entire official monthly salaries, are so big you can’t miss them. One minister even wears a watch that is almost twice his annual remuneration. It doesn’t stop at watches – there’s Louis Vuitton; laptop bags to luggage sets, red-soled shoes – all openly on display.
How can they afford it on their “official” salaries and their “declared” members interests and gifts, when many are pleading extreme hardship despite their free accommodation and government supplied generators? There’s been talk of amending the Constitution.
Perhaps we need to adopt the late great Robin Williams’ idea of making them all wear branded jackets and shirts, like racing car drivers? That way we can really see who their sponsors are. And they won’t have to waste their time and ours, filling in registers in Parliament that aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.