Groundswell against nuclear in South Africa could put paid to a power deal

President Jacob Zuma has appointed David Mahlobo, a close ally as energy minister.
Flickr/GovernmentZA

South African President Jacob Zuma, has a maximum of 18 months left as head of state. This time he hopes to rescue a nuclear power deal involving a proposed contract to build between six and eight new nuclear reactors in South Africa.

In an attempt to push through the deal, Zuma has appointed his former minister of state security, David Mahlobo as energy minister. The president trusts that Mahlobo, a close ally for over ten years, will act decisively to implement the deal. He appears to be under orders to get a deal with Russia done and dusted.

The nuclear deal contract is for nuclear reactors to produce 9600 megawatts of power. This would be five times the amount of energy generated from Koeberg, South Africa’s only nuclear power plant which generates a maximum of 1844 megawatts.

But the facts show that the country does not need this extra power. Demand for electricity has come down every year since 2011. And the National Treasury argues that the costs, in the range of at least R1-1,8 trillion, will be prohibitive.

Nuclear energy will also be the most costly electricity source, according to work done by energy experts. In a climate where the state utility Eskom is deeply in debt and is therefore trying to raise the price of electricity by 19.9% for the next few years, investment for nuclear will force up the cost to consumers, and meeting the borrowing requirements will put unnecessary pressure on an already stressed economy.

Zuma’s push for nuclear continues to emphasise how isolated he really is. The anti-nuclear lobby is no longer confined to environmentalists. Large sections of civil society, business, academia and even sections of government have come out against it. My hunch is that democracy will win, and the people will triumph over a tainted and over-extended kleptocrat.

Massaging the energy strategy

Zuma’s efforts to get the deal underway have been stopped in their tracks following a court ruling that declared previous attempts to privilege Russian interests as illegal. The court ruled that before the deal can be reinstated, it has to go through a public participation process and parliament has to approve it. The court also ruled that state efforts to put Eskom in charge of procurement were illegal, as the proper procedures weren’t followed.

It is unlikely that even Mahlobo can meet these legal requirements in the time that his boss has left in office.

Mahlobo’s first step has been to try to speed up the state’s energy strategy – which was supposed to be updated in April 2018. Although the plan is supposed to be updated every two years the 2010 version – which called for more nuclear procurement – is officially still on the table. A subsequent revision in 2013 questioned the need for nuclear. But this plan was never tabled in parliament by the Department of Energy.

The 2018 plan being promised by Mahlobo is expected to re-emphasise the commitment to nuclear. Zuma wants the plan fast tracked. But by speeding it up, the government has indicated to parliament that it will be excluding a public participation process.

This is likely to be challenged given that the plan is the closest thing South Africa has to a national discussion on its energy future.

But even if the plan can be massaged in Zuma’s interests, it won’t be enough to ensure the deal goes through. It will be challenged by political parties and NGOs who are prepared to litigate to challenge a rigged plan if necessary.

Additional hurdles

The public participation process that the national electricity regulator must manage – as prescribed by the April 2017 court judgement – is far from being established. The regulator was berated by the court for not doing this. It has to happen before procurement takes place. The process will provide the perfect opportunity for organisations to make the case that the scientific, environmental and economic arguments against new nuclear are backed by solid evidence.

Even if this process approved the orders of new reactors, there are other hurdles to be cleared. Before the competitive procurement process can be initiated, South Africa would need to renew a series of legal memoranda of understanding with vendor countries. These include France, Russia, China, South Korea and the US. This would ensure that these are free of contractual content, and then sanctioned by parliament. Only then can the procurement proceed legally. And government would have to ensure that the process abides by the Constitutional requirements of “fairness, equity, transparency, competitiveness and cost-effectiveness.”

This means that it will be illegal and unconstitutional to offer Russia preferential treatment in guaranteeing that it secures the deal.

Any transgression of the law or the Constitution will be met by litigation from the environmental lobby. It will be strengthened by an array of other actors, ranging from tax and anti-corruption to human rights activists.

Zuma can of course flout the rule of law, but would he want to jeopardise what is left of an already problematic legacy over this more or less unwinnable issue?

David Fig, Honorary Research Associate, University of Cape Town

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

After Mugabe: why the role of Zimbabwe's army can't be trusted

Zimbabwe’s Defence Force has taken control of the country’s political affairs.
Philimon Bulawayo/Reuters

Former Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s forced resignation invites a re-examination of the military’s role in political affairs. While a professional military is typically expected to refrain from politics, the interface between security and politics can sometimes be blurred.

