Can’t write about Mo Shaik
I was sickened by Zuma’s appointment of Mo Shaik. I was going to write about it, but it would just make my blood pressure spike. So I’ll let Nic Borain not write about it.
However, Mo(e) has inspired me to do a bit of pictorial commentary:
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ANCs fascist attack on democracy and the poor
I admit with some embarrassment that the story of the of the vicious attack on shack-dwellers by the ANC in Durban didn’t initially grab my attention. I can perhaps blame this on that apart from a few opinion pieces, it was largely ignored by the mainstream press. But this is a story that should be ringing alarm-bells for all South Africans. ANC thugs – aided and abetted by the police and ruling ANC officials – attacked a peaceful community, destroying homes and killing at least three people.
Their crime? Members of this community belonged to an independent organisation – crucially not ANC-aligned – which actively campaigs for better housing, sanitation, healthcare and education, to be provided on terms favourable to its members. The organisation is called Abahlali baseMjondolo, and the settlement is Kennedy Road in Durban. Abahlali has successfully fought for its member’s rights – all the way to the Constitutional Court. This has clearly irked the notoriously anti-poor ANC ruling elite who would much rather divert development funds to their own bank accounts.
On the night of 26th September, a heavily armed gang launched a surprise, unprovoked attack on the settlement. They destroyed everything they could while calling on Zulu’s to identify and spare themselves. This ethnic rampage resulted in at least three – many reports have it at eight – deaths. This murderous spree went ahead with the connivance of the police who refused to intervene. The only activity the police undertook was to arrest eight Abahlali leaders!
Watch this video: it’s a heartbreaking tale of repression:
The ANC, in a display of unbridled arrogance and cynicism, held a sham reconciliation meeting – attended solely by ANC activists. They then complained loudly when the Abahlali leaders – in hiding for their lives – did not attend. They spent their time heaping abuse on the movement and blaming them for everything. ANC Councillor Nigel Gumede left no doubt that this was a case of Zulu vs Pondo:
He added a dash of tribal hatred, saying that “in our [presumably Zulu] culture, this [Mfene] dance is associated with muthi” (witchcraft) and needed to be investigated.
Still the community remains under attack. There is nothing covert about it: the ANC is sending a strong message that anyone not actively supporting them is their deadly enemy and will be destroyed. Here are the reasons given for a planned attack on Sunday night:
A decision has been taken to demolish two more shacks after the meeting. These shacks both belong to AbM members – they are both women. The decision has been justified on the grounds that:1. They are known AbM activists.
2. They failed to attend today’s meeting.
3. They failed to accept pressure to board the ANC buses to protest for denial of bail at the bail hearing for the Kennedy 8.
Zuma, of course has not said a word. This tacit support for pro-Party fascist thugs – in the mould of the Nazi Brownshirts and Zanu-PF youth militia – must be taken very seriously.
Please sign this petition to ask Zuma to intervene.
Related article:
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Jacob’s ladder of lies
In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, South African President Jacob Zuma attempted to wash away any culpability for his role in his government’s deliberate extermination of at least 300,000 (mainly ANC-supporting) AIDS sufferers. He attacked ex-president Thabo Mbeki maintaining that his insane idea that there is no link between HIV and AIDS was his own private view and not government policy.
Somehow it was Mbeki’s private affair that let his criminal, alcoholic health minister unleash her bizarre cure of onions, beetroot and garlic (with a side helping of African potatoes) for AIDS on the public health system. It was rigorously enforced; doctors were fired trying to treat their patients with anti-retroviral drugs drugs. Activists had to go to the Constitutional Court to force these murderers to allow the distribution of ARVs. They didn’t take Mbeki and Tshabalala-Msimang to court in their private capacities: they sued the government – which vigorously defended its position.
