No gold at the end of the rainbow

Stung by local and international criticism of the extent of corruption, the South African parliament late last year passed a new law, The Protection of State Information. It carries a penalty of 25 years in prison for any journalist or editor who blows the whistle on ANC corruption. Speaking in June 2012, Wendy Woods, the widow of the legendary anti-apartheid journalist and editor, Donald Woods said in relation to the new law, "I would say it's more insidious than what my husband had to deal with. There were many laws in his time restricting journalists, but they knew what they were. This bill allows any government official to deem any information a state secret. It's worse than the apartheid era because it's so unspecific..."

In the past Zuma has been mentioned as a person accepting bribes over arms deals. A former Police Commissioner, Jacob Sello, was sent to prison for taking bribes from a drug baron and another police chief Bheki Cele has recently been named for leasing a police headquarters at a greatly inflated rate. Julius Malema has been named as influencing tenders in return for kickbacks when with the ANC.

South Africa does have an anti-corruption office. It is headed by a respected and fearless woman, Thuli Madonsela, a former teacher and lawyer. She is officially known as the Public Protector. The office has before it 14,000 documented cases of 'maladministration'. She has come under pressure by Ministers to revisit her findings. She has said that the 'Tunisian option' - the popular overthrow of a corrupt government - was not far off in South Africa if measures were not taken to deal with corruption.

Zuma has expressed regret at the shootings and called for a period of official mourning for the victims, but that will not erase the fact that under his stewardship the country is hastening back to the past. Successive white Apartheid administrations were corrupt in every sense of the word. It seems that South Africa cannot shake off the legacy of its past.

With the failure to improve the lives of ordinary citizens, particularly black citizens, the ruling ANC elite can expect to be challenged by angry and increasingly radicalised blacks, probably youngsters, whose expectations are not being met, in fact are being squandered in a morass of venality. For them at least there is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

The move to the past might also include a return to black grass-roots politics. Zuma and the ANC elite have little time in which to mend their ways and put the country back on the track which Nelson Mandela was walking, but from which Tabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma strayed. Without change, concerned professionals, particularly whites, will continue to leave.