In Kenya for example, the military Chiefs of Staff usually come from the president’s ethnic community making them partisan to the head of state and the party he represents. Most recently, there have been allegations of the military’s involvement in a poll rigging scheme with President Uhuru Kenyatta’s government.

Other countries such as Uganda, Egypt and Thailand have experienced more flagrant examples of the military’s involvement in politics.

Recent events in Zimbabwe need to be understood within this context. The Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF) latest stunt must be read as political subterfuge. The military has been enmeshed in Zimbabwe’s politics since the liberation struggle. While it has occasionally flexed its muscle to support Mugabe’s grip on power, this time around it has intervened to shore up the ruling party’s fledgling support after years of the former president’s unpopular rule.

Officers who call the tune

The ZDF have been an invisible actor in the country’s protracted crisis. The intervention that resulted in Mugabe’s resignation was the result of a slow brewing coup that has been occasioned by the military’s involvement in the country’s politics since independence in 1980.

The military has been accused of violence and intimidation, as well as participation in electoral malpractices. ZDF’s human rights violations, economic plunder and entanglement in politics have been widely documented. And its professional misconduct has fomented poor civil-military relations.

The military takeover is therefore a manifestation of undercurrents that have been present for years.

According to the latest research, Zimbabwe is ranked 81 out of 133 countries in terms of military strength, just after the Middle Eastern nation of Kuwait, and one rank above Georgia, which is a former Russian territory. It has a total of 52,000 military personnel, 30,000 active personnel and 22,000 reserves.

ZDF prides itself as having been the liberator in the country’s struggle for independence. During the fight for independence political figures were deployed in the military rank and file to motivate the fighters. At the time, the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) was the political wing of the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA). This close relationship between the military and political wings persisted after independence.

Mugabe has regularly gifted the military through the allocation of exploited resources. He has also rewarded military men with high positions in the civil service to retain their loyalty, for example the late Mike Karakadzai and Samuel Muvuti. These dynamics have progressively obscured the separation between the army, state and party.

Open support for the ZANU Patriotic Front

The military has been openly partisan in its support for ZANU-PF. The politics of patronage and wealth accumulation has characterised the relationship on both sides. In suppressing the opposition, ZDF has created an uneven political playing field through intimidation and election rigging. The Joint Operations Command which coordinates the military, police and intelligence has been central to ZANU-PF’s security policy.

The military has also taken an openly antagonistic stance towards the opposition. An example of this was Brigadier Douglas Nyikayaramba’s description of Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), as a national security threat.

By engineering Mugabe’s ouster the military has reasserted its position as an important player in Zimbabwean politics. It may not hesitate to intervene in the event of another “national crisis”.

Factors in the Mugabe ouster

In their clamour to oust an oppressive ruler and his ambitious wife the Zimbabwean people have placed their hopes in a devious military.

It is hard to tell whether Mugabe’s Achilles’s heel was his wife, Grace, or an equally scheming military, which lured him into a false sense of security and then double-crossed him when he failed to indulge their political whims.

The current political crisis could in fact be the climax of an unwitting convergence of machinations from both sides. By casting Grace as the villain, and taking on the role of saviour, the military is attempting to erase the part it has played in Zimbabwe’s fractious politics.

By joining in the calls for the installation of former Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa, the people seem to have momentarily discounted his dark past in the country’s politics. Examples of his misdeeds include his role as chief architect in the Gukurahundi massacres which was carried out between 1983 and 1987. Approximately 20,000 Ndebele’s were murdered by the military and security forces.

Another dark cloud that hangs over him includes his special relationship with the military. They were jointly involved in the economic plunder of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The former vice president has also been known to persecute his opponents.

While he has the support of ZANU-PF and the top military brass when he becomes president he will face the challenge of de-linking himself from his murky past.

What next for Zimbabwe?

The military takeover strongly suggests that the men in uniform are intent on determining the country’s political trajectory. As such, there are limited leadership choices open to Zimbabweans. With the military’s support, Mnangagwa will take over in the interim and potentially win a future election. But he has a blemished past, which the ZDF cannot sanitise. And his installation could plunge the country into further uncertainty.

For Zimbabwe to take a different route, two things need to happen: the radical security sector reforms that have stalled since 2008 need to be revived. These reforms should be targeted towards professionalising the sector by addressing past misconduct, mainstreaming human rights, and introducing community policing. This should go in tandem with depoliticising the sector, and demilitarising the state and some civilian populations.

In addition, the people of Zimbabwe need to agree on a framework for a viable transitional justice process.

