SMWX: INTERVIEW WITH DA LEADER MMUSI MAIMANE

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SIZWE: Spread the fire, welcome back to SMWX. Good to be with you again and I am
extremely excited today to be joined by a leader of the opposition in
parliament – DA leader Mmusi Maimane. Baba thank you so much for joining us.

MAIMANE: No thank you and it’s great to be here in a season where Liverpool are still on
top of the table.

SIZWE: I mean I didn’t wanna bring it up but, top of the league.

MAIMANE: Yeah, yeah, yeah I wanna do it.

SIZWE: The numbers don’t lie.

MAIMANE: Exactly. Everything else can change but numbers remain the same.

SIZWE: Well you did predict we’d win the Champions’ League. We won the Champions
League, so any predictions for this season?

MAIMANE: This is the season – Liverpool at the top of the table.

SIZWE: Well, either we’ll be a meme or we’ll be right so let’s see what happens. By
the way I don’t know if you know your new nickname after the letters in
parliament – uBabes wezincwadi?

MAIMANE: Wow! Wow!

SIZWE: I was asking if on Thursday, I know you bring this debate to parliament, will
there be any letters to be produced?

MAIMANE: Yes, no absolutely I think South Africans are writing in general because you
know life is tough. We try and, and as much as we can realize that you know
we can talk GDP numbers, we can talk Geneco efficiency numbers, we can talk
macro-economic talk but at the end of the day there is a story behind
someone. There is a mother tonight who will go to bed hungry and who will
have to look after kids.

There is a student who will finish university and not be able to find a job or
there is a kid who’ll drop out of school. So these are faces. These are South
Africans so for me I’m always very deliberate about saying in our work the
greatest danger we can face is to be cynical; and cynicism says, “You forget
that you are actually dealing with human lives and you are genuinely wanting
to make an impact into society – to someone.”

SIZWE: Absolutely, I’m glad you start there because these economic debates are often
abstract and the President has been reflecting on some of the ways that just all
of the ills in our country have flared up recently with the tragic injustice of
Uyinene Mrwetyana. Firstly what are your thoughts on the President saying you
know we should all hang our heads in shame as he has finally reacted to the
tragic news that was made public yesterday.

MAIMANE: Firstly I think: 1) We had to provoke the President into responding tells you the
difficulty of the leadership vacuum that we have as a country. Secondly I think
that it’s a failure to recognize how systemic violence is. When we think about
gender-based violence – and I don’t wanna sit and claim being an expert on the
subject.
I can simply reflect on the fact that there is a challenge upon which when you
look at South African homes, particularly homes of black South Africans you
realize that the family has been dismantled. Effectively as a function of our
history, you are ending up with many kids growing up without fathers, without
any sense of role modelling. The idea as to how we deal with conflict in society
that broadly is violent.

We fail to reflect on the fact that many of our young girls drop out of school
and so the quality of education we give to young women in our country is
actually sub-standard by international standards. We then discover that as an
exacerbated level of poverty that the home is a stressful place; and ultimately
that when acts of violence take place there’s absolutely no justice for the
victim; no prosecution.

And as men we fail the basic task of calling other men out. It starts with the
conversation at the braai. When somebody says something about a woman that
degrades the dignity of that woman, we fail to stand up and say, “Look that’s
unacceptable in the society that we live in” as we would about other forms of
discrimination whether they be race, whether they be sexual orientation;
whatever the case might be.

So I think we’ve got to get back to saying, “What is the leadership in society
here? What are the systemic cause that we need to fix?” And more seriously
when we set up a Sexual Violences Court, we need to make sure that there’s a
capacity so the monsters who are beating up women, who are killing people in
our own homes end up in jail.

