Is Ramaphosa deliberately bringing the ANC and the country into disrepute?

By: Sipho Singiswa*

The recent exposé by Arthur Frazer that Cyril Ramaphosa had an undeclared R50 million stolen from his house in Phala Phala may be the key that uncovers years of money laundering and shady dealings by the president. It also begs the question of whether this ‘apparent recklessness’ is a cover for a more sinister strategy.

The fact that he had not declared to the Reserve Bank, nor in his register of assets, the existence and theft of such a significant amount in foreign currency is a serious economic crime violating the laws of the Republic.

Added to this it has been alleged by various reports that the stolen millions are part of a larger amount estimated to be more than $80 million (R1.24 billion) that Ramaphosa concealed on various of his properties. Equally shocking is that this particular alleged criminal conduct by Ramaphosa also coincides with the period that the ANC has been unable to pay its staff salaries, forcing many to seek alternative employment or to stay home.

What many want to know is why the president keeps such a huge amount of untraceable cash at his private properties and then acts to ensure the theft of a portion of that money is kept secret from the authorities?

The answer to these questions may be found in the long history of Ramaphosa’s dealings with white capital and a penchant for running his presidency along with the same dictates as corporate culture.

This history predates the 1994 negotiated settlement when Ramaphosa’s link to the Anglo-Swiss multinational commodity trading and mining company can be traced back to his association with ANGLO-AMERICAN and ANGLOPLAT mine bosses, who recruited him into the neo-liberal inspired Urban Foundation prior to his meteoric rise in the mining union sector and ANC politics. Urban Foundation was one of the platforms created to execute the White corporate sector’s countermeasures against the international sanctions and the economic policies advocated by the ANC/SACP alliance. It was also designed to give the extraction industry giants a liberal veneer while maintaining direct access to the cheap Native African labour force that was not rigidly regulated by the apartheid government, which favoured the Afrikaner labour force. They felt that the National Party government’s rigidly racist policies had put their profits at risk.

It is alleged White mining bosses head-hunted Ramaphosa and others back in 1976 as potential agents to be recruited onto the board of the Urban Foundation to execute and legitimise its agenda.

After joining the Urban Foundation Ramaphosa was encouraged by the mining bosses to establish a national union of mineworkers platform (NUM). This ultimately led to the establishment of COSATU, to provide the mine bosses the desired direct access to the labour force. From the 1980s the White corporate-controlled media houses started marketing and portraying Ramaphosa as someone who possessed extraordinary leadership qualities useful in the management of a post-apartheid system of inclusion.

A few years later the mine bosses rewarded Ramaphosa for his loyalty with business shares and partnership deals disguised as ANC-inspired BEE-related initiatives. These deals catapulted him from a labour unionist leader to an overnight billionaire.

During this time Ramaphosa was marketed and positioned by White-owned media houses to be a major broker between the ANC-led government and the White business sector, which was set on positioning him as the Deputy President and their inside man. This ploy for the position as deputy president failed however and Ramaphosa joined the corporate world.

No longer the face of the ANC, Ramaphosa was wooed by white businesses as their obvious policy lobbyist and later became the Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) director of the Shanduka Group, a diversified industrial company with major interests in coal mining operations. The Group also had interests in the financial services, energy, food & beverages, telecommunications, property, and industrial sectors in South Africa, Mozambique, Mauritius, Uganda, Ghana, and Nigeria. It was officially established in 2001 largely with the help of White corporate bosses who saw the opportunity to exploit groups such as Shanduka and many other BEE-initiated groupings as their conduits to African markets and resources across the continent.

During this same period, Ramaphosa was also a BEE chairperson of the MTN Group that was accused of laundering over $12bn out of Nigeria between 2006 and 2016. A Nigerian forensic report also revealed that between October 2012 and January 2015, the MTN Group transferred more than $88,7 million from MTN Nigeria to Shanduka Telecommunication Mauritius.

In 2013 MTN also admitted to transferring unauthorised payments of N37.6 Billion to MTN Dubai between 2010 and 2013. However, the forensic report also revealed that over a period of more than fifteen (15) years MTN International had connived with South African and Nigerian politicians to transfer more than an estimated N90.2bn out of the country to tax haven countries, including Dubai and Mauritius. According to the report the transfers were then “on-paid” to MTN Dubai and a shelf company in Mauritius “with zero number of staff and which physical presence in the capital Port Louis is nothing more than a post office letter box”.

