How to Steal a City E-Book

Crispian Olver

• Herausgeber: Jonathan Ball
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

'In March 2015, I was tasked by Pravin Gordhan, the minister responsible for local government, to root out corruption in the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality in the Eastern Cape. Over the following eighteen months, I led the investigations and orchestrated the crackdown as the "hatchet man" for the metro's new Mayor, Danny Jordaan. This is my account of kickbacks, rigged contracts and a political party at war with itself.' How to Steal a City is the gripping insider account of this intervention, which lays bare how Nelson Mandela Bay metro was bled dry by criminal syndicates, and how factional politics within the ruling party abetted that corruption. As a former senior state official and local government 'fixer', Crispian Olver was no stranger to dodgy politicians and broken organisations. Yet what he found in Nelson Mandela Bay went far beyond rigged contracts, blatant conflicts of interest and garden-variety kickbacks. The city's administration had evolved into a sophisticated web of front companies, criminal syndicates and compromised local politicians and officials. The metro was effectively controlled by a criminal network closely allied to a dominant local ANC faction. What Olver found was complete state capture – a microcosm of what has taken place in national government. Olver and his team initiated a clean-up of the administration, clearing out corrupt officials and rebuilding public trust. Then came the ANC's doomed campaign for the August 2016 local government elections. Having lost its way in factional battles and corruption, the divided party went down to a humiliating defeat in its traditional heartland. Olver paid a high price for his work in Nelson Mandela Bay. Intense political pressure and even threats to his personal safety took a toll on his mental and physical health. When his political support was withdrawn, he had to flee the city as the forces stacked against him took their revenge. This is his story.

Leseprobe

‘This is one of the most incredible and gripping accounts of the rot and devastation of corruption in South Africa since 1994. How to Steal a City reads like a work of fiction, but everything here is sadly and devastatingly true … this dissection of where we are now will leave you angry, sad and yet aching to take positive action. We will be talking about this remarkable book for decades to come.’

– Justice Malala, author of We have now begun our descent

‘The authors of memoirs bearing witness to corruption typically paint themselves as moral crusaders. Refreshingly, the Crispian Olver who emerges from these pages is instead a hard, pragmatic political operator. The book is all the better for it. An important insider’s account of the corruption of the ANC.’

– Jonny Steinberg, author of A Man of Good Hope

‘How to Steal a City is the most important book yet written on state capture in South Africa. It is the inside story of one of the most effective attempts we have seen to clean up graft in local government. ‘Whistle-­blowing’ is not a loud enough description for what Olver does in these pages. He lances boils, and exposes secrets and cover-ups. He names names. He tells us who is complicit and who remains silent. He pieces together the deep structures underpinning corruption and undermining efforts to challenge it.

‘Tough times lie ahead. How to Steal a City may be the best guide we have to how to “de-capture” the South African state. There is information and insight here from the front line. It should become ammunition in the hands of many. We are lucky to have this book and we are lucky to have him. Read it. Read it now. And use it.’

– Indra de Lanerolle, University of the Witwatersrand

CRISPIAN OLVER

How to Steal a City

The Battle for Nelson Mandela Bay

An Inside Account

Jonathan Ball Publishers

Johannesburg & Cape Town

To Jem, whose unseen hands hold me up

Author’s note

This book is a personal account, my own experience of events that took place during a particularly turbulent and dramatic period. I have written it as honestly as I can, but my views were deeply coloured by my own background, and by the role I played in Nelson Mandela Bay metro. I was much closer to certain factions than to others, and, even though I have tried to be balanced, I have no doubt that my perspective remains partisan at times. Also, memory is a strange beast. When I sat down to write this book, I would write some sections entirely from memory, not just factually but as my heart remembered them. Then I would go back and check my notes. The surprise was how, over the course of a year, I had already substantially rewritten the story in my head, collapsing incidents, forgetting others, putting a different conclusion to events. Even for myself, there are many different versions of the story in this book, and my truth is only one among many. I have tried to be fair in the telling of it. There are a few instances in which I have changed people’s names or obscured certain characters in order to protect whistle-blowers and people still involved in the administration. For reference, a list of the main characters is provided on page 247.

