New loop hole?

Week 32 – 10 August 2012

 

The international humanitarian society is quite worried about the undermining effects of corruption on citizens’ trust in the police, courts and education. Referring to the latest discovery of about 6000 new school text books that were dumped in Limpopo, me Mary Robinson, visiting past high commissioner of the UN human rights commission said at a Womens’ day celebration at the University of Johannesburg that to withhold textbooks from children is a human rights violation.

At the tenth Nelson Mandela commemorate lecture in Cape Town she mentioned that corruption is a big problem world wide and that the ANC has abandoned is moral power. She used the Limpopo text book scandal as an example to show the importance of the role of social media in curbing corruption.

Never minding this situation, the ANC appointed Mr “Mo” Shaik, brother of Shabir Shaik who received jail sentence after found guilty of fraud because of his corrupt relation with Jacob Zuma before the latter became President of South Africa, as head of the budding new Development Bank International, a subsidiary of the Development Bank of Southern Africa.

Mo Shaik’s family and personal association with Zuma is seen by the opposition parties as a reason for his appointment in important government posts and he is regarded as a loyal cadre of Zuma and the ANC.

In his new executive position, Mo Shaik will be in charge of bidding of contracts amounting to billions of Rands. The first of which is the North-South corridor in Zambia, an important section of the planned trans-Africa-Highway between Cape Town and Kinshasa. Loans for this project amounted to 29% of the Development Bank of Southern Africa’s international credit portfolio. (Source: Beeld 8 August).

Whether this situation will develop into another back door for the tender-preneur situation, like most other tenders previously granted did, remains to be seen.