So long as that never happens we’re gonna have this cycle repeat itself and so
the President, I’d rather him come out and announce a plan that says, “How do
we deal with the cycle of violence?” And he had a summit last year. He’s a man
for many summits but ultimately at the end of the day we need action and our
citizens, as a father to a young girl I think about even my own wife, it cannot
be that they would be fearful to go to a post office or fearful to walk around
the streets. It is simply not the society that we want and it requires leadership
that is willing to take decisive action.
SIZWE: And of course this happened in Cape Town, which is a DA-led city. We’ve got
military, we’ve got crazy things happening in the Cape Flats from military
deployments and a generalized feeling of crime just from our cities. Are you
failing to deal with the crime problem in Cape Town? What do you think can be
done better so that we can avoid tragic injustices like Uyinene Mrwetyana’s
rape and murder?

MAIMANE: Firstly I think our history, if you think about 1994, when the drafters of the
Constitution were deciding as to how to allocate policing, they took a stance
that said that policing must remain a national competence. I think that was
wrong; and I can understand why they did it – for fear that engulfed our nation
at the time. But what it means over a long period of time is that: a) you don’t
have intelligence that’s closer to the ground; b) resource allocation is woefully
unavailable as the Khayelitsha Commission proved; c) there was insufficient
policing in communities.

I’m from Dobsonville in Soweto. The international average for the allocation of
police needs to be somewhere between one is to two fifty, to three fifty.
That’s the broad range. That number in Dobsonville is one policeman is to one
thousand, two hundred citizens. So when the policeman is sitting at their desk
and before them is a case of domestic violence, motor vehicle accident,
murder, rape – whatever the categorization of crime is, you know that they are
not gonna be able to effectively police that.

Now, one of the great difficulties is that when I think about the Western Cape,
just over ten, eleven billion rands is allocated to policing in the province yet
the Premier of the province has no dictate as to what happens to that finance
because it’s a national competence. It’s the same in Gauteng, and any other
province. I think the long-term trajectory is that we need to bring policing
closer and make it a provincial competence and that requires that we give the
resourcing to provinces.

This will also ensure that provinces with metros, because they consume, many
of the citizens live in those places you can merge the SAPS and JMPD or metro
police in whatever the city is. So can you imagine if all the police in the
Western Cape coupled with the metro police in the city and any provincial
police could work together as a force, be given the equipment to be able to
fight crime – we’d have a broader crime fighting unit and ultimately we’d have
 the intelligence to be able to fight back and know okay in this street, here’s
who’s living here, here’s what’s happening.

Because often citizens will tell you, “We know in that home something is not
right there. We know what’s happening in that community.” So how do we
partner better with communities? So I really think that the evolution of the
powers of police is a very important step that we need to take forward so that
we can fight crime.

SIZWE: Sure, I mean it does feel in many ways that the country’s on flight mode …

MAIMANE: Ja.

SIZWE: We’ve got violence which is spreading through CBDs. It seems like every day
it’s a new CBD. How do you feel about what’s going on around our country and
just this sense that there’s a sense in which we’re losing our grip in many ways
in a lot of people on just a state of stability in our country?

MAIMANE: Absolutely and I, you know I feared the most going to the elections. I thought
to myself, “You know when you go to an election, elections give you three
things: 1) They give you a mandate to someone; 2) they also let you build an
institutional capacity to hold that person to account; 3) they give you
accountability and a pressure valve.”

We can then say, “We were unhappy with what was going on in the last number
of years, therefore we demand change.” And I feared back then that if nothing
materially changed post the elections, something will change. This is the
change we are experiencing. It’s a change upon which citizens are saying,
“We’ve waited eighteen months. These reforms, what are you talking about?
Nothing really is happening. We’ve waited, we’re watching life get tough
around the economy, around education outcomes, around healthcare … and
now suddenly, because previously we had some to blame – we thought if we
eradicate corruption all our problems will disappear.”
All these problems have been coming and when you talk about the economy
people say, “No let’s talk about corruption with this person or that person.”
No, we need it to be much more deliberate about the issues that are affecting
citizens so now we’re living in a country now where we have a party that’s run
out of ideas; that has the mandate; and a leader who’s trying to unite his party
rather than focusing on South Africa. And the net consequence of that is that
we are on flight mode rudderless and I really believe that it’s high time now
that we have a political reform.