List of abbreviations

ANC – African National Congress

DA – Democratic Alliance

Cope – Congress of the People

Concacaf – Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football

Cosatu – Congress of South African Trade Unions

EFF – Economic Freedom Fighters

Fifa – Fédération Internationale de Football Association

Idamasa – Interdenominational African Ministers Association in South Africa

IEC – Independent Electoral Commission

Imatu – Independent Municipal and Allied Trade Union

IPTS – Integrated Public Transport System

LOC – Local Organising Committee (2010 Fifa World Cup)

MBDA – Mandela Bay Development Agency

MEC – Member of the Executive Council (provincial cabinet minister)

NPA – National Prosecuting Authority

Numsa – National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa

PAC – Pan Africanist Congress

PEC – Provincial Executive Committee

PR – proportional representation

REC – Regional Executive Committee

RTT – Regional Task Team

SACP – South African Communist Party

Salga – South African Local Government Association

Samwu – South African Municipal Workers’ Union

SAPS – South African Police Service

SARS – South African Revenue Service

UDM – United Democratic Movement

PART I

How to Steal a City

Chapter 1

Exile

Something is not right. I am at the end of a dingy corridor lit by a fluorescent strip, and I’m facing a man. I know him. He’s dangerous. A former ANC official, ringleader of a corrupt faction, systematic liar and sociopath. A political thug. He is mumbling something that I can’t quite understand. Something about what they have found out about me, why they don’t trust me, why they have decided to bring me here. I’m uncomfortable. There is something about this situation and what the man is saying that doesn’t feel right, but I can’t put my finger on it. Then the man starts talking in a strange falsetto voice. For the first time, I become aware of the room – concrete walls, frayed carpet tiles, hollow and echoing. It reminds me of the ANC regional office in Nelson Mandela Bay, but it feels like we are underground. I feel claustrophobic. Then I notice two metal chairs facing each other at the far end of the room. As if set up for an interrogation. Why have I been brought here? I suddenly feel chilled, a cold and deep river of fear running through me. My pulse is racing. I turn to the man to ask him what we are doing here, but no words come out. Instead, I am startled by his eyes. They have turned pale green. These are my eyes, my face. I am looking at myself. A faint beeping echoes in my head. I feel like I’m under water, the beeping just out of my reach, and I’m swimming up towards the surface to reach it. Swimming, slightly breathless. Then the surface.

Oh damn. It’s my cellphone alarm.

Jem leans over in the bed and prods me in the back. I’m awake. The start of another day. I don’t want this day.

‘Do you want tea, darling?’ I ask Jem.

‘Mmm, its 4.30 in the morning,’ he says, and pulls the pillow over his head.

I desperately want company, so I go and make tea for both of us anyway. As I stand, dazed, by the kettle, I realise I still feel sick to my stomach. This is the day I have been dreading, the day of reckoning. There is no escaping it. My usual morning rituals seem ominous today, mechanical, taking me closer to the moment I am dreading. I take Jem his tea, and he peeks at me from under his pillow. ‘Shame, are you all right?’ He says I look pale, and he must be right. I feel pale.

I dress warmly. I don’t want to shiver in front of my enemies, even if I am terrified. Jem is finally up as I head to the front door, and he rubs my back on the threshold. I put a memory stick containing all my forensic files into his hands, in case anything happens. I hope I am not being unnecessarily dramatic.

‘I’m sure it will work out fine,’ he says as I open the bright orange door to our flat and step out into the cold corridor.

I’m on my way. There’s no turning back now.