A report commissioned by both the United Nations and African Union in 2012 and released between 2013 – 2014 and compiled by a high-level panel led by former South African president Thabo Mbeki: “considered tax avoidance by multinationals to be an “illicit financial flow” and a significant drain on government resources across the continent”.

In total illicit financial flows, which included corruption and the proceeds of crime, were determined to be costing the continent $50billion a year”. The report stated.

It is not hard to suspect that Ramaphosa’s top positions in these companies point to his complicity in the corruption and offshoring of the above-mentioned billions.

Of great interest is the fact that Fraser’s exposé coincides with the recent US Department of Justice’s judgement in which Glencore agreed to pay fines of more than $1.1 billion to the US Department of Justice (USDOJ) after being found guilty of foreign bribery and global market manipulation schemes. It is important to note that the years shortly before and during which Glencore is found guilty of violating the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and manipulation of commodity prices coincide with Ramaphosa’s equally unprecedented and meteoric increase in his wealth as the local BEE chairperson of Glencore amongst other companies.

Glencore admitted in the US court to paying more than $100 million (R1.5 billion) in bribes to officials in Brazil, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria, South Sudan, and Venezuela between 2007 and 2018, and agreed to pay fines of more than $1.1 billion over to the USDOJ. Even though there is no direct reference to corruption links in South Africa in the judgement in what seems to be a calculated political consideration, Glencore is accused of having engaged in similar unethical practices that mirror the charges it’s been found guilty of in the USDOJ judgement.

That a Swiss-based international mining company, Glencore, incorporated its corruption and the bribery of politicians into its business culture as an acceptable standard business practice and was also found guilty of grand-scale international corruption, as well as the bribery of politicians during the same period Ramaphosa was its BEE chairperson and South African Head of Government Business, gives credence to allegations about money laundering and the unethical funding of Ramaphosa’s 2017-2018 political campaign for the presidency of the ANC and the country.

It has been argued that it was largely due to deliberate lapses in the judiciary system that Ramaphosa was able to abuse his political connectivity to help his corporate partners create artificial operating costs in order to pay less or not pay taxes for their self-enrichment. Equally, and despite this evidence, it is the fault-lines and rot in the judiciary system that enabled Ramaphosa to become the president of the country despite his complicity in tax evasion, money laundering, and offshoring.

This points to Ramaphosa’s penchant for running the ANC with the same corrupt corporate culture – a matter that has been so obviously overlooked by his cheerleaders, chapter 9 institutions, and mainstream media in their enthusiasm to overthrow former President Zuma. The hypocrisy is astounding.

Surely then Fraser’s exposé further reinforces Public Protector, Busisiwe Mkhwebane’s allegations that Ramaphosa has a money laundering case to answer to. It stands to reason then that Ramaphosa should not be trusted to lead the ANC and the country. Add to this latest expose his political conceit; corruption and lies, including his disgraceful conduct that contributed profoundly to the August 2012 Marikana Massacre, as well as his role in the racist corporate agenda to collapse and sell off State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) such as ESKOM and SAA to his corporate sponsors and political cronies.

Is Ramaphosa treating the ANC in the same way as he is dealing with SOEs – by running it into the ground in order to break it from the inside? After all, he is the poster boy of the corporate class with the mandate to leverage his influence to advocate for and ‘achieve’ corporate-friendly policy amendments, especially the South African Mining Policies. If so, is this to ensure that the ANC’s electoral dominance is destroyed by creating the possibility of a coalition government out of a selection of neoliberal parties and in collusion with his long-time business partners, to uphold and entrench the corporate status quo, protected from the threat of radical transformation? Is he then intentionally bringing the ANC into disrepute? Perhaps the answer lies in the leaked recordings around the use of public funds for the CR17 campaign when he mysteriously said – don’t worry comrades, I will fall on the sword and take the blame. Just what does his fall entail?

*Sipho Singiswa is a political commentator and filmmaker. He is co-founder of Media for Justice and Director of Media and International Programming of The Robben Island Ex-Political Prisoner International Human Rights Program.