The time has come to call out those ANC leaders who fail the people of South Africa

By: Carl Niehaus

These are emotional times for those of us who have in the past been the victims of apartheid repression. I have told how the memories of arrests, torture, and imprisonment under apartheid came back when I was recently arrested for trumped-up COVID-19 charges.

At the relaunch of Africa News 24/7 as Africa News Global on Thursday this week, when I was asked to say a few words, and I started by referring to my illegal arrest in front of the Estcourt Prison, where President Zuma was/is being incarcerated as the first political prisoner since the dawn of democracy in 1994.

These remarks were met with a sprinkling of uncomfortable sniggering in the audience, probably because there were senior ANC NEC members and cabinet Ministers such as Zizi Kodwa, Deputy Minister of Intelligence, and Lindiwe Zulu, Minister of Social Development, in attendance. The impression was that I was putting them on the spot, and calling them out. Of course, that was exactly what I was doing! Ultimately this is no laughing matter.

To have an ANC government, having been elected by the majority of South African exactly because of its history as the pre-eminent Liberation Movement, and the promises that it will deliver a better life to the majority black (especially African) poor, deploying thousands of heavily armed soldiers and police officers against our own people is certainly not something to be taken lightly. To have the same ANC governing party allowing the misappropriation, and wanton theft, of billions of Rands of COVID-19 emergency relief funds, is similarly not a matter to be taken lightly. To be the Liberation Movement that presided for over 27 uninterrupted years of being in government over the destruction of people’s hopes to get out of poverty, to the point where now we have the highest levels of unemployment and inequality in the history of our country, is nothing less than heartbreaking. To be a governing party that mismanaged its own affairs to the extent that it cannot pay employees, and criminally contravened labor laws over years of not paying compulsory Provident Fund, UIF, and medical aid contributions, and then on top of it all to fail to meet the IEC electoral provisions, and fail to register candidates in 35 municipalities (perhaps even more) for the local government elections, is pathetic in the extreme!

Most unsettling is that these are only some of the more recent examples, and are by no means an exhaustive list of maladministration and malfeasance of gigantic proportions, covering years of increasing rot.

It is evident that those of us within the ANC, and in South African society in general, who call the ANC leadership out for their greed, incompetence, and overall pathetic failure to govern and to carry out the historical liberation task of the ANC, are now to be silenced at all and every cost. Within the ANC we are targeted, trumped disciplinary charges are brought against us, we are ‘urgently suspended’, with indecent haste and scant, or no, attention to the ANC’s own disciplinary procedures, and in flagrant contravention of the ANC Constitution.

In addition, the laws of our country are weaponized for factional political purposes, and law enforcement agencies, specifically the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) and our compromised courts are abused to target specific political opponents on flimsy and trumped-up charges. President Jacob Zuma, and the Secretary-General of the ANC, comrade Ace Magashule, are only two of the most prominent examples, there are many more among us.

The recent terrible violence and looting that erupted throughout South Africa was the inevitable consequence of the dismal failure of the leadership of the African National Congress to govern and to address the hopes and true needs of the people of South Africa. The illegal arrest of President Jacob Zuma was the spark in an already smoldering powder keg of broken ANC government promises, desperate poverty, and the horizonless agony of permanent institutionalized unemployment for the majority of young people.

No, this was no carefully planned ‘insurrection’, as the propaganda story goes that President Ramaphosa and his lackeys are trying to peddle, it was the upwelling of our people’s desperation, on the back of government failure of tragic proportions to even address the most basic needs of the majority of South Africans. It was lost hope, and desperation welling up, and eventually erupting like a long-smoldering volcano, when the one symbol of hope and caring leadership, in the person of President Zuma, was so blatantly targeted and illegally imprisoned.

I am deliberately referring to the wanton failure of those in the leadership of the ANC, and without hesitation, I am fingering the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the ANC, and the ANC deployees in the National Executive (Cabinet), from President Ramaphosa down. It is not the vast majority of the rank and file grassroots members of the ANC who are failing our people, but these self-centered leaders who are more concerned about aggrandizing themselves and lining their pockets, than serving the people and carrying out the historical revolutionary liberation task of the ANC.

The extent to which the majority of grassroots ANC branch members may be held complicit, is in so far as we have not withdrawn our democratic support from these charlatans, masquerading as leaders, quicker and voted them out. As a consequence, we now have an ANC NEC where the majority of members are not in the service of the people, but in the service of their ever bulging personal bank accounts, linked to their shameless fronting for, and servitude to, White Monopoly Capital (WMC).