I slip into the passenger seat of the Uber taxi waiting downstairs. The driver shakes his head as we pass two traffic officers inspecting vehicles on the way to the airport. ‘They are looking for bribes,’ he says. ‘They are following our President, he has told them it is fine to use government money for themselves.’ I am in no mood for a discussion on the state of the country, and I wish him well with the day.

It is still early, but OR Tambo International Airport is busy and a bit too bright. I pull my sunglasses down and head for the security check. Flashing overhead is a large electronic advert from South African Tourism advising me to take a ‘sho’t left’ and visit a remote part of the country. Yes please, as remote as possible, I think. I would rather be travelling anywhere but where I am headed today. I used to love going to Port Elizabeth. I love the view from the air of the long curving Nelson Mandela Bay and the high dunes rolling into the distance. I love the smell of the windswept succulent coastal bush as I get off the plane. The city holds a special place in my heart, only now it fills me with dread.

My mood brightens a bit when I see my bodyguard, Mzingisi, standing outside the arrivals gate. Mzingisi has been my constant companion for a year now, following my every move. He is like my shadow, with me from sunrise until late at night when my work ends. I never thought I would get used to this other presence in everything that I do. But Mzingisi has made it easier by being his gentle and discreet self. His company has been a source of enormous encouragement and sustenance – not to mention reassurance. For months, the city has not been safe for me. Today is the last day he will be by my side.

We park the car on cold, windswept Govan Mbeki Avenue, which runs down the middle of Port Elizabeth. The buildings around us are shabby, and a large advert for a sex shop shouts at us from the other side of the road. Unwilling to get out of the car just yet, I sit in the passenger seat, watching an empty packet of NikNaks tumble down the road, until it catches on the side mirror of a parked kombi. I can’t bring myself to open the door, but eventually Mzingisi moves.

I know it is time.

—————

A couple of hours later, I am back in the car, my heart racing and pearls of cold sweat on my forehead. Mzingisi takes me straight to the home of my friend Thérèse, who has kindly put me up for the past 16 months. There isn’t much time, an hour at the most, before the ANC regional office realises I am not coming back. Not enough time to sort out all my files. I carefully put sensitive forensic reports into sealed envelopes and slip them into my bag. I cram what I can into the suitcase and leave the rest behind. My phone rings – someone I don’t know, who wants to meet me urgently but refuses to say why. I am spooked. I move faster.

Thérèse comes home as I am nearly ready, and sees my bicycle packed in its case.

‘Oh no,’ she says. ‘You’re leaving for good.’

The farewell feels terrible.

The bags are packed at last, and Mzingisi helps me carry them down the stairs. The dogs and cat look mournfully at me as I head to the door, and I take one last look back at my home away from home. I don’t know when I will be back.

It’s a 15-minute drive to the airport, and Mzingisi speeds along the winding coastal road. We rush into the VIP section at the airport, and Mzingisi walks me up to the security check.

My phone rings. It is the ANC regional office number. They’re looking for me. I don’t answer.

The phone rings again. I turn it off completely.

Mzingisi hugs me, and my eyes well with tears. This is it, our final goodbye. I hope his next assignment will be more relaxed. There are no other farewells as I turn my back on my adopted home.

The game is over for me. Others will have to take it forward.

Chapter 2

Back to Basics

Crossing busy Sauer Street, in the heart of the Johannesburg city centre, requires caution and a bit of skill during the morning rush hour. The minibus taxis jump the traffic lights regularly, so there is no safe time to cross. The best way is to slipstream the more experienced young professionals on their way to work, while keeping an eye out for pickpockets.

On Monday 19 January 2015, I was running late for a meeting at Luthuli House, the headquarters of the African National Congress (ANC), which sits between the First National Bank building and the government offices along Sauer Street. I was banking on the meeting starting late – as ANC gatherings usually do. I had been invited by Gwede Mantashe, the Secretary General of the ANC. I hurried to the lifts past the garish black, green and gold mosaics celebrating the ANC’s centenary, past the bronze statue of Pixley ka Seme, one of the founders of the ANC and a leader from a different moral age. The chatter in the lift was about the weekend’s parties and how tired people were feeling. Not the serious stuff one would expect in a revolutionary headquarters.