So Zuma lied that it wasn’t government policy. But worse than that, Zuma vigorously defended this disgusting policy at the time. In an address to parliament in 2000, calling on members to acquaint themselves with the AIDS-denialist literature. Then he dragged out the old straw man canard, They laughed at Galileo:
In Europe in the Seventeenth Century, the main stream scientific view was that the sun moved around the earth. An Italian scientist Galilei Galileo had a different view and believed that the earth moved around the sun. However his views were considered to be so threatening to the scientific establishment that he was forced to publicly recant. As we all know today, he was right and they were wrong.In the history of science and in particular the history of medical science, there are other examples where solutions were found to difficult challenges as a result of robust scientific debate between conventional and alternative views.
This House, which is based on the fundamental principle of the right to differ and to express a different opinion, ought not to balk at the idea that the President is asking scientists to behave as scientists.
As Carl Sagan said: “They laughed at Galileo. They laughed at Newton. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.”
In 2000 Padraig O’Malley interviewed then ANC Secretary General and current deputy-President, Kgalema Motlanthe on his views on HIV/AIDS (part 1, part 2). He toed the line that HIV does not cause AIDS, as simply a natural breakdown of the immunity system. As such the “opportunistic” diseases should be treated in their own right. He called AIDS a symbol – perhaps he hadn’t understood Mbeki’s assertion that AIDS was just a syndrome - not a disease. He then went on to blame the drug companies for fabricating the whole thing to make huge profits. And of course he had a swing at whites:
No, they are gullible. You see half of them don’t read but they regard themselves as well informed because they’re white. The reason why when you ask – you ask any of the experts whether they have seen evidence, any piece of document that says scientist so-and-so in such a country has isolated this HIV virus and photographed it and studied it’s modus vivendi under controlled conditions, they will swear at you.They will tell you that question was answered twenty years ago, they will tell you you are giving audience to dissidents. They will not tell you because it’s not there. That’s why they become vicious because it is simply not there. They take it on authority and then it gets passed on like that but there’s no authority, it’s a lie repeated by those who are supposed to know better. The truth of the matter is that if they were to admit that indeed no such thing has happened, I mean it would cause serious reverberations across the scientific world.
Zuma can lie all he wants but we know the truth: the ANC hates its own people and was willing to let them die in their hundreds of thousands rather than confront the source of this disease and the source of the life-saving drugs. As George Annandale writes on this subject:
Perhaps the president can explain how it is possible to recall and redeploy President Mbeki for creating a nuisance and sowing division in the party, yet, when he was the driving force in the thinly veiled extermination of hundreds of thousands of HIV/Aids sufferers, this moral alliance and its moral upstanding leaders, could not stop him.
Yes Jacob, they laughed at Galileo. And we would laugh at you too if the stench of death didn’t hang around you like a vulture.
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The rise of the Weak Man
As the editor of a major South African broadsheet, Peter Bruce writes an amazingly naïve article on his surprise at how the Zuma presidency is panning out:
Jacob Zuma is proving to be almost the opposite of what I expected him to be. I expected a decisive presidency but he isn’t. I expected an authoritative leader, yet no one in or around the ANC seems to pay him the slightest heed. I expected that he would keep party loudmouths quiet but the only person whose attention he seems to have is the mayor of Balfour.
Zuma’s weakness was fully expected. Zuma is not a leader at all. He didn’t take the Party by the scruff of its neck and impose his leadership vision on it. He never had to stump for support or run on his record. He has never debated an opponent in public nor has he made any direct appeal to the South African public.
South Africa is being ruled by a Weak Man.
A Weak Man is someone who is deeply flawed and in deep trouble. He desperately needs support to keep him out of jail or penury but has nothing to offer his benefactors other than his soul. He is without principle and will do anything to get out of his predicament. He has another very important characteristic: he is a populist and appeals to the ordinary man who empathises with his “oppressed” persona.
The Weak Man is surrounded by power-hungry individuals who prefer, or are only able to rule by proxy. In Zuma’s case this is largely the South African Communist Party and its leftist allies, the trade union movement Cosatu and the ANC Youth League. These organisation would be hard-pressed to win any seats in an election, let alone a general election itself.
