By: Sipho Singiswa
It is not that there is no justice at all in the post-apartheid South Africa under the Ramaphosa administration, but in addition to self-serving greedy political characters, the judiciary system and law enforcement agencies are contaminated with corruption, cronyism, poor leadership, political factionalism, racism, and politically weaponised law enforcement. Sadly, this is all at the expense of the majority of citizens.
The differences in the handling of corruption and criminal allegations by law-enforcement agencies such as the Special Investigating Unit (SIU), National Prosecuting Authority of South Africa (NPA), and National Director of Public Prosecutions (NDPP), as well as the judiciary, is a case in point. This is seen in the handling of suspended ANC Secretary-General, Ace Magashule, the embattled former Public Protector, Busisiwe Mkhwebane, former ANC national treasurer, Zweli Mkhize, former ANC and State president, Jacob Zuma, and ESKOM’s former CEO, Brian Molefe, versus investigations of similar allegations, including the huge amount of foreign currency in undisclosed US dollars at Phala Phala, levelled against President Cyril Ramaphosa, Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy, Gwede Mantashe, and security upgrades at his three (3) houses by BOSASA, and sexual misconduct and assault against Minister of Finance, Enoch Godongwana, are notable. So too is the failure to lay corruption charges against leading White Capital bosses such as former CEO of Steinhoff International, Markus Jooste Johannes.
The contrast in the application of these investigations is wilfully designed to help discredit and eliminate ANC leaders who espouse a different political ideology, as well as those opposed to Ramaphosa’s style of leadership, his blatant corruption, and the White Monopoly Capital stranglehold of the country’s economy. In the run-up to the ANC’s 55th National Elective Conference in December 2022, this bias becomes more apparent.
We cannot overlook the fact that this fits into White ideology and its overwhelming preoccupation to install anti-pan-Africanist puppet governments in the African continent that help protect the western agenda no matter the long-term dire consequences to the well-being of the Native African people.
Their meddling in electoral procedures and decisions clearly aims to protect Ramaphosa and other implicated members of his executive from any prosecution that may result from the serious allegations of corruption levelled against him, and thus end his second-term presidential race and destabilise the guaranteed protection of the White monopoly capital.
An example of the entanglement of the legal system, Ramaphosa’s administration, and White Capital will is seen in the nucleus of the R225-million asbestos corruption charges faced by Magashule, premised on his lack of oversight as then Premier of Free State. One can also argue legally that Ramaphosa also has a case of corruption to answer to given that he was Deputy-State President (21 May 2014 – February 2018) and ‘Head of all
Government Business’ from 29 May 2014 to February 2018 when he became a full President, with the full mandate of overall oversight of all State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) including the country’s power supplier, Eskom; SAA; DENEL; Transnet, etc.
It is during this time when as both Deputy-President and Head of Government Business that multinational corporate companies were invited to help translate government policies into cost-cutting, but improved and efficient long-term implementation strategies to address the domestic priorities of the country and service delivery to the majority citizens.
The companies included highly paid consulting firms who also had both direct and indirect links to Ramaphosa’s private businesses which, among others, consist of mining and construction.
However, soon after the over-paid firms were contracted, all SOEs bounced from crisis to crisis while their coffers were being depleted by the companies using a criminal strategy orchestrated by the White-controlled firms to raid and loot State funds with very little services in return.
Consequently, Ramaphosa’s lack of oversight as Head of Government Business is central to how the SOEs’ coffers were looted and how this contributed to the consistent crisis and near collapse, they are experiencing today. It then makes sense that Ramaphosa should also face similar corruption charges relating to his own lack of oversight in the manner in which he had managed the SOEs.
Unfortunately, we have seen how selective, brutal, and corrupted the South African law enforcement agencies and judiciary system are when it comes to protecting Ramaphosa, his friends, and ultimately, White Monopoly Capital.
Members of the ANC Tripartite Alliance’s discontent with Ramaphosa’s administration are adamant that beneficiaries of Ramaphosa’s decades of the cosy and utilitarian relationship with his corporate sponsors, together with people still hoping to make personal gains from supporting Ramaphosa, are being blackmailed, coerced and manipulated into helping him get the second term by turning a blind eye to the economic crime allegations he is accused of.
Many of the beneficiaries include judges, academics, as well as those leading the NGOs and Chapter 9 institutions who, despite overwhelming evidence, have chosen to also turn a blind eye to allegations levelled against Ramaphosa. Although all profess to be dedicated in fighting corruption and maladministration, the majority have actively shielded Ramaphosa and Mantashe from being properly investigated by the now-suspended Public Protector, Advocate Busisiwe Mkhwebane, and other independent statutory bodies who have reasonable grounds for demanding a deeper probe into the corruption allegations.
The investigations could also lead to the opening of a CAN OF WORMS dating back to when Ramaphosa became the Deputy-President of the country and appointed the ‘Head of All Government Business’ in May 2014 with the overall mandate of full responsibility for the oversight management of all the SOEs.
Others have pointed out that, given the history of White Capital’s synonymity with both Ramaphosa and Mantashe’s extraction industry policy decisions, the can of worms could also prompt questions resurfacing about Ramaphosa’s recruitment into the Board of the Urban Foundation soon after the 1976 Student Uprising.
The foundation was initiated by three White oligarch families, the Oppenheimers and Menells, both mining barons, as well as Anton Rupert, considered the doyen of Afrikaner business, specifically to counter the international impact of the 1976 Student Uprising to the South African White Monopoly Capital, especially the mining industry.