I was ushered into a long room with tables down each side and realised I was the last to arrive. Already gathered around the room was a wide cross-section of old activists from the Eastern Cape cities of Port Elizabeth and Uitenhage, mostly from the ANC, the trade unions and the civic organisations that had been part of the Mass Democratic Movement. Many of them I knew from my time in the region during the late 1980s and early 1990s. As a medical student in Cape Town, I had been part of the End Conscription Campaign, which had earned me a stint in Pollsmoor prison, which only fuelled my anger and resolve. As a young doctor, I left Cape Town to work at the Cecilia Makiwane Hospital in Mdantsane, a township near East London. I became an ANC activist by day and a doctor by night, treating the horrific injuries of young comrades who had been shot or tortured and ended up in my trauma ward. During that period, I became part of the ANC leadership in the region.

We were all looking a little bit older and tired, no longer the young radicals who had made the Border region ungovernable during the 1980s. Some of us, myself included, were no longer involved in politics at all.

Seated at the far end of the table were the ANC’s top officials, who projected an unmistakable impression of power. The ANC – and South Africa’s – President, Jacob Zuma, was at their centre, looking relaxed and in charge. A struggle veteran who had run the ANC’s underground intelligence operation, his genial manner belied the ruthlessness that had led to the ‘recall’ of former president Thabo Mbeki in 2008. Gwede Mantashe was sitting at Zuma’s side, looking pleased with himself and loudly cracking jokes. At his other side sat the Deputy Secretary General, Jessie Duarte, who looked serious, as if preoccupied. I had known her for a long time and we had developed a close working relationship, most recently engaging in discussions about the ANC’s track record in local government and the governance challenges it faced. I wondered what the ANC leaders wanted to discuss with a mixed bag of old activists.

Going around the table to an empty seat on the other side, I deferentially shook the President’s hand as I walked past. We’d first met in the mid-1990s, when I’d worked on the ANC’s Reconstruction and Development Programme, the socio-economic blueprint for Nelson Mandela’s government. Ten years later, when Zuma was Deputy President, we’d sat together at his official residence in Pretoria; as an ANC ‘deployee’ in government, I’d had to justify to the party my decision to leave my job as Director General for Environmental Affairs and Tourism.

In his usual jocular manner, Gwede Mantashe told me to stop disrupting the meeting. He then proceeded to introduce the President, who got up to speak. JZ told us that the ANC had just disbanded its regional leadership in the Nelson Mandela Bay region, and we had been called back to assist with a special project. Integrating three major urban areas, with Port Elizabeth at its heart, Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality is one of the country’s key metropolitan areas, a drab industrial city home to the country’s motor industry, and where the powerful National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) has led many shop-floor and community struggles. The ANC owes much of its history as a liberation party to this region – big political moments such as the Defiance Campaign in the 1950s, or the fight against the Group Areas Act and forced removals in the 1960s and 1970s, or the eruption of people’s power through the labour movement and civic struggles in the 1980s. Many of the ANC’s top leaders have come from this area, and many activists have died there. Many of my comrades were tortured in the infamous Sanlam building, the regional headquarters of the apartheid security police.

The reason for the ANC’s radical move of firing its regional leadership was the decay of the party’s organisational structures in the region. We all knew that the local structures had divided into competing factions fighting for control of the administration of the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality – known as the ‘metro’. The infighting had had a terrible impact: in the 2014 national elections, the ANC had polled below 50 per cent in the metro for the first time ever. In a region long considered an ANC stronghold, this was a wake-up call. It was time for the party to do something drastic to try and turn things around.