You see, the great difficulty is that the problems that we need require change.
Not just change in the ballot box but the political infrastructure. You have a
party that, you know one finance minister issues an economic document,
another opposes it. All of it in the same party. So citizens are looking and
going, “Not only are we being not led, we are being misled.” So what we
desperately need is reform.

We need to reset our politics and I’m actually looking forward to that. The
hope for our country is that we must head towards another 1994 moment. We
must sit back and say, “Look, we’ve gone twenty five years up to this point.
It’s served us in this way and that way; it hasn’t served us in that way and that
way. Where are the changes?” Image if we could directly elect the President.

Imagine if we could change the electoral system so that it’s constituency-

based. Imagine now suddenly if we could create a new political realignment
upon which parties that agree no certain things could work together and be
able to execute against that plan going forward. Imagine if we could call upon
all citizens, black and white because at this point in time sometimes it often
feels like people go to the polls to express their race rather than infect their
ideas or their future.

What we need is a sense upon which we can call upon all citizens to say, “Can
we work together towards this objective regardless of who we are?” And then I
think we need to be future-focused you know. Nothing dispels the spirit of
spirit of citizens than hopelessness and I fear that’s what our country is going
through.
SIZWE: What would you change about parliament in those reforms? It just seems to me
as though there’s a structural problem with parliament holding leaders
accountable. It’s actually hard to get a proper debate going and it feels to me
as though there could be a lot of reforms to the parliamentary system that
could make it more agile and more effective.

MAIMANE: Ja, and that’s the point. If you created, as the Van Zyl Slabbert Report to
parliament said that we need to have three hundred constituencies and a
hundred PR-based MPs, it would mean at the end of the day – and not that
that’s a panacy for problems but it would mean an MP goes there, they’re not
just voting as voting cattle with an instruction from elsewhere.

It means actually they must consider real life citizens who voted for them and
it means that suddenly accountability can be effected because now suddenly
you unshackle the view that says, “We’re just voting in unison.” We can then
hold people to account. But furthermore, in the operations of parliament itself
its quite anomalous that the President comes once a term. He literally speaks
to citizens four times a year.

SIZWE: Ja, and can basically just say whatever he likes.

MAIMANE: And, and that’s another thing that because the speaker of parliament is not
sufficiently independent in that they come from a party, it is in their interest
to protect their own leader. If the current Speaker was to take on the
President, there’d be party discipline elsewhere. So we need independence in
the Speaker position or if we form in such a way that the Speaker then resigns
their party political affiliation as would happen, then we could finally get a
speaker who could say, “I’m guaranteed five years and I’m going to make sure
that parliament works.”

You know, one of the worst indictments was in the Zuma case of the Secret
Ballot. The Chief Justice in fact remarked in parliament and said it had also
violated its Constitutional mandate; which tells you that we are beyond
damaged in terms of what parliament does, it needs proper reform. But that’s
why I’m saying we need another ’94 moment. We need to sit down and say,
“We’ve served up to this point, let’s bring reform.”
SIZWE: I wanted to, since we are on parliament now, come to parliament I know
there’s something quite interesting happening on Thursday with this economic
debate, but before I come onto that I wanna take you back to November last
year where uBabes wezincwadi was born and you took out that letter and you
said, “I have evidence here of a five hundred thousand Rand donation and this
Andile Ramaphosa situation” which just – I mean it may go down as the most
devastating parliamentary question in the last, in this term.

What was going through your mind? And when did you realize, or did you even
realize that question would lead to all that it has led to in terms of lifting the
lid on these campaign donations?

