Blue Chip Issue 81

GOOD READ
Rogues’
Gallery
If you reckon corruption in South Africa began
with Zuma or even with apartheid, it’s time
to catch a wake-up call. As this new book by
Matthew Blackman and Nick Dall shows.
It is hard not to consider the current state of South African
political and economic affairs as being the worst of times. The
dreadful daily news of corruption is so familiar that most of
us simply shrug and go about our daily deeds. One regularly
hears statements like, “Almost every single Department under
this government is in a state of total incompetence,” and the,
“Audit office is a perfect farce.” And it is certainly not unusual
to find a journalist saying, “I believe great irregularity to have
prevailed in the payment of the expenses.”
What might be a surprise to some is that these are not the
words of a modern journalist or contemporary politician but
rather those from a letter written in 1825. The author of the
letter was the colonial auditor Richard Plasket who had been
sent out to the Cape Colony to try to sort out the corrupt
and dysfunctional mess Lord Charles Somerset had made of
the Cape.
In our research for our book Rogues’ Gallery, we
discovered that there were very few eras in South African
history where our politicians did not have their hands in
the cookie jar. Corruption proper began in South Africa
with Governor Willem Adriaan van der Stel, a man who
used state funds, manpower and raw materials to build his
massive fiefdom at Vergelegen, before selling Vergelegen’s
produce to the company he controlled at vastly inflated
prices. And when the locals complained of his corrupt
acts, he threw them into dingy dungeons and presided
over kangaroo courts which got them to recant their
accusations. Remarkably, justice was done, and he was
booted back to Holland in disgrace.
Perhaps the least well-known of all the British governors
of the Cape was Sir George Yonge, an entitled British buffoon
with a serious spending habit. Yonge, at taxpayers’ expense,
adorned his official residence with Moroccan leather and
doubled the tax on brandy. He also helped to run an illegal
and evil slave-smuggling racket.
But he was certainly not the only British governor to engage
in illegal and corrupt acts. Lord Charles Somerset went about
ruling the colony as if government money was his own. He also
had a habit of imprisoning or banishing whistleblowers. Lord
Charles even had his own Nkandla scandal. A scandal in which
he was told to pay back the money. And his rule came to an end
with an all-too-familiar commission of inquiry.
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