Bruce is “rescued” by writer Meshack Mabogoane:
“A hardcore party man, he (Zuma) defers to the ANC for the positions he adopts,” writes Mabogoane. “He reads what is written for him and avoids discussing complex matters. At the same time his comments on crucial matters are usually made after the events and are generally evasive and weak. Zuma has never committed himself to any policies and never offered any personal vision.”
The ANC leaders he defers to are SACP chairman Gwede Mantashe, SACP secretary-general Blade Nzimande and Cosatu head Zwelinzima Vavi.
This same strategy was tried in the campaign to get John Hlophe onto the Constitutional Court. The fact that it stumbled at the last hurdle this time does not mean it won’t be successful in the long run. The problem with Hlophe is that he is just too unpredictable and not nearly as pliant as is Zuma. Perhaps Hlophe will come to realise this and make himself the vassal his supporters so wish him to be. At the moment he is not quite weak enough – but give him time.
Another manifestation of the Weak Man phenomenon is one Siyabonga Gama who is in the running to be the next Transnet CEO. Except that he has been suspended by his board for awarding lavish contracts without authority amongst other misdeeds. There is no doubt he is a loose cannon and shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near South Africa’s largest state-owned enterprise.
But what do we see instead? Huge, unprecedented political support – and threats – from the same team that put Zuma in power. In fact, they are claiming he is a victim of political conspiracy just like Zuma was. Another Weak Man is being pushed into an influential position to do his masters’ bidding. Transnet of course has many billions of Rand flowing through it and under its control. Thanks to previous CEO Maria Ramos, it is not yet a smoking, bankrupt ruin and remains a deep trough for alliance parties and the leaders that run them to get their snouts in it.
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Is Zuma an evil genius or a genial idiot?
The fading arc of dye at the end of my left thumb nail is a reminder that it’s about 100 days ago that Zuma became president of South Africa, the customary evaluation time. Like the faint mark, most South Africans have probably a less black-and-white view of the man now than they did 100 days ago. Yet I’m not convinced that we fully understand his strange presidency.
Let’s roll back and consider how the Big Man got into power in the first place. Certainly, he didn’t campaign on his clean record of public service and exceptional leadership qualities. Was it perhaps identification with an uneducated, polygamous and deeply conservative tribalist that got him elected? No, I think rather it was the sleazy outcome of a deal between a highly compromised man facing a life of jail and ignominy, and a power-hungry left-wing rabble of communists and trade-unionists. It is difficult to find any other motive for this other than the creation of a puppet for the real rulers, who are perhaps unpalatable to the average voter.
In the process, this rabble threatened and pressurised the judiciary, viciously threatened their enemies real or imaginary and engineered the collapse of prosecutorial independence. Zuma was willing to see the Constitution – the crowning achievement of decades of bitter struggle – threatened and weakened just so that he, as an individual, could escape the very serious charges against him. The way was then opened for him to be pushed into office.
We are seeing the ramifications on this assault on the Constitution. The judiciary is feeling extremely vulnerable and is involved in a public squabble. The prosecuting authorities have lost all credence. Whether these will have long-term ramifications is yet to be seen. Needless to say, the supremacy of the Constitution is in peril.
So the deal is: the left-wing cabal guarantee that Zuma is protected and is given the leeway to use State resources to form a ring of steel around him – an immunity zone. In return, he will be a compliant figurehead, a stooge for the real rulers who have been slavering away for power but could never achieve it in their own right.
Let’s have a look at the evidence for this deal.
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The Zanufication of South Africa
Story 1: War veterans illegally occupy private farmland. The ruling political party to which they belong facilitates this by providing shelter to the invaders. When the owner and the local opposition-party mayor lawfully demand that the invaders leave or be forcefully removed, the police threaten to arrest the owner and mayor, not the criminal invaders.