MAIMANE: When you ask the question I wasn’t even at that point worried about campaign
donation, and in many ways still not worried about campaign donation. When I
asked the question at that point, you’ll recall a few weeks before that, or a
few months before that we’d just had a Commission on Correctional Services,
on the Inspector General, Arthur Fraiser was moved into some corner by this
President who was promising a new dawn.

And Correctional Services was adjudicating many contracts that go to BOSASA;

and now suddenly to get a candidate who in the model you get connected
business people who buy a leader, who then, the net effect gives them
contracts through the State. When the information came to say, “But this
man’s son is then doing business with the same company” it was already
alerted. The issue to say you cannot maintain this triangle.

It was not, and it was rowdily condemned under the Zuma years when people
used to say, “Ubaba ka Duduzane” and I found it strange that when it was
“Ubaba ka Andile” there was suddenly a toning down. So we must go into that
discussion because if we can get through why were these contracts issued in
the first place? What were they for? And you will remember then – it then
became a question of Andile coming back saying, “These contracts were
consulting services.” Which is a weird amount and then furthermore the
President then coming out to say, “This was campaign financing.”
 Which when you then follow the rest of what happens you can realize that
what my, the initial suspicion which is about argument in that contract of
connected business people, by senior politicians, we adjudicate contracts and
money. And so long as that triangle keeps working then we can keep the façade
of running the government, but in fact it becomes a scheme. That’s what it is.

SIZWE: Were you shocked by the way it played out after you asked the question and
the storm it created?

MAIMANE: Yeah, I think the … I’d initially thought they would go into the question about
Andile’s role. It was, the next bomb that fell was when the President said, “No
but it was actually for campaign financing.” Then I knew back then that there
was a lot more to this issue than what meets the eye. And of course we’ve had
other information that indicates that actually there’s more to this thing and
what we shouldn’t dwell on as a country is insist that accountability must apply
to person X and not to person Y because whatever.

If you wanna exercise accountability in South Africa you need the Rule of Law
not the rule of man. So more must come out of this thing. Accountability must
be effected and if the President or anybody has a question to answer for, then
they must. Why is it that Vincent Smith in the same ANC received some
donation from BOSASA, took a different stance and distanced himself and
resigned or whatever and other people in the ANC’s cabinet who had become
BOSASA affiliates as it were, had not been held accountable? Why should the
President be unique in that space if he also received campaign donations?

So at the end of the day this issue is about if the Guptas were to President
Zuma’s faction, then the Wattsons must be to what President Ramaphosa’s
faction – instruments of corruption.

SIZWE: Let’s stay on parliament then and let’s look at Thursday because there’s a big
debate that you initiated on the unemployment crisis and broad questions of
the economy. Why have you brought this debate? What do you think needs to
be our focus as South Africans digging through what parliament will be speaking
about on Thursday?
MAIMANE: You know our parliament has this luxury of having, not only is it multiparty but
it is multiracial so, and I think it’s the best place where it’s away from the
Executive where MPs who serve in different committees can then come on and
say, “What is our economic recovery plan?” Because it’s clear, 10.2 million for
people who are unemployed is unsustainable. The majority of those being
young people, there are about so many of our households that are without
income in them.

So that crisis will impact all the MPs that are there. All four hundred of them
who are there. I would be, it is a dereliction of duty that parliament itself
cannot be able to table a plan that says, “This is our recovery plan and this is
what we’ll execute across various portfolios, departments so that we can begin
to guide society in general.” So that’s the first thing.

The second thing is, parliament is where decisions are made. This is where we
decide on the budget of the nation and so if we are going to adjudicate that we
must give fifty seven billion Rand to Eskom, which is one of the first points I
make in the economic recovery plan – that we need to make decisions about
what Eskom does. You cannot just sit around and say, “Oh well, we’lll just
keep coming there to vote like voting cattle and give money to an entity that
seems to not be able to match its own revenue with its own expenses.”