Yvonne Rowa, PhD Candidate in Politics and International Studies, University of Adelaide

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

What South Africa's Reserve Bank can -- and can't -- do about illicit financial flows

South African Reserve Bank deputy governor and registrar of banks, Kuben Naidoo, has the tough task of curbing money laundering.
Supplied by SARB

Developing nations are facing a rising wave of illicit financial flows and money laundering. In South Africa the country’s Reserve Bank is at the forefront of managing the problem. Mills Soko asked South African Reserve Bank deputy governor and registrar of banks, Kuben Naidoo, to explain the scale of the challenge and what’s been done about it.

What are the key highlights of how to fight money laundering?

First let me just say that we don’t know how big the losses are, but South Africa must be losing billions, if not tens of billions, of rand in revenue through illicit financial flows.

The South African Reserve Bank plays two particular roles in dealing with money laundering and illicit financial flows.

Firstly, we assess the compliance of banks with the provisions of the Financial Intelligence Centre Act (FICA) and the relevant regulations. This is purely a compliance job to ensure that banks have the requisite systems, processes and procedures to be able to implement the act.

We do this through an auditing methodology. We ask a bank for a sample of customer accounts, let’s say 70 accounts. We then go through the sample to determine whether the bank has complied with FICA’s Know Your Customer requirements. Did they check the names of their customers against the United Nations database on criminal sanctions? Did they check them against the database of politically exposed persons? If anyone was on a list, did they do an enhanced diligence?

Then, we ask for all the transactions involving the 70 people and pick out suspicious transactions or those that fall within the cash threshold reporting requirements. And we check whether the bank’s systems flagged these suspicious transactions.

There is then a manual process that takes up to two weeks to see if these are indeed suspicious transactions. If they are, did the bank submit a suspicious transaction report to the Financial Intelligence Centre.

The second role we play involves enforcing the remaining foreign exchange controls and regulations in terms of the Currency and Exchanges Act of 1933 , a function delegated to us by the Minister of Finance. We monitor and enforce the foreign exchange aspects of cross border transactions. If a South African company or individual wants to take money out of the country above a certain threshold, they need foreign exchange control approval.

If, in the course of monitoring these transactions, we pick up violations of exchange controls, we have an administrative process to find out:

• Why the person violated exchange controls?
• If they want to declare what they’ve taken – what we call regularise?
• Is there a sanction we can apply?

But we don’t have the ability to prosecute. We refer cases that are ready for criminal prosecution to the police who, after their own investigation, refer these to the National Prosecuting Authority for a decision whether to prosecute or not.

What are the big challenges that developing countries face in terms of tracking and curbing money laundering?

One of the challenges facing countries like South Africa is that it has relatively open capital markets. You can bring money in, and take money out within limits. At the same time, it also has significant amounts of corruption and crime, both of which are sources of illicit financial flows. While compliance has improved dramatically since 1994, there are still people who take a chance by avoiding taxes. The challenges therefore are: the corruption; proceeds of crime; and the legitimate South African businessmen who wants to avoid taxes.

What are countries like South Africa getting right?

The Financial Intelligence Centre – which is housed in the National Treasury – is a significant tool for monitoring the financial sector. But it’s limited to monitoring the formal financial sector. It also has a strong bias towards electronic transactions.

In general, the financial sector has a high level of compliance with the Financial Intelligence Centre Act. The act, and recent amendments, give the Reserve Bank significant powers to monitor transactions and require banks to report suspicious transactions. The legislative framework also creates room for greater cooperation among the three institutions - South African Revenue Service, the South African Reserve Bank and the Financial Intelligence Centre – to connect the dots and pick up patterns regarding money laundering, tax evasion, or fraud.

Where are the big gaps?

The financial reporting system that the South African Reserve Bank monitors is almost unique in the world. The bank has records of every ATM, debit card, credit card, or electronic funds transfer (EFT) transaction, whether done in South Africa or abroad. If a South African uses their card to buy coffee at Starbucks in New York the bank knows.

The system provides the bank with an opportunity for further investigation if it picks out what it believes are patterns of money laundering. But there are gaps. For example, South Africa’s remittance system allows transactions worth R3 000 per transaction, or R10 000 per month. There are almost no questions asked, only proof of identity. And there’s evidence that the remittances system is being abused.

Then there are gaps relating to South Africa’s trade with the rest of the world. For example, we have a 40% duty on imported clothing. You bring in a container load of shirts and tell the South African Revenue Service these shirts cost R10 each, and you pay R4 in import duties per shirt, but actually the shirts cost R100 each.

You now have to get R90 out of the country illegally to pay for the shirts. What you do is you send lots of gifts to somebody abroad. Alternatively, you set up a company and you apply for an advance purchase authority to pay for the imports. Once the payment goes through, but before the goods are delivered, the company collapses.