Sound familiar?
Story 2:The supreme law of the land is the Constitution which guarantees a raft of basic human rights to its populace. The highest court in the land zealously guards it. The Ruling Party does not like the rulings the court hands down and so systematically goes about stripping the Court of independent jurists and replacing them with obsequious party hacks. Eventually the Ruling Party is allowed to do as it pleases, stripping people of their rights and brutalising the opposition supporters. The judges smile on in benign approval.
Sound familiar?
Well, we all know the story of Zimbabwe and its brutal ruling party, Zanu-PF. They have reduced their country to ruin, their citizens to penury and fear. In effect Zanu-PF runs a fascist dictatorship, a kleptocracy of vicious thugs.
South Africa is no Zimbabwe – that’s obvious. I for one have been dismissive of hysterical claims that South Africa is turning into another Zimbabwe. But I am starting to get a bit uneasy of late. Two reports appearing today have made me become quite apprehensive.
The first report came from Timothy Nast, the DA mayor of Midvaal Municipality on Radio 702 this morning. A large group of thugs were burning tyres, blocking traffic and stoning passing cars on a busy highway this morning. They had invaded a farm yesterday and, Nast alleges, habitable containers were provided by the ANC-controlled area authority. South Africa has appallingly anti-private property laws regarding squatters but at least they do allow invaders to be removed from the property within 48 hours of arriving. The owner quite rightly and lawfully demanded that the invaders move off the land and that the police should enforce this. Nast alleges that the police refused to do this and instead threatened to arrest him.
The second report was carried by Business Day. Judge President of the Western Cape, John Hlophe’s Judicial Service Commission (JSC) hearing into the dispute between him and the judges of the Constitutional Court (CC) have been cancelled. Let’s put this in perspective. Hlophe was accused by the CC judges of attempting to improperly influence judgements relating to Jacob Zuma. Hlophe ducked and dived, using every trick in the book his rabid supporters led by the fugitive Paul Ngobeni had honed to get Zuma off the hook. His waiting game was a transparent attempt to get a hearing by a far friendlier JSC after Zuma’s election.
And he got it. Zuma replaced his appointments with a bunch of pro-executive and definitely pro-Zuma and Hlophe lawyers. Their first action was to hold Hlophe’s hearing in secret and then to simply cancel them. It looks very much as if Hlophe, who any reasonable person would find to be the last person who should hold such a position, is headed for the post of Chief Justice. Even if that is not the case, these actions show executive intent to mould the judiciary into the ANC’s lap-dog. “Transformation” of the judiciary clearly means to transform independence into subservience.
So yes, Story 1 happened in South Africa, although of course it has happened in Zimbabwe countless times.
Story 2 is the story of the emasculation of Zimbabwe judiciary. Without a judiciary willing to uphold the constitution, ordinary Zimbabweans were left naked in their defencelessness from a ruthless and arrogant ruling party, Zanu-PF – lead by that madman Robert Mugabe. These actions taken in the JSC’s Hlophe hearings are an extremely worrying portent of where South Africa could be headed.
But is there any evidence that the ANC seeks to follow Zanu’s example? Well not directly and not really on the same path. Whereas Zanu-PF is a very aggressive fascist socialist movement, the ANC seems to be moving towards a highly centralised Stalinist statist model. Here are the pointers:
- Under Thabo Mbeki, the ANC government sought to centralise control of all facets of government and “deployed” ANC cadres to key positions – not on the basis of ability but on that of blind loyalty to the leader
- The ANC’s 2007 Polokwane conference resolved to centralise political power with the Party – not with the elected government
- The ANC arrogantly chose an entirely inappropriate candidate, Jacob Zuma, for president and then embarked on an aggressive campaign of threats against the judiciary to make sure the legal impediments to his ascendency were removed
- After years of doggedly pursuing Zuma on fraud and corruption charges, the National Prosecuting Authority succumbed to enormous political pressure and abruptly dropped all charges on flimsy and discredited grounds
- The majority of Zuma’s cabinet are or were loyal communists (as was he), including key appointments such as the Stalinist finance minister Pravin Gordhan and a senior cabinet post for Blade Nzimande, general secretary of the SA Communist Party
- A new, enlarged cabinet structure which has a heavy emphasis on central planning
- Policy, direction and disciple is not set by the president or his government but by the Party under the leadership of SACP chairman and ANC secretary-general, Gwede Mantashe
- Justice minister Jeff Radebe interferes with the working of the “independent” JSC
I agree that this is not conclusive evidence of a South African version of Zanufication. But I would argue that with so many pointers toward total Party control, there is a great deal to be concerned about.