At the end of the day we need a decision that says, “No we are not going to cut
money but we want to make sure that the independent power producers can
come on board.” Or we must make a decision that serves the citizens: Allow
cities to purchase their energy directly to be able to do so. Or what are we
doing about labour regulation? Is our labour regulation, whilst we are
correcting the abuses of the past against labour, have we swung too far that it
makes it too hard for someone to enter the job space, particularly young
people?

Can we exempt them from certain labour legislation? What is our view on
collective bargaining? When we talk about justice, what does that mean? Does
that mean when we think about justice when it comes to the question of land
or when it comes to the question of title, how do we build a much more
inclusive economy?
 That must inform parliamentarians’ actions and I really think that, that way we
could add the leadership value to society. But if parliament cannot apply its
mind on those things and we’d rather talk about motions and this, then I think
we fail citizens.

SIZWE: Well let’s end on this because I think the economic debate is crucial, but your
economic plans have also been critiqued to the extent that yes, it’s true that
the State in many ways has failed and is continuing to fail but it’s also not clear
that we can completely trust the private sector with questions of
transformation; with questions of economic justice.

And in many ways, many of your solutions seem to rest largely on privatizing or
introducing a greater role for private business to increase efficiencies. Why
should South Africans trust that the corporate sector in South Africa, which has
been so damaging in many ways would make this a fairer society?

MAIMANE: Yeah I think it’s a very important solution and certainly the solution doesn’t lie
in saying let’s just have a State-led economic development because we can’t
trust – other argue strongly that we can’t trust the current State; or that
history has demonstrated that States will put themselves at the centre. We’ve
got multiple models of this, have delivered similar outcomes when you look at
the African continent.

So clearly we need a reform of that, but what I would argue strongly is that
this is where, the role of the State is to create a regulatory framework that
ensures that actually private citizens are able to comply with the objectives
broadly, which is about economic inclusion et cetera. But also furthermore,
when we define the private sector it isn’t just a question of one particular race
being dominant in its space.

What I really wanna do is to have private citizens who are black setting up
companies that are able to compete all across because then that way we are
able to create funds that give capital that ensure that the sector is able to
deliver services but it also in and of itself becoming much more inclusive. So I
think it’s a question of regulatory framework and a conducive climate. So when
I ask the question, “What are some of the objectives that we’ve got to try and
hit?” You think about issues like Spectrum as an example.
SIZWE: Oh, okay I see.

MAIMANE: Here we sit here today, if you wanna download anything onto your phone
you’re going to pay a fortune.

SIZWE: Our subscribers who watch this on WhatsApp would be very keen to …

MAIMANE: Yeah, so what I’m saying to them is the solution requires that Spectrum be
allocated in a space where it can be more competitive; and if you bring in more
competition you’ll drive prices down. But if you fail to allocate Spectrum you
are going to end up in a space where as the current framework has gotten now,
in some ways nationalized, you are driving costs up and that is a classic
example of what happens when you put the State at the centre of the
management of the infrastructure around Spectrum.

And I’m asking the question that we’ve got to re-think it and if we can be able
to do that we can allow more people to come on board, introduce 5G, new
technology and drive down prices so that the State isn’t worried about
maintaining towers and infrastructure – which is not their primary competence.
It must worry that there’s healthcare, there’s medicines in hospitals, textbooks
in schools, worry that it creates the regulatory framework for people thrive.

I think no one ever, I want a market-based economy but that’s not to the
exclusion of the State, because I think the State creates the conducive
environment for which citizens are able to thrive.

SIZWE: Mr Mmusi Maimane thanks so much for joining us again on SMWX, and look
forward to the parliamentary debate on Thursday.

MAIMANE: No! My great privilege, thank you.

SIZWE: And look forward to Liverpool winning the …

MIAMANE: You should never walk alone.

SIZWE: You should never walk alone. Sure

MAIMANE: Great job!

SIZWE: Appreciate it.

MAIMANE: I always enjoy these interviews …