Sangweni’s spirit is here to stay for a public service that is upright

On Saturday the 13th of September the inaugural lecture of a befitting to be Stan Sangweni Annual Memorial Lecture was hosted at Unisa under the joint authority of the Public Service Commission and the National School of Government. The lecture was addressed by a befitting President who in the words of Dr Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi said was the architect of the Public Service design with Dr Sangweni as the executor of the design. President Thabo Mbeki addressed the inaugural lecture.

What made the lecture more contextual was the developments in the Northern Cape ANC NEC, Here the ANC leadership pledged that it will not protect wrong doers any longer. The declaration on this stance ironically corresponded with advice contained in “The Future We Chose Scenario.”

One of the outcomes of this scenario was Muvhango, which to the day has with distinction played out in front of our very eyes. Its core features were first bang goes the boom. As the fortunes of the first 15 years of freedom dry up, bang goes the boom mutate into a second feature of a politician against politician outcome. Because everything goes as life gets cheapened, the rail guards are loosened leading to a third outcome feature of the champ slips up. By the time the 2024 elections come, the party is in disarray and performs far below 50 percent. Tail between its legs without anyone with a clean record the party begs for forgiveness from the electorate and the fourth and final stage breeds a brink of a new era. The challenge for a brink of a new era scenario is discounted from eventuation because a possibility of a leadership of years of sticks in the ears and thumbs in the retina confessing that it will not support any wrong doer is one based on the true possibility of fooling some people all the time and the impossibility of fooling all the people all the time.

The question the stalwarts asked in 2017 and the advice they proferred was precisely about this. It was not heeded. President Mbeki quoted the full text of a disappointed Sangweni who when paying tribute to Dr Zola Skweyiya as he was laid to rest addressed President Cyril Ramaphosa directly. He said that if a repentance moment were to be had, and if South Africa would show commitment to ethical leadership, it was on the occasion of the funeral of Skweyiya. Yet to date nothing happened to heed Sangweni. A dololo moment to date as President Mbeki put it.

So, it is clear that the beating up of breasts about not supporting wrong doers in the light of the next election might well be wished but may run the drought of having no one left as a supporter. Bathabile Dlamini pointed out back then that everyone in the party has a smallanyana skeleton. This makes it difficult to deny wrongdoers legitimate support because there will be no one to mobilize against supporting wrongdoers when each and everyone has a smallanyana skeleton. The most likely outcome therefore is the habitual support of song and dance that will have to accompany any unlucky victim of the law.

I recall my first encounter with Professor Sangweni was in November 1994. He was with Dr Skweyiya and they visited Mmabatho where Professor Kahimbaara and I treated them to our then Bophuthatswana Statistics Office. As an environmental scientist, he was impressed with our geo maps that we deployed in the census of 1991 for the homeland. But more importantly they were blown aware by our vision for a post-apartheid statistics office. This vision was planted when we invited Dr Wole Adeboyega of the UN and Mr Kuria of the UNFPA to a conference we organised in Bophuthatswana in 1992. They were based in Botswana. Whilst the prospect of inviting UN personnel then looked remote, Kahimbaara and I went ahead with an innocent yet camouflaged agenda.

The second idea that blew them away was our strategy for post-apartheid South Africa that emerged from an all RDP offices workshop on the future of statistics in South Africa. We had just hosted the conference at Rooigrond, in Mmabatho in October 1994. So, the resolutions were hot off the press. Professor Sangweni was a consummate professional. The Directors General of the second administration had to sign a pledge and the ceremony was held in Magaliesberg. As fate would have it, I was probably the first of the Directors General to be accused of violating the pledge through impropriety. Allegations were cast against me and my back was against the wall. The nation awaited census data and I wanted to clear my name. I chose to get the census data out first, whilst a cloud hung over my head. Two weeks after release of the census data, I asked the then Minister Trevor Manuel on how I should proceed with the allegations contained in a dossier. Manuel asked me to report to Prof Sangweni. I did and asked the public service commission to come and investigate me and opened all my accounts to them.

A competent Lawrence Moepi conducted a forensic investigation and found nothing. Alexandra the Great is said to have instructed his generals to live his hands dangling out of his coffin when he dies. When asked why? So that the world can know that even with all the riches he commanded, when the Great dies all those riches remain behind. Smallanyana or biggernyana skeletons haunt us and continuously hold us back from a national dialogue, but a dialogue we shall have and no skeleton whatever its dimensions will be left out. Whether the accused for wrongdoing are the unlucky johnny come lately and are abandoned by historical support of bananas that ripen in the dark or have a conclave of support in the dark Sangweni’s spirit is here to stay for a public service that is upright. It will be a public service that is like Alexander the Great who would call on the best doctors to treat him sick so that all and sundry know that even with the best doctors sooner or later we will all be dead and being a great servant of the people is the greatest reward for any daughter or son of the soil.

Dr Pali Lehohla is a Professor of Practice at the University of Johannesburg, a Research Associate at Oxford University, a distinguished Alumni of the University of Ghana. He is the former Statistician-General of South Africa

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

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