Judicial independence under threat
Zacob Zuma, in his successful attempt to become South African president, employed a dogged, block-by-block campaign to pursue every possible legal opening, to spoil and delay, and to unleash his allies on the judiciary. Whenever an unfavourable ruling was handed down his dogs vilified the judge involved and threatened the judiciary as a whole. When he happened to receive a favourable ruling, the judge was lauded as a comrade judge, a progressive thinker in a sea of judicial conspiracy. Finally, the prosecutors were brought into line using an illegally obtained spy tape and a hopelessly flawed and plagiarised legal argument.
Zuma’s actions made it clear he didn’t give a jot about the constitution and its institutions. However, during the election campaign the ANC repeatedly said they respected the constitution and that they had no intention whatsoever of changing it. They had held a two-thirds majority before and never used it to change the constitution.
Well they lied. As Pierre de Vos points out, they want to change the constitution to place the state above the law.
This amendment thus attempts to place the state above the law and the Constitution. It demonstrates a shocking lack of respect for a judgment of the Constitutional Court and for the independent and impartial judiciary and sends a signal that the ANC government will amend the Constitution if it does not like a judgment of the highest court.
So what next? Will the ANC-led government now attempt to remove the provisions in the Constitution that subject the President to the Rule of Law? Hey, who needs to follow the law or the Constitution if you were elected by 2400 delegates at Polokwane? What about the right not to be arbitrary evicted from your home without an order of court? After all, those pesky poor people continue to challenge arbitrary evictions by our heartless and anti-poor government.
This is an extremely worrying and dangerous development. One cannot have a supreme Constitution if the governing party changes the Constitution willy-nilly to overturn decisions of our highest court.
After all the anti-constitutional activity by Zuma and his acolytes/puppet masters, should one have expected anything less? For those who haven’t got it yet: the ANC government cannot be trusted. And it will act with the arrogant knowledge that its voters will support it no matter no matter how much it tramples on their hard-won rights.
The independence of the judiciary appears to be Zuma’s most pressing target. The ongoing barrage of words against this constitutionally guaranteed independence has given way to a new, insidious battle. The recent court cases involving John Hlophe have unfortunately shown that judgements in the High Court have tended to split along racial lines. The judgement given in Hlophe’s first case in the then Transvaal High Court was a judicial mess and the honourable justices seemed to be bending over backwards to find in favour of Hlophe. It was correctly slapped down by the the Appeal Court. The judges in this case all happened to be black. In his latest action against the Judicial Service Commission (JSC), the majority opinion once again appeared to be highly accommodating to Hlophe, going so far as giving him more than he even asked for. Once again the majority happened to be comprised of black judges.
This has got to be heartening to Zuma. To him – and to many others – it must look like black judges will be more friendly to fellow black judges and politicians. So, surprise surprise, the new Justice Minister and Zuma acolyte Jeff Radebe has persuaded the “independent” JSC to delay all interviews for judicial appointments. Why?
“The minister of justice requested a postponement to consider the
following: the enhancement of the independence of the judiciary (and)
the vital question of the transformation of the judiciary in terms of
the constitution with regard to race and gender representivity in order
to facilitate meaningful input in the appointment process.”
