“Exiting in less than three years — ahead of the global median — highlights SA’s ability to drive reform when needed, and its determination to move beyond the legacy of state capture that weakened institutions of law enforcement and prosecution.
“The reforms implemented have strengthened our capacity to fight corruption, financial crime and economic misconduct.”
These were the words of Operation Phumelela chair Leila Fourie, responding to the news that SA was taken off the greylist.
The speed with which SA exited the greylist placed its turnround above average.
Getting off this list of naughty countries with weak financial controls that enable money laundering and terrorist financing among other things, usually takes longer than the two years SA took.
Fourie rightly pointed out that SA had the ability to drive reforms when it put its mind to it.
This means the many other instances when the country is unable to drive reform is because there is no political will to do so.
In fact, the warped politics of our country often oppose the needs of the country, making needed reforms unfavourable for the dominant political elite.
When this happens as consistently as it has in SA, it is time to get rid of the dominant and unrepentant political leadership and elect new leadership.
The utility of the political class in any society is found in the alignment of its political interest with national interests.
In this interesting relationship between political and national interests, it is national interests that must set the tone and establish the direction.
Once political interests are at odds with national interests, such political interests disqualify themselves from the position of political leadership.
Yet in many cases, ignorant but powerful political interests try to change national interests to disastrous outcomes.
One of the favourite ways is how they consistently use race to distort national interests to look like race-based interests.
The ease with which this has been accomplished for a long time is owed to the collective trauma delivered by the colonial and apartheid eras.
Both the South African political left and the right use the same race-based narrative to distort national interests to look like race-based interests.
In so doing, our politics tends to deepen the ignorance-driven narrative that has been behind racism, colonialism and apartheid even during the democratic era.
It is important to investigate why and how political interests from the left and right merge.
For instance, how did both the left and the right find no noticeable offence in SA’s drive to reform our financial control systems enough to exit the greylist?
As much as the reform of Eskom is still in process, what made it possible for both the left and the right to support reforms at Eskom?
What makes it possible for both the left and right to support the reforms at Prasa?
What role does the consciousness of the electorate play?
What role does the awareness of the electorate about the truth and the deliberate distortions presented by the political class play?
It could well be that as we see these small reforms emerging out of the quagmire of corruption, crime and degeneration, these reforms add up and form a great movement that carries SA to its bright destiny.
At the same time, the increasing awareness of the electorate, heightened by their lived experience of broken promises made by militant revolutionaries, plays an important role in forcing the political class to also reform itself.
Though this renewal has been on the lips particularly in the ANC, the progress seems very slow.
At the same time, no other party from either the left or the right has made any such announcements about reform.
It may be that none of the other parties from both the left and the right feel they need to reform.
Yet considering that none of the existing political parties have been untouched by the ignorance of our past, none of them should believe they are saints.
Some reform is needed to shift our national focus from mere politics or politicking to management and administration which are the core of government.
It is this approach which will ensure that SA does not fall back to the greylist ever again.
The systematic effort that saw our country exit the greylist must dominate not only in financial management affairs, but in our whole government approach.
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