But its long-term agenda and objective was to eventually undermine the combined Pan-Africanist views of the ANC, PAC, and BCM, including by subverting the liberation struggles for equality and socioeconomic transformation from within these movements in order to maintain White monopoly capital.
However, the Foundation needed ‘BLACK FACES’ TO FRONT ITS WHITE CAPITAL AGENDA and convince the international community to lift the international economic and cultural boycott against apartheid South Africa.
Coupled to their willingness to oblige them, Ramaphosa and Mantashe’s greed for money and power fitted the criteria and profiles that White monopoly capital uses as one of the tools to groom African leaders into the role of corrupt puppets, thus they were head-hunted to serve and protect White privilege in return for limited access to such privileges.
This ‘CAN OF WORMS’ could then, easily lead to further public scrutiny of both men’s sudden and meteoric rise in the ranks of the Tripartite Alliance leadership structures, Ramaphosa’s politically calculated close proximity to the White mining oligarchies and later Nelson Mandela, as well as who exactly funded the establishment of both NUM and COSATU?
It will also contribute to illustrating how African leaders such as Ramaphosa and Mantashe’s greed for money and power at all costs is exploited by western multinational industry bosses to siphon trillions of dollars out of targeted African countries.
However, it is evident that there is a corporate-orchestrated political campaign to systemically manipulate ANC leaders, lawmakers, law enforcement agencies, and the judiciary, as well as Chapter 9 institutions and mostly the US, UK, and western Euro-Zonefunded NGOs, in helping Ramaphosa and his cronies avoid any form of accountability and prosecution. The campaign includes ensuring at all costs that Ramaphosa wins a second term in order to continue protecting White capital and privilege.
Disillusioned members of the party argue that the president and the extraction industry bosses who have invested in him as well as in the capture of ANC leaders and the subversion of its commitment to an authentic socioeconomic transformation program fear that a lot is at stake if Ramaphosa does not get the approval of ANC branches for a second term.
This is why Ramaphosa’s cronies and corporate sponsors fear that a transparent investigation of the litany of allegations will seriously dent his chances of winning a second term. These include cross-border money racketeering; laundering; illegal commodity price fixing, as well as money transfers and complicity in international tax evasion in which many of them are also implicated.
Ramaphosa and his associates know that if he loses the presidential campaign, he will no longer enjoy the immunity enjoyed by a Head of State, which he has abused to frustrate and avoid proper investigations and a high probability of prosecution and convictions given the amount of evidence supporting the allegations.
Consequently, and in contradiction to his public proclamations and ‘empty rhetoric’ about instilling the values of a clean administration to help renew and unite the ANC, the captured and self-serving ‘Thuma Mina’ deployees in the ANC Tripartite Alliance leadership, with secret bank accounts flushed with illegal acquired US dollars, have, at the drop of a dollar, been hard at work cajoling ANC structures to turn a blind eye to all Ramaphosa’s serious transgressions, including the allegations of money laundering, tax evasion and abuse of power and state resources.
It is critical to note that what feeds the trepidation of Ramaphosa’s corporate sponsors is not concerns about strengthening open democracy, transparency, accountability, and justice processes. Neither is it about the need to de-colonise the current South African Constitution and Judiciary system, still steeped in neo-colonial-liberal ideology. Nor is it premised on genuine concerns about the forever widening gap between the ‘HAVES and the HAVE-NOTS or about the injustices of inequality access to land rights and ownership, thus the means of production and livelihood for the majority Native African people. Rather the apprehension stems mostly from White industry bosses’ and their rejection of the ANC’s proclaimed pro-working-class socioeconomic transformation program, which they consider a threat to their White monopoly capital. If Ramaphosa loses the ANC presidential campaign how will the White Capital agenda continue to maintain their stranglehold of South Africa’s economic resources? They will no doubt encounter serious challenges without him at the helm of the ANC and the State.
This is simply White Capital wanting to milk the cow dry. Ramaphosa, who had been groomed and trained since 1976, is its chosen Head Shepherd in whose loyalty White Capital had invested hugely, thus they rely on or command him and his political cronies, such as Mantashe, to help tame the wild Native African cow they want to still milk.
With Ramaphosa’s administration in place for another term, the White corporate sector is assured the right to continue its inhumane exploitation of the country, its people, and corrupt state officials as its economic conduits while simultaneously using the country as a springboard to the rest of the African continent’s resources.
Even to the politically naive and ignorant, it should now be obvious that the ‘so-called’ Mr. Clean, a term bestowed on Ramaphosa by the neo-liberal media to help his Cyril Ramaphosa 2017 (CR17) campaign, is nothing more than just a White Monopoly Capital sponsored political phantom. Ramaphosa is, plain and simple, merely sloganeering when he uses terms such as committed to the ANC ‘Renewal and Unity’, ‘Fighting Corruption’, and ‘instilling the values of Clean Administration. These public proclamations are nothing more than his usual choreographed and rehashed empty rhetoric’.
Comrades must remember this is the same Ramaphosa who, while hiding millions of undeclared US Dollars in his furniture, pleaded poverty to justify his campaign to disband ANC structures such as the ANCWL, MK, and ANCYL, instead of embracing and helping them as part of the ANC’ Renewal and Unity campaign.
*Sipho Singiswa is an ex-Robben Island political prisoner and a well-known documentary filmmaker and political commentator. He is a founder of Media for Justice and Head of media and international programming for Robben Island Ex Political Prisoner Human Rights Programme.