This sounds just so Orwellian. The constitution already directs the JSC to consider issues of transformation when it make appointments. The overriding impression left from this action is that Zuma, through his lapdog Radebe, wants to pack the Court with more friendly faces – probably black faces.
The attack against the independence of the judiciary is accelerating. Zuma’s young attack dogs are no longer spewing insults at member of the bench. It’s got a lot more serious.
Zuma’s socialist fantasy
South African president, Zacob Zuma has delivered his first State of the Nation address. Well, to more accurate it was his Fantasy Nation address. Zuma is the friend of everyone – give him an audience and he’ll set out to please. Radical communists? He’ll be as Stalanist as uncle Joe himself. Capitalist businessmen? Positively Thatcherite in business-friendly assurances. Right-wing Afrikaners? They are the best (non-black) South Africans. And so on.
So, true to form, friendly Jake has set out to please everyone. Well, that’s if you like promises of goodies being dished out willy-nilly. Name the problem, and The Kangaman will dish out the goods.
How to tackle unemployment? Easy – just promise to generate 4-million jobs by 2014. And, of course, the small matter of making that 500,000 of them before December. How? Well the old socialist fall-back: public works programmes. This is so outrageously pie-in-the sky as to question if he’s not having a joke at our (great) expense. His bloated ministries aren’t even set up to deal with hiring the required armies of dead-hand bureaucrats, let alone to creating half-a-million new jobs in the next six months. Or is that… no can’t be.
And this while South Africa is in the midst of a deep recession, where jobs are being shed at a record rate.
Poverty is another focus. According to Zuma, “Social grants are the most effective form of poverty alleviation”. Great. There are already more than 13-million people – a third of the entire South African population – on social grants. He vaguely says that the able bodied should be more willing to work, but what and how remains unsaid.
And all of this is off the backs of the hard-pressed 5.3 million taxpayers. Governments do not create wealth, people do. Governments can either support individuals and companies to create more wealth (which seldom happens), or hinder them. The South African government seems to be hell-bent on destroying them in chasing their socialist dream.
Zuma made a number of other designed-to-please promises without any hint of how they will be delivered. It is no more than a grandiose wish-list – a rabble-pleasing socialist fantasy. The only certainty is that the South African taxpayer is in for a rude shock.
There is little doubt that Jake is setting himself up for failure. But he will as usual wriggle out of any blame – there is always someone conspiring against him. The saddest of all is that his supporters will buy his excuses, as they’ve always done.
Moral compass left spinning
In a report in The Times, South Africa’s cabinet ministers are asking for guidance to find clarity on the ethics of receiving gifts.
“Cabinet raised the issue… Maybe we need to look at the ethics handbook to make sure there is proper guidance,” he said. “Ministers will always be given gifts and as the new cabinet we should discuss how these things are handled.”
This follows the astounding case where the new Minister of Transport, S’bu Ndebele was given lavish gifts, including a top of the range Mercedes Benz worth over R1.1 million, by contractors to the Transport department. The sheer chutzpah of publicly handing over this bribe is astounding enough and is only surpassed by the astounding stupidity of accepting it. Ndebele then went on to defend this utterly indefensible action.
S’bu Ndebele accepting his car
Faced with a public outcry, he chose to seek guidance from that paragon of virtue, Jacob Zuma, who lives under a cloud of 783 unanswered corruption charges. Predictably, JZ told him: “Of course you should accept it, old boy. Why ever not. I mean, if your friends are feeling generous, why spoil their fun? Just jot it down in the gifts book, and you’re good to go.” Or something like that. Zacob would have to say that, wouldn’t he? His defence for receiving the bribes paid by his friends is that they were just gifts and loans. Not that he ever entered them into the gifts register, though.