JZ then announced that we had been appointed to a caretaker executive body, the Regional Task Team (RTT), to run the Nelson Mandela Bay region until a new regional leadership could be elected.1 ‘Your primary task, comrades, is to rebuild the ANC from the ground up,’ said the President. ‘The branches must become vibrant places of debate. We have to put a stop to this practice of branches being owned by individuals. You must reach out and pull in all the old comrades. You must go and rebuild the ANC as a political force in the metro.’ This was a daunting responsibility. In the ANC, the party’s regional leadership is in charge of all local ANC branches and leagues, which in itself is a handful. On top of it, we had to start rebuilding the public’s faith in the party.

I was touched that the ANC national leadership had reached out and pulled a group of former activists in to rebuild the party from scratch in the region. In fact, I felt honoured and excited by this request. For some years, I had watched from the sidelines, with increasing alarm, as the party we’d all fought so hard to bring to power lost its moral compass and began to tear itself apart. This was a chance to get involved again in some way. The ANC had always been my political home, and, even though I had grave reservations about the state of the party, there really wasn’t another movement I could comfortably align myself with. This was where I felt I could still have an impact. Naively perhaps, I wanted to be involved in trying to fix things from within the ANC.

Yet something surprised me about the President’s speech: he didn’t mention corruption at all. Not once. Surely everyone around the table knew that infighting within the party had a lot to do with control of lucrative contracts and tenders, and that corruption by ANC officials was losing us support in the metro. I sat there, dumbfounded. If the ANC’s electoral slide was to be reversed, we had to start by naming the problem for what it was.

I was pulled back from my reverie when the President announced that Charles Nqakula would chair the RTT. Charles was an old leader of the South African Communist Party (SACP), who had been Minister of Safety and Security until the Zuma campaign had unseated Thabo Mbeki as party President at the ANC’s 2007 conference at Polokwane. He had obviously been rehabilitated for this assignment, which was perhaps a sign that bridges were being mended. Charles loved to tell stories of liberation heroes and to pontificate about Marxist revolutionary theory, but I didn’t know if he was any good at actually getting things done.

Charles rose, spoke about the gravity of the assignment, and said we needed to return to the ‘M Plan’ to organise local neighbourhood committees and build the organisation street by street. The M plan was Nelson Mandela’s programme for a people’s insurrection, which he had been pushing in the early 1960s before his arrest and trial for sabotage. Charles then spoke passionately about the example of Cuba’s committees for the defence of the revolution. The ANC branches of today were a far cry from what they had been in the 1960s – not to mention that South Africa was hardly comparable to Cuba – and I felt that nostalgia for his underground days was perhaps getting the better of him. He then declared that the Regional Task Team was not a parallel structure to the ANC’s provincial leadership, but instead would need to work under its authority, with the party’s Provincial Secretary as its custodian. This was, at best, surprising, if not downright alarming, for the ANC Provincial Secretary was rumoured to be behind the dominant ANC faction in the metro. A programme of RTT meetings was outlined, and the meeting ended after questions and inputs from other comrades around the table.

—————

Two months later, I was sitting with Pravin Gordhan, at the time Minister for Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs – the Cabinet member responsible for local government – and two of his close advisors, in a plush holding room at the Gallagher Convention Centre in Midrand. For a few months, I had been advising Pravin – or PG, as his friends and comrades call him – and his team on their Back to Basics pro­gramme, which was meant to turn around dysfunctional municipalities. That day, Pravin was presenting his turnaround strategy to the national conference of the South African Local Government Association (Salga).

I had worked with PG in the past. In the late 1990s, when I was Deputy Director General in charge of local government in Nelson Mandela’s government, he had chaired Parliament’s portfolio committee dealing with those matters. Back then, I had spearheaded much of the new local government legislation, and as such had engaged with Parliament to push for its adoption. In that context, Pravin and I had disagreed over local government policy. For all the respect I had for him, I also found PG a difficult man to work with. On the one hand, his incisive intellect always kept him a step or two ahead of the discussion, his struggle credentials were admirable, and his integrity was beyond reproach. On the other hand, he wanted to be part of every decision and micromanaged his team. He also kept up his trademark Socratic questioning when it was time to decide and act. As a doer rather than a thinker, I don’t have much taste for long-winded intellectual debates. Yet, when he’d asked me to work on the Back to Basics programme a few months earlier, I hadn’t hesitated. The disintegration I had witnessed in local government required a bold intervention that I felt Pravin’s strategy could provide.