Overall, we, as the general ANC membership, had been far too tolerant of a culture of a permanent so-called ‘leadership’, where some aged, even octogenarian, floundering leaders are carried along on our soldiers and perpetually re-elected into leadership positions, regardless of their lack of performance, and increasingly diminishing revolutionary zeal and care for the people. This must come to an urgent, immediate, end!

All of this is even more intolerable when we recall that the election of President Ramaphosa, and his cronies to the NEC of the ANC, was ‘facilitated’ by huge sums of money. What is euphemistically referred to in some ANC circles, as the ‘brown envelope’ syndrome? However, now we must call a spade a spade: It was nothing less than the illegal and corrupt crime of vote-buying.

All of this was in blatant contravention of the ANC Constitution. To add insult to injury the same ones who committed this crime even tried to remove Rule 25.5 from the ANC Constitution, that prohibits the use of money to influence the outcome of elections in the ANC!

That the CR17 bank accounts, that can shed light on these alleged dark, illegal, and unconstitutional maneuverings, remain sealed by the courts on the explicit request of President Ramaphosa, makes all of this even more intolerable. I repeat what I have said ad nauseam: If there is nothing to hide, why the desperation to keep these bank accounts sealed at all costs? The best disinfectant is sunshine, let those bank accounts be opened, and in the glaring light of day let it be known to all of us what is being hidden in dark closed bank vaults.

Instead of engaging in a democratic and accountable manner all of these genuinely serious matters, the COVID-19 pandemic is being abused as a reason to prevent accountability. If there was any shred of political will, creative and perfectly legal ways would have been found to hold the National General Council (NGC), that is so critically important for accountability in the ANC. However, the NGC is deliberately not being convened, not because of COVID-19 (that is only abused as a convenient excuse), but because there is no political will from the faction that is now in control of the ANC NEC to be held accountable for their appalling record of mismanagement, corruption, and failure to implement most of the Resolutions of the 54th National Conference. Once again, let’s not beat about the bush: The failure to hold the ANC NGC is a blatant political manipulation by the dominant faction in the ANC NEC, in order to avoid being held accountable by the membership of the ANC.

Those of us who openly say this, are being vilified and silenced. Stratcom propaganda tactics are being used to ‘frame’ us as so-called ‘instigators’ of a nonexistent ‘insurrection’. The objective is to deliberately portray the peaceful and lawful protest actions of the #FreeJacobZuma campaign as if being part of the sad and terrible recent violence and looting.

No matter that the #FreeJacobZuma campaign always calls for peaceful and lawful protest, a malicious narrative is being pushed, despite the fact that not a single shred of credible evidence had been presented, that we were among those who egged on the violence and looting, and even worse that we were somehow part of the ‘instigators’ of the so-called ‘insurrection’ that they have conjured up.

This is the politics of deliberate scapegoating in order in order to tarnish legitimate political and ideological opposition as ‘insurrectionist’ and ‘vigilantism’ so that instead of engaging us on the democratic political playing field, state security apparatuses are used to criminalize legitimate political, democratic. State agencies (i.e. State Security, NPA, SAPS, and a biased, bought, judiciary) are abused to suppress, arrest and imprison fellow citizens. Such repression of our legitimate constitutional rights indicates a growing, alarming, tendency to subvert our democratic state into becoming a dictatorship.

Centralizing intelligence (misleadingly called ‘State Security’) under an insecure, and ideologically suspect, leader is always the first step of establishing the foundation for a dictatorship. Hitler did it, and so did Mussolini and Pinochet, and now President Ramaphosa is doing the same.

The last time this was done in South Africa was by the apartheid so-called ‘securocrat’ State President, P W Botha when he wanted to suppress the growing community-based, people’s resistance to apartheid. It is exactly the same mentality.

The Mufamadi Report that recommended that President  Ramaphosa centralizes power, was also critical of President Zuma being close to intelligence, claiming that it would be politicized.

Now Sydney Mufamadi as the newly appointed ‘State Security’ Adviser will be central to the politicization of intelligence.

This faction never ceases to amaze!

The timing of moving ‘State Security’ into the Office of the President is very significant. It follows after President Ramaphosa had deliberately chosen to characterize the outbreaks of the desperate and tragic violence as an “insurrection”, despite no evidence to back it up.

President Ramaphosa’s decision to label the violent expression of the anger, frustration, and desperation by the poor as an “insurrection”, is based on a deliberate decision to tarnish his political and ideological opponents as ‘insurrectionists’ and “‘vigilantes’ so that instead of engaging us on the democratic political playing field, he can use the state intelligence and security apparatuses to criminalize our legitimate political, democratic, opposition to him, and to suppress, arrest and imprison us.