What cretin would accept “gifts” like that? Has the man no moral compass at all? Didn’t something at the back of his mind send out even the slightest alarm? Even the most acute sociopath would at least intellectually recognise the gross error in accepting these blatant bribes. But not our friend, S’bu. What hubris does he possess? It took an irate public (who he would be inclined to ignore) and political allies (who he can’t ignore) to force S’bu to hand the “gifts” back.
But now the public and the press are full of praise for this genius! They are congratulating him and treating him like a hero! He has clearly, unequivocally demonstrated that he possesses no integrity, has the ethics of a sewer rat and has the feeling of entitlement only bred from extreme hubris. And this is the man that is now being thanked. In any sane country he would be thankful he wasn’t chucked out of government by the ear or facing corruption charges.
And now we know he is not alone. His cabinet colleagues are all at sea, and don’t have the faintest idea on the ethics of public office. This is what you get when you elect as your leader a deeply flawed man, who has legally been found to be in a corrupt relationship with a convicted fraudster, and though the bullying tactics of his supporters got the corruption charges against him dropped. Who in his circle would not feel that he was entitled to pocket a lavish “gift” from adoring suppliers?
Another Zuma tactic – get rid of your persecutors – has resulted in the demise of the one body that could investigate and root out this sort of corruption, the Scorpions. The crooks in government will now feel that they can plunder the public purse with impunity.
It is now left to the press and the public to step up the scrutiny on it’s elected officials. We are alone and unprotected. It is not the time to thank corrupt officials for handing back their ill-gotten gains when found out. It is up to the press and the public to stop that moral compass spinning wildly.
A tale of two scandals
The UK is currently in the throes of a huge scandal of MPs excessive, cynical and sometimes fraudulent expense claims. Every day of this row has seen the press and the public becoming more irate and the politicians running for cover and being brought to heel by the party leaders. And since policticians from all parties are involved, this is no mere political point scoring exercise. The Conservatives have moved more decisively than the governing Labour Party and will probably gain from this from a disgusted electorate (although it appears politicians have correctly gone down in the public’s estimation).
A poll released Friday showed that 65 percent of the population want early elections because of the expense scandal, while 64 percent want some lawmakers to resign.
Compare this to South Africa’s Travelgate scandal. Dozens of MPs were caught defrauding parliament by exchanging the travel vouchers for cash in collusion with accredited travel agents. Although MPs from most parties were involved, the vast majority of them belonged to the ANC, which did everything in its power to protect them, while the opposition parties took far more decisive action. The ANC went so far as to welcome into their ranks one Craig Morkel, who fled to form his won party when caught stealing R33,000 before seeking solace in the protecting bosom of the ANC.
Yes, some of them were reprimanded, others even had to pay the money back but this certainly didn’t apply to the big wigs in the party. When that became a possibility the party went on the offensive and intensified its attack on the Scorpions, the body investigating this great fraud. In one of the most outrageous and cynical moves by a party renowned for these, the very people accused by the Scorpions of defrauding Parliament stood in judgement of the law-enforcing body in the process of axing it.
And then as an insult to taxpayers, it used public funds to buy the debt incurred by it’s own fraudsters thus closing the case nicely. A scandal dealt with in the most scandalous fashion possible.
Now, like the British public, one would have thought South African’s would have reacted to this with disgust and outrage. But no, hardly a peep. In fact the ANC won an overwhelming victory in the recent election and many of the fraudsters are still merrily feeding from the public trough. None in the party structures thought stealing from the public purse was cause enough to rule them out as candidates, let alone expelling from the party.
And it wasn’t there was some major issue that overshadowed the elections to rally the herds behind the ANC. In fact there was little to choose from in policy. The docile sheep who comprise the majority of the voting public came out in favour of corrupt politicians led by a deeply flawed character with various counts of racketeering, money laundering, corruption and fraud unanswered.
Gordon Brown can only look on enviously as Zuma’s elected officials have been carte blanche to plunder the public purse with impunity, while the bovine voting fodder shuffle silently by.
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