All of South Africa’s mayors were assembled in the cavernous halls and meeting rooms of the Gallagher Convention Centre, and many of them were deeply worried about Back to Basics. By our estimation, at least a third of the municipalities represented at the Salga conference were, in Pravin’s words, ‘in the ICU’. They suffered from endemic corruption, councils that didn’t function, weak administrations and poor financial management, which had resulted in a collapse of infrastructure services. Ordinary South Africans were being let down, and Pravin was scathing about what he saw as a dramatic failing. He wanted to intervene directly in municipalities to correct the decay.

This frank assessment offended many councillors and mayors, however. They didn’t like the threat of intervention, and were irritated by PG’s imperious, scolding style. They’d been waiting for the right forum to push back against the Back to Basics agenda and embarrass him. Although PG was the minister in charge of local government, the organisers of the Salga conference treated him like an afterthought: he had been invited at the last minute, and was scheduled to speak after a tea break rather than during the opening addresses. There was a lot of whispering in the corridors, and we were convinced that the more corrupt local government officials were going to use the conference to settle scores with him. The mood in the hall was tense, and back in the holding room Pravin was angrily pacing up and down.

Fortunately, President Jacob Zuma had already given Back to Basics a big push in his opening address earlier that morning. ‘We need to focus on the little things, such as repairing streetlights, fixing potholes and sorting out billing challenges,’ he had said. This was at the core of PG’s approach – a bit like Rudolph Giuliani’s ‘broken window’ campaign in New York City. ‘We must not employ our friends and family just because they are unemployed and we feel for him or her or our cousin,’ he’d added. ‘We must employ people who know what they’re doing.’

JZ had called for an end to the ‘mango mentality’, or the culture of passive handouts that had developed after 20 years of ANC rule: too many people just sitting under a tree, waiting for the fruit to drop. ‘If I were a dictator, I would make a lot of changes,’ he’d said, more ominously, ‘but we live in a democracy.’ His famous laugh had echoed through­out the hall, and most of the audience had joined in. But I had found this remark a little sinister.

At least his speech had helped to set the tone, making it more difficult for the assembled councillors to push back against Pravin and his plans. In a special session after the tea break, PG proceeded to give an update about the programme, and touched on some issues that councillors were worried about. Then he turned to his recent letter to the provinces, which had urged them to axe local government officials who lacked the minimum competencies required. This had caused great consternation, because many of the ANC officials ‘deployed’ into senior management posts were not qualified for their jobs.

After Pravin had spoken, a vigorous debate followed, with the Free State delegates leading the assault. The Mayor of Mangaung metro, who was the Salga chair, attacked PG’s minimum-competencies letter. ‘You will find that there are people who are not qualified but they have so much experience and they are performing so well,’ he argued. ‘Just to get rid of all people who are called unqualified won’t assist municipalities.’ Other mayors spoke out in support of the programme. Their interventions were crucial and ultimately steered the debate towards Pravin’s view. By the end of the discussion, the disgruntled mayors had showed their hand but had not prevailed. PG seemed happy.

Restless, I went to look for Maria Hermans, Speaker of the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipal Council. A principled and hardworking left-­winger, Maria had emerged from trade union and SACP ranks. I had been told that she was one of the few people standing up to corruption in Nelson Mandela Bay.

