For reasons that have to do with more than the incident itself, there are eye-opening lessons about the use and abuse of power and the limits to power which we in Guyana can learn from South Africa’s recent so-called “wedding plane scandal.”
Presidents, Prime Ministers and other high officials of government sometimes fashion relationships with persons and groups of wealth and influence, both inside and outside the countries which they govern. We in Guyana are familiar with such alliances. Often, they exist for mutual gain, the wealthy securing favours from the state on account of their relationships with its well-placed agents who are strategically positioned to circumvent the laws of the land. Those agents of the state – variously Presidents, Prime Ministers and other high officials – usually place a price on such favours, so that in real terms they are not favours at all. The practice, commonly known as influence peddling, is about the abuse by servants of the state of the privileges that attend their positions, in exchange for kickbacks of one sort of another. It is a widespread form of official corruption.
Last week, President Jacob Zuma of South Africa found himself under the proverbial gun, accused of ordering clearance for a private aircraft chartered by friends of his to land at a military base inside South Africa. There was no emergency. The aircraft was carrying guests of the Guptas, a wealthy Indian family, and hosts to a wedding in South Africa. Perhaps the Guptas simply wanted their guests to be spared such inconveniences as arriving in a country through a civilian airport.
Some of the reported details of the incident amount to acts of official lawlessness. Apparently the passengers on the privileged aircraft were spared the immediate ‘inconvenience’ of having to comply with the country’s immigration procedures. Those procedures were reportedly attended to at the place of the wedding reception.
The Guptas are reportedly long-standing friends of the African National Congress, having been contributors to South Africa’s liberation struggle. Some of the disclosures regarding the relationship between South Africa and the Guptas speak of large and lucrative investments by the Guptas – including interests in mining, aviation and media – in South Africa. Two of the President’s children reportedly have ‘cushy’ jobs in the Gupta business empire. The Gupta family, a Reuters report says “have been major financial backers of both Zuma and the ANC.”
After the public disclosure that attended the irregular landing of the aircraft at a military base had come to public attention both the President’s office and the African National Congress reportedly distanced themselves from the landing permission fiasco. Such denials usually follow acts of influence peddling that turn ugly, that is, embarrassing to officialdom. Swift cover-ups that manifest themselves in public denials of high-level involvement and, on occasion, the finding and ‘exposing’ of some hapless fall guy are usually the chosen methods of dealing with such matters. It appears that both methods were applied in the case of the wedding plane scandal.
In some countries – Guyana arguably being one such country – the matter would, thereafter, have been done and dusted. Not so, it seems, in South Africa where the official denial by the presidency and the ruling party and the suspension of a protocol official from duty were not sufficient to thwart an enquiry, the outcome of which quotes the suspended public servant as saying that the decision to allow the aircraft to land at the military base was made “under pressure from Number One,” an unmistakable reference to President Zuma.
Even if the outcome of the “wedding plane scandal” has no negative implications for what is left of President Zuma’s political career it is worth noting that South Africa’s institutional procedures and regulations place limits on presidential authority, those checks and balances serving as a counterweight to what, often, is a proclivity on the part of high officials for abuse of power.
Here, it is apposite to point out that it would be, at best, unlikely, at worst, virtually unthinkable that the unfolding investigation into South Africa’s ‘wedding plane scandal’ would be allowed to proceed on an even remotely similar trajectory in Guyana, the political administration having, over time, demonstrated a messianic aversion to public enquiries into questionable occurrences the outcomes of which might injure or implicate their ‘own.’
It strains credulity, for example, to even contemplate the likelihood that a public servant would be allowed to identify the President of Guyana in the manner that the South African protocol functionary pointed to President Zuma, far less to allow for such a report to be placed in the public domain.
No one is suggesting that President Zuma would have wanted to interfere with the official enquiry either by way of using his authority to have the reference to “Number One” removed from the report or else, to ensure that it never entered the public domain. But then we cannot assert the contrary either. That having been said, it certainly appears that the powers of the keepers of the state in South Africa are circumscribed in a manner that places limits on the authority of even the President to transgress national laws without detection or consequence. We in Guyana would be more than a little comforted by similar assurances.