Or you say you are importing software for R50 million and you transfer R50 million and the exporter sends to South Africa a box of compact disks (CDs). Our customs officials have no way of knowing whether these CDs are worth R5 or R50 million. For all you know, they could be copies of Lionel Richie’s CDs.

Even though the legislative framework provides for cooperation, there is often not good cooperation between South African Revenue Service, the South African Reserve Bank and the Financial Intelligence Centre.

The last gap relates to law enforcement. We have given 151 cases to the police and/or the National Prosecuting Authority over the last 5 years, out of which there have been only two prosecutions . This might be because they don’t have the time, resources, expertise, skills, or the will to prosecute.

How can the gaps be closed?

This can be achieved through tighter cooperation between relevant institutions. And by creating better capacity to prosecute money laundering and illicit financial flows.

This is part of a series called Face-to-face interviews The Conversation Africa is running in which leading academics put questions to prominent individuals in the public, private and not for profit sectors.

Mills Soko, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Zimbabwe beware: the military is looking after its own interests, not democracy

Zimbabwe National Army commander Constantino Chiwenga, second from left, addressing the media.
EPA-EFE/Aaron Ufumeli

November 2017 will go down in the history of Zimbabwe as the beginning of the end of Robert Mugabe’s 37 year tyranny. A tumultuous week finally culminated in his resignation on November 21st. One cannot understate the widespread jubilation at the demise of Mugabe and his desire to create a dynasty for himself through his wife Grace.

But the optimism is misplaced because it doesn’t deal directly with the dearth of democracy in Zimbabwe.

First, contrary to popular sentiment that the coup was meant to usher in a new era of political liberalisation and democracy, the takeover is actually meant to deal with a succession crisis in Zanu-PF. The military made this clear when it said that it was dealing with criminals around Mugabe. And the party’s secretary for legal affairs Patrick Chinamasa indicated that removing Mugabe from the party’s Central Committee was an internal party matter.

Secondly, I would argue that the military resorted to a “smart coup” only after its preferred candidate to succeed Mugabe, Emmerson Mnangagwa, was fired from the party and government.

The way in which the military has gone about executing its plan upends any conventional understanding of what constitutes a coup d'etat. It’s a “smart coup” in the sense that the military combined the frustrations of a restive population, internal party structures and international sympathy to remove a sitting president. It thereby gained legitimacy for an otherwise partisan and unconstitutional political act – toppling an elected government.

This begs the question: Is the military now intervening for the collective good or for its own interests?

Why the military intervened

It is baffling to imagine how the military has suddenly become the champion of democracy and regime change in Zimbabwe.

It’s clear that what motivated the military commanders was a fear of losing their jobs and influence after their preferred successor was purged. They launched a preemptive strike against Mugabe to safeguard their own selfish interests as a military class and the future of their careers.

Given the symbiotic relationship between the Zimbabwean military and the ruling Zanu-PF party, it was inevitable that the top commanders would be embroiled in the party’s succession crisis. After all, the military has been the key lever behind the power of both Mugabe and his ruling Zanu-PF since 1980.

In the past they have acted as part of the Zanu-PF machinery, openly campaigning for Mugabe alongside other security agencies.

And they have played a key role in neutralising political opponents. Back in the 1980s the military was responsible for the massacre of thousands of civilians and Zapu supporters in Matebeleland. More than two decades later in 2008 they were responsible for the torture, death and disappearance of 200 opposition activists and the maiming of hundreds more.

In addition, the UN has implicated Mnangagwa and the generals in the illegal plundering of resources in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They have also been fingered in the disappearance of diamond revenues from Zimbabwe’s Marange diamond fields.

On top of this the military and Zanu-PF share a special relationship that has its roots in the liberation struggle. The Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu) was the political wing of the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (Zanla) during the liberation war. They therefore have vested interests in the survival of the party.

After independence, the relationship remained intact as the military became the guarantors of the revolution. Some of the same surviving commanders of Zanla are still senior high ranking officials. The commanders are also bona fide members of the ruling party and guarantors of Zanu-PF power.

The same securocrats are also members of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association. This quasi paramilitary group is an auxiliary association of the ruling party and has fiercely opposed Mugabe’s attempt to create a dynasty.

Military must step aside

Zimbabwe goes to the polls next July to choose a new president and parliament. The elections – if conducted in a credible way – will provide the next government with the legitimacy it needs to take the country out of its political and economic crises.

Now that Mugabe has resigned the hope is that the military will allow a genuinely democratic transition to take place. All political players, including opposition parties, would need to be incorporated into a broad-based transitional authority pending credible elections.