Thus, we must get ready for a dramatic increase in surveillance, harassment, suppression, and arrest of Ramaphosa’s domestic political opponents…

It is also in this context that a clarion call of warning must be sounded that what we are now experiencing is similar, and in some instances even worse, than the repressive militarization that we experienced under the apartheid regime. Evidently, our country is now becoming a dictatorship, with armored vehicles and heavily armed soldiers and police officers being deployed at every court hearing, where supporters of democracy, and the #FreeJacobZuma campaign,  are being charged on trumped-up charges in order to silence their democratic and salient calls for justice.

It is extremely disconcerting to take note that the newly appointed Minister of Defense and Military Veterans, Ms. Thandi Modise, has announced that her first task as Minister is to establish an Army ‘Riot Squad’ to act against peaceful protests. Out of all the priorities that she should have, as she is confronted by a faltering and poorly resourced SANDF, and a Department of Military Veterans (DMV) that is riddled with corruption, and dismally failing to address the plight of military veterans, the priority that Minister Modise decided to concentrate on, is to establish a ‘Riot Squad’. It would have been funny if it was not so serious and tragic!

The awful irony of this announcement, and especially the name ‘Riot Squad’, must not be lost on us. This is exactly what the apartheid regime called the special forces Riot Squad units that they used to viciously break up, and oppress, community-based peaceful protests against apartheid.

The ‘Riot Squad’ that Minister Modise now plans to establish has exactly the same mission. This Riot Squad will turn out to be nothing less than the jackboots of an increasingly dictatorial state, and ultimately they will become the same askaris and death squads, that the similarly named Riot Squads of the apartheid era used to be.

Those of us who care about democracy, freedom of speech, and the protection of our hard-fought civil liberties must be under no illusion about the intolerant and vicious tsunami of repressive undemocratic action that we are now increasingly up against …

Let me in conclusion return to the launch and rebranding event of the re-named African News Global, where I called out the ANC NEC members, and Cabinet Ministers, who were present. It was one of the few appropriate forums to do so, because of the courage that this online news platform showed in speaking truth to power. They have lived up to their slogan: Journalism of Courage: Non-stop! They have given those of us, whom some of the very same ANC NEC members who were present have tried to silence, a voice and the opportunity to speak out. As I have said in my speech, for that we are very grateful.

I am indeed unapologetic about having called them out because these members of the National Executive Committee of the ANC must answer for what they are party to. In the instance of the Deputy Minister of Intelligence, Mr. Zizi Kodwa, it is untenable that he waxes lyrically about his commitment to a “diversity of voices” when he is the Deputy Minister of Intelligence centralized in the Presidency and is inevitably co-responsible for the intimidation and arrest of those of us who exercise our democratic right to freedom of speech to call for the immediate release of President Zuma. This is hypocrisy of the worst kind!

Those very same NEC members and members of Cabinet, who were present saw their political fortunes rise under President Jacob Zuma. They know very well how they were elevated by him from political obscurity, and how for some of them it was under President Zuma that they got their first recognition, and trust, to be appointed as members of the National Executive.

Today, when President Zuma is politically targeted, persecuted, and illegally imprisoned, they look the other way and are quiet. They sit in NEC meetings where decisions such as the political imprisonment of President Zuma, and the suspensions of the Secretary-General of the ANC, comrade Ace Magashule, and other longstanding members of the ANC, are applauded and decided on, and at best they remain silent – even worse they concur with these travesties. The time is now to call them out for exactly who they are: Theirs is not comradeship, it is pathetic cowardice!

They will do well to remember that in politics the wheel always turns. The abuse of power, and the selling out of our liberation struggle, will not last. Ultimately things will change. The democratic will of the majority of poor and oppressed, that they now so callously disregard, will eventually prevail. There is indeed political karma, and in the not too distant future, that karma will knock on their doors. This is not a threat, it is simply a reality.

In the meantime, those of us who are committed to a fully liberated and democratic South Africa – and there are many of us – have a sacred democratic and revolutionary mission not to allow ourselves to be intimidated, and to cower. We will continue to speak fearlessly, insisting on our constitutional right to Freedom of Speech, and we will continue to mobilize rolling peaceful mass action, which are lawful, in order to advance our peaceful legitimate democratic revolutionary objectives.

* Carl Niehaus, is a former ambassador of South Africa to The Netherlands. He is also a former member of the NEC of the ANC. He is an ANC veteran, whose ANC membership is temporarily suspended. He wrote this article in his personal capacity.