Pityana questions Zuma and equality in SA
President Jacob Zuma's credibility was a topic of conversation during an ethics conference held in Midrand on Friday morning.
The Mapungube Institute for Strategic Reflection is holding an Ethics Conference on Seeking the Ethical Foundations of the South African Nation.
Anglo-Gold Ashanti chairperson and businessman Sipho Pityana started off his talk by saying he is happy to engage himself with 'clever blacks'.
"I am a deployee of white monopoly capital, happy to be in an engagement with clever blacks," he said to a laughing audience.
Pityana went on to question the concept of equality in South Africa.
"A conference and a conversation on ethics must start with why it is that I have a sleeping disorder. At 2.00am in the morning after I heard that the President is having a meeting with business and that at the same time I will be standing here, I penned down a question that I would have asked if I was in that meeting. The question is, can a society where an unemployment single mother caught stealing a garment worth R2000 ends up serving time in jail, and an unskilled worker caught stealing R700 loses a job, and the President who illegally benefits over R7 million from the public purse keeps his position, can that society justly claim that it is one where all are equal before the law," he asked.
Panel chairperson, Advocate Mojanku Gumbi also addressed the president's credibility.
She said the issue of ethics in politics and government was epitomised when President Zuma had to answer questions in Parliament this week - and he was unable to answer a question regarding the government's much talked about nine point plan.
"I take this matter seriously. Somehow it's a hangover of having worked in government that when somebody says in the State of the Nation Address that this is going to be the rallying call for the nation, these nine points. I assume that you live and breathe those nine points every day and every day you check it to see what progress has been made. For me, that is the highest form of ethical behaviour," she said.