The problem with the plane trip
When Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka was appointed deputy president, she was said to be flabbergasted by the number of bodyguards and shiny vehicles that made up her new travelling entourage.
For the girl who had grown up in a religious KwaZulu-Natal home where service to the community was the highest value, this might have seemed an extravagance, an unnecessary elevation of the self. But she got used to it.
In December, a mere six months after Mlambo-Ngcuka’s inauguration, she and her immediate family went on holiday in the United Arab -Emirates aboard a Falcon 900, one of the VIP jets the air force operates mainly for the use of the Presidency.
The fuel alone cost about R400 000. The full cost to the taxpayer may have been double that.
The rules are not clear. The official handbook for members of the -executive excludes state funding for most instances of private travel, but the president and his deputy seem not to be subject to this.
The Presidency seems to have developed its own set of unwritten rules, dating from the time of Nelson Mandela’s incumbency. The Presidency this week defended Mlambo-Ngcuka, saying it was “convention and practice” for the state to provide all transport for the president and his deputy irrespective of whether the purpose was public or private. It is convention and practice inherited from apartheid’s apparatchiks and not adapted to a different country. The response of government is therefore bureaucratic not democratic.
And while the Sowetan argued this week that naysayers were merely uncomfortable with black wealth, such a knee-jerk racial response is also not appropriate. Not in a week when flooding revealed the tenacious -existences of shack-dwellers in our major cities; not when the back-to-school stories showed that in many places children still share their pencils and erasers and continue to learn under trees.
It may well be that Mlambo-Ngcuka broke no rules. But that is hardly the point.
Our deputy president spent in the region of R200 000 tax money a day on herself -- eight years’ wages for the average working person, each day.
Somewhere in this, all sense of proportion has been lost. This remains a poor country.
In hundreds of instances last year, the country’s townships erupted as the poor grew tired of delays in service delivery while their elected representatives fattened up, moved to rich areas and lost touch. Small wonder that would-be African National Congress local councillors now have to pledge to “listen to the views of the community” and “live in the community that has elected me”.
President Thabo Mbeki, aware that his legacy and the future of his party depends on delivery to the poor, has been driving the campaign to bring local politicians back down to Earth and to the people who vote them into office. Contained within the pledge is a recommitment to humility and to close the gap between the fat cats and the struggling masses.
But he should know that the best leadership is by example. His deputy’s high flying will undo a thousand campaign pledges and made the ANC’s manifesto look like a poll ploy.
The Presidency this week sought to remove responsibility for the flight decision from Mlambo-Ngcuka, saying she was “advised that the provision of security would be best served through the use of SANDF transport”.
But Mlambo-Ngcuka is no fool, and she should have known the cost implications and the poor political judgement in her decision. Why not fly SAA and take a bodyguard along? Besides, Dubai is not Baghdad. This is no way to serve the cause of her party or the people. She should pay back the money and do as the Spoornet advertisements advise: take a train next time.
An ignoble end
So, Cyril Ramaphosa is to get another footnote in the history of South Africa’s economic restructuring. His resignation this week from the board of Johnnic Holdings came at the blood-soaked end of the first real knock-’em-down, drag-’em-out battle for a listed company to be played out entirely by black-owned contenders.
It was the streetfighting men, Johnny Copelyn and Marcel Golding of Hosken Consolidated Investments, who prevailed over the empowerment prince, but however you feel about the protagonists, there is encouragement to be had in another coming-of-age for black business.
That said, however, we can’t help but be saddened by the apparent dénouement of what promised to be among BEE’s most exciting stories, and the devolution of a promising company into a holding structure for hotel and gambling interests.
When Anglo-American spun off control of Johnnies Industrial -Corporation to Ramaphosa and the National Empowerment Consortium in 1996, its sprawling network of holdings in everything from beer to newspapers was valuable, but unfocussed. And by 1998 a drive was under way to concentrate on the media, telecoms and entertainment assets. With cellphone giant MTN at the heart of its portfolio, the company was the most bankable of the JSE’s early black chips.
Ramaphosa, deployed by the African National Congress to forge links with business and begin the process of transforming the commanding heights of the economy, was the toast of the town.
By 2003 most of the MTN shares had been unbundled — unlocking immense wealth for only some Johnnic shareholders. In 2005 the pyramid structure that gave the company control over media group Johncom (which owns the Sunday Times, Business Day, Nu Metro, and Exclusive Books, among others) had been unwound too, leaving that company -without a major black shareholder.
The slugfest with HCI then, was over a controlling stake in the immensely lucrative casino interests of Tsogo Sun: control over Johnnic was essential for HCI to ensure control of the hotel group. Gaming is lucrative, but hardly a strategic and powerful lever in the South African economy.
All in all, Johnnic is a story of failed promise for it has not been a tale of broad-based empowerment as the 1996 deal first promised.
Meanwhile attempts, led by Ramaphosa, to put together an empowerment consortium that can buy into Johncom are being frustrated by its rocketing share price. The suggestion is now that he will be joined by Patrice Motsepe and Tokyo Sexwale, and a deal will be done in the first half of this year.
That looks like an uncomfortable arrangement, and even if it comes off, it all looks rather like one step forward and two steps back for a company that held immense broad empowerment promise.
The South African Presidency today denied that it had been inconsistent with its explanations and defense of a holiday trip undertaken by the South African deputy president, Phumzila Mlambo-Ngcuka, during December last year, which was funded by the state.

Mlambo-Ngcuka, who was appointed as deputy president of South Africa after the previous deputy president, Jacob Zuma, was removed from the position following allegations of fraud and corruption, undertook the controversial holiday trip to the United Arab Emirates aboard a state-owned ''Falcon 900'' National Defense Force jet during the December holidays last year. When the facts surrounding the trip became known in early January it was criticized by a wide range of critics, including the country's leading opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA) and the largest alliance of trade unions, COSATU. The cost of fuel alone for the use of the jet is said to amount to approximately R400,000 (at least $67,000). The total cost to the state and the South African taxpayers for the deputy president's holiday trip amounts to as much as R700,000 (at least $116,000).

The deputy president has indicated that whilst the trip was a private holiday trip, it had also been undertaken for work purposes and that she had visited projects in the UAE that she had had an interest in. The deputy president's children and the wife of Social Development cabinet minister Zola Skweyiya had accompanied her on the trip.