When I asked her point-blank to tell me what was happening in the metro, Maria was cagey. She insisted that we meet in an empty meeting room. She kept whispering and looking over her shoulder. Then she turned her big eyes to me, and the words flooded out. At one stage, I thought she was going to cry. I tried to follow what she was saying, but she sped through a long list of names linked to this or that regional faction and political leader. ‘I am so scared,’ she gasped at one stage, ‘I really don’t know what I can do.’ She needed someone to comfort her, but this was not my forte, and the brief hug I gave her was a bit stiff. We agreed to meet later at her hotel, where we could talk a little more privately.

That evening, we sat down in the noisy restaurant of the Holiday Inn Sandton. I ordered a glass of wine while Maria ordered a soft drink. She insisted on sitting with her back to the wall, facing the entrance. Maria knew I was both part of PG’s advisory team and on the RTT, and as such could assist with the uncomfortable situation she was in. After playing with the swizzle stick in her drink, Maria cocked her head to one side: ‘Where should I start?’

Over the course of the evening, Maria told me about a web of corruption that worked on multiple levels. Pulling the strings were ANC regional politicians, mainly from a faction known as the Stalini group, who controlled the metro Council. Abetting the corruption was a set of powerful, strategically positioned city officials and political staffers, whose real bosses were not the City Manager or the Mayor, but rather ringleaders outside government. Indeed, some of these officials, who had first operated on behalf of the party bosses, had become free agents controlling their own corrupt networks, diverting public money into their own pockets.

Threats and intimidation were part of the daily lives of councillors who refused to be part of the system, and some had even been killed for tackling corruption. For the first time, I was given a glimpse of how the web of party connections, private interests and compliant officials interrelated.

As I went home that night, my ears were ringing and I felt anxious. In my work on local government, I’d seen my fair share of dysfunction and corruption. But what I’d just heard about Nelson Mandela Bay, and what that revealed about the state of the country more broadly, was deeply disturbing. How many similar stories were unfolding far away from the scrutiny of the media and the public? I was also upset that someone as principled and upstanding as Maria could be cornered and forced to live in fear. Back at my computer, I sat down and tried to turn what Maria had told me into a logical structure. I wanted to understand clearly who was who among the metro’s various administrative and political players, and how they were connected. Late that night, I finished and read through my report, which brought the municipality and the connection with the ANC into focus. I had something I could present to Pravin, the sort of detailed intelligence picture that I knew he was looking for.

The following night, I took this report back to Maria so she could confirm the details. She looked a little more relaxed; the chance to get all this off her chest – not to mention the prospect of getting allies to fight in her corner – was probably a relief. Maria shared some personal troubles. She had recently separated from Irvin Jim, the father of her child and the Secretary General of Numsa, a breakaway from the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu). Jim was setting up a left-wing alternative to the ANC called the United Front, and Maria told me that she had been attacked for her relationship with him. ‘How can that be fair to me?’ she asked. ‘I can’t be held responsible for what he does.’

We went through my report and fleshed out the details. I was struck by how the different parts of the system meshed to create a shadow power structure that bypassed the official municipal administration. Two things stood out. First, the extent of the corruption was much greater than I had imagined, extending across a number of departments in the metro administration. Second, politics and corruption were closely linked: political power was exercised in pursuit of financial gain.

PG seemed pleased with my report. He had been looking for a high-­profile pilot for the Back to Basics programme, and Nelson Mandela Bay, with its political divisions, rampant corruption and deep financial troubles, was a good place to start. Previous interventions in the metro had been unsuccessful, and the ANC’s recent suspension of its regional executive had opened a new door. In Pravin’s view, the conditions were ripe for a major turnaround of the metro. ‘How deep do we need to go?’ he asked. I didn’t know the answer yet. PG asked me to put together an intervention plan.

The Mayor of Nelson Mandela Bay, Oom Ben Fihla, was at the Salga conference, and PG invited him to talk to us. Oom Ben looked even older than when I had last seen him. He walked slowly and talked even more slowly. He mumbled ‘yes, yes, yes’ at the end of each sentence. While sipping tea in a room off the main hall, we pressed him about the situation in PE, but Oom Ben was not particularly forthcoming. ‘Yes, there are problems,’ he admitted, ‘but we are dealing with them . . . yes, yes, yes.’ I asked him a few questions based on the information that Maria had provided, but his answers suggested that either he didn’t really grasp the extent of the problem or he was playing us.