But for the elections to be credible, the transitional authority would need urgently to reform the electoral system. This would ensure Zimbabweans can freely and fairly choose their leaders. Without this, peace and prosperity will continue to elude Zimbabwe.

In the long run, the military would do well to get out of politics instead of continuing to view itself as “stockholders” in the country’s political affairs because of its liberation struggle credentials.

Enock C. Mudzamiri, DLitt et DPhil Student in Politics, University of South Africa

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Mugabe and Dos Santos: Africa's old men seem, finally, to be fading away

Mugabe tried to impose his wife on his party as his chosen successor.
Philimon Bulawayo/Reuters

Soon after Zimbabwe’s army confined President Robert Mugabe to his palatial Harare home this week – allegedly for his safety – it was announced in Luanda that Angola’s new President, João Lourenço, had relieved Isabel dos Santos of her position as head of the state-run oil company Sonangol.

While there may not be any direct connection between these two events, they suggest some intriguing comparisons. In both countries ruling families seem to have failed to secure themselves in power.

When Mugabe, as leader of the Zimbabwean African National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF), became ruler of Zimbabwe at independence in April 1980, José Eduardo dos Santos was already President of Angola. He had succeeded to that position after the death of Agostinho Neto in September 1979.

Dos Santos had to deal with external intervention and over two decades of civil war , during which he ruled dictatorially. Mugabe, despite a facade of constitutionalism and regular elections, also became increasingly dictatorial. He abandoned adherence to the rule of law and his country’s economy collapsed. Angola became notorious for the scale of the corruption linked especially to its oil riches. Zimbabwe went from bread-basket to basket-case. With the great majority of the people of both countries living in dire poverty, Dos Santos flew to Europe when he needed medical attention, while Mugabe went to Singapore.

Though Dos Santos was probably as reluctant as Mugabe to give up power, he decided to quit as president of the country and try to retain influence through the ruling party and members of his family. Mugabe tried to impose his wife on his party as his chosen successor and then to cling on to his positions even when the army took effective control of his country.

Given recent developments in Luanda and Harare, it would seem that neither of these two old men have succeeded in securing their family dynasties.

Dos Santos’s succession plan

By 2016, suffering health problems that took him to Spain for treatment, Dos Santos announced that he would step down as president of Angola and he approved his Minister of Defence, João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço as his successor.

João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço, president of Angola.
EPA/Fernando Villar

Following the victory of the ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in the general election held in August this year, Lourenço took over as president in September. But Dos Santos remained president of the MPLA, and clearly expected Lourenço to look after his interests and that of his family, who had become enormously wealthy.

From the action Lourenço has now taken against Dos Santos’ billionaire daughter Isabel, it would seem that he’s becoming his own man. It appears he wishes to distance himself from the Dos Santos family, which for many Angolans is associated with corruption on a vast scale.

The London-educated Isabel has proved herself to be a very capable businesswoman, and though the Angolan economy has been suffering because of low oil-prices, on top of massive corruption, it’s unlikely she was sacked to bring in a better chief executive to run the country’s most important state owned company. There is talk in Luanda that Isabel’s brother, José Filomeno dos Santos, will be relieved of his position as head of the country’s large Sovereign Wealth Fund and that his father, the former president of the country, will be replaced as president of the ruling party, though that may have to wait until a party congress is held.

Mugabe’s succession plan

In Zimbabwe Mugabe has sought to arrange that his wife will succeed him. But Gucci Grace and Robert made the mistake of trying to ensure this by firing Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa.

Though at the time of writing, the 93-year-old Mugabe remains president both of the country and of the ruling Zanu-PF party, it’s widely expected that he will soon be relieved of both positions, probably by Mnangagwa, with the assistance of the army.

Changes for the better?

New leadership in Angola and Zimbabwe will have an impact on the region as a whole.

Given Mnangagwa’s record as a long serving member of government in Zimbabwe, and his involvement in the mass killing of Ndebele in the early 1980s, it is hardly likely that he will emerge as a champion of democracy.

In Angola, Lourenço is still finding his feet as head of government.

Fired Zimbabwean Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
EPA/Aaron Ufumeli

It is therefore unrealistic to hope that either country will soon move from decades of repressive rule and lack of transparency to greater constitutionalism and closer adherence to the rule of law.

But if we are witnessing the end of an era in which dictators stayed in power for decades and tried to secure their continuing influence through their families, and if we are seeing the diminishing importance of liberation movements turned political party, this must be good not only for Angola and Zimbabwe but for the southern African region as a whole.

It should also hold lessons for those who rule in neighbouring countries.

Chris Saunders, Emeritus Professor, University of Cape Town

This article was originally published on The Conversation.