Sandile Swana
Roger Jardine has insight into several things that affect the country’s upper classes and the very many thieves that have really dulled this nation and made our lives full of uncertainty. He is now the cat among the pigeons; the kleptocrats, incompetents and imposters are afraid.
Jardine came out of the public sector as a director-general and became CEO of Aveng, a leading South African construction company with about 34 000 employees and operating in about 30 countries.
He came in around 2008, and shortly thereafter received summons from the Competition Commission because Aveng had been involved in collusion, corruption, and cartel operations since 1973. He had to pay fines and collaborate with state for leniency of sentences.
Recently he came out of the First Rand when all the banks, including First Rand, are fighting tooth and nail to be extricated in the dollar/rand exchange rate price fixing scandal.
Some have already admitted guilt and paid fines, others have been convicted offshore in the US. In this field of bank corruption, collusion and price fixing Maria Ramos, an ANC stalwart and wife of Trevor Manuel, came out and apologised to the South African public as CEO of Absa for her bank’s role in running price fixing schemes.
Jardine admits there are many cartels in the South African business arena, run by big business captains. Scholars say that you and I pay an extra 35% for every basket of goods to the price fixing cartels.
He needs to clarify how big business and cartels are going to work with an equally suspect government of kleptocrats to deliver ubiquitous, universally accessible, and affordable railways, harbours, buses, sewage, water, health care and electricity. There is a measure of honesty, accountability and transparency that is needed before we talk about the role of the private sector in service delivery.
He knows the immorality and cruelty of the private sector first hand. These are no saints nor saviours.
Jardine rises at a time when South Africa has rapidly climbed to position number seven among the 193 nations of the UN most impacted by organised crime. This comes at a time when we are already grey listed because we do not have credible measures to control money laundering. South Africa is leading among African states in money laundering, illicit financial flows and terrorist funding.
Over time the actions and intentions of the state are hard to separate from those of organised crime. Honest police officers are killed with the help of their colleagues, the late Lieutenant Charl Kinnear is just one example. Many police generals and senior officer are in court because of crime.
South African Crime Intelligence is divided into political factions and aligned to competing criminal syndicates. Nepotism and unprofessionalism characterise South African Crime Intelligence.
Jardine launched his party in Riverlea, one of the hotspots of organised crime. Places such as Riverlea, Westbury, Eldorado Park, the Cape Flats, among others, have a rapidly growing organised crime culture because there is no policing that makes them unattractive to life of crime. There is no eldership in the community that dictates the behaviour of young men.
The so-called coloured communities have seen an increase in fatherlessness and failure to marry among males since 1994. Fatherlessness in both the African and coloured communities have escalated since 1994, and with it, teenage pregnancies, criminality, gangsterism, unemployment and academic mediocrity.
Jardine presents himself as a responsible father, a dutiful son who cares for his mother and aunt, a credible sports administrator and sponsor.
All of that with impeccable credentials and concrete evidence of success, no previous criminal convictions, solid curriculum vitae and a productive lifestyle. That is the type of role model that is needed in these devastated communities.
Jardine comes from a strong tradition of nonracial sports. A local stadium is named after his father, Bill Jardine, a well-known and effective campaigner for nonracial sports in the country.
To me, then, Jardine now needs to refocus on creation of sustainable systems of developing local talent and draw the youth away from drugs, teenage pregnancies, and gangs.
He needs to reproduce himself on a large-scale. He needs to neutralise the misguided and unscientific teachings of Gayton Mackenzie that fuel racial hatred and xenophobia, rather than shared self-development of black communities.
Black communities must take full responsibility for their own development, and Jardine and former UDF activist and businessman Murphy Morobe are ready to lead by example