The next day, PG’s officials and I worked on a plan to strengthen political leadership and municipal governance in the metro. The plan called for the replacement of the Mayor, Deputy Mayor and Chief Whip, as well as members of the Mayoral Committee and senior managers found to be involved in corruption. In order to do this, someone had to take a hard look at the finances, particularly around major contracts. We also needed a forensic team to follow the leads we already had on corruption and to systematically document wrongdoing, as well as a legal team to work on disciplinary cases and the recovery of misspent funds. Human Settlements – the metro department in charge of land use and housing – was a red flag. The national minister, Lindiwe Sisulu, had been wanting to take it over.

PG listened to our presentation and asked a few pointed questions. Once again, he wanted to know more. What political changes did we need to make exactly? And if we were going to replace the Mayor and Deputy Mayor, who should be considered as replacements, and who could be appointed to the Mayoral Committee to support them? Who did we need to suspend in the municipal administration, and in what order? Pravin wanted a step-by-step intervention strategy, with a clear sequence to the interventions. He also questioned our exclusive focus on corruption and governance, given that the Back to Basics programme covered a broader realm of intervention.

I was exasperated. First, we didn’t yet have enough information to provide the level of detail he was demanding. We also didn’t yet have the capacity to obtain that information, let alone to incorporate all five pillars of the Back to Basics programme. In fact, we needed an army to take this on. We agreed on the outlines of an action plan, but PG asked us to flesh out some details. Pravin, for his part, agreed to get the national ANC on board to back the change in the metro’s leadership and to provide the political support we needed to carry out our proposed intervention.

‘Who’s going to coordinate all this work?’ Pravin asked, looking at me.

And, just like that, I was given the assignment of a lifetime, an assignment that would stretch me to my absolute limits.

As I drove home that afternoon, thinking about how to clear my desk and take on this assignment, I was thrilled but also fearful. I was happy to go back to the Eastern Cape, where I had spent my formative political years and which remained close to my heart. To me, PE – as Port Elizabeth is known – had always been a fascinating microcosm of South African politics, with its combination of African working class, British settler and coloured communities. For several years, I had watched as growing corruption consumed the fabric of our society, without being able to do anything about it. Here was a remedy for my sense of impotence and frustration, and a chance to practise the good governance I had been preaching.

The assignment also perfectly complemented my RTT appointment. I now had two windows to look onto the metro: one through the ruling party, and the other as a change manager inside the metro administration. I consulted PG about whether this constituted a conflict of interest, but he agreed it wasn’t. As long as I kept these two roles carefully separate, they could reinforce each other.

I hadn’t yet realised that they could also devour me.

Chapter 3

eBhayi1

Two months later, I was in Port Elizabeth with Pravin’s team to depose the Mayor, Deputy Mayor and Chief Whip. Oom Ben Fihla had been appointed by the ANC to manage the dysfunctional metro and to deal with factionalism within the party. He had been ineffective on both counts.

Oom Ben might have started out with good intentions, but he was inexperienced and overwhelmed. Worse, he had aligned himself with the dominant faction within the regional ANC, which Maria Hermans had referred to as the Stalini group. His connections to some faction members dated back to his early days in PE politics. The Deputy Mayor, Chippa Ngcolomba, seemed to be effectively in charge, and we thought that it would be impossible to turn the city around while Oom Ben and Chippa were in place. In South African cities, mayors, their deputies and the Mayoral Committee are not directly elected but are appointed by the political party or coalition that won the last local election. In principle, therefore, the could easily make changes. But, in the party’s typically byzantine way, the decision to act had taken months of behind-the-­scenes work.