Will the ANC allow the championing of its renewal by an alleged criminal and corrupt, Ramaphosa and his cohort?

By: Clyde Ramalaine

The ANC is eight weeks from its 55th Conference, where its policies will be engaged among others, but its next leadership will be elected. The ANC finds itself in more than inclement weather since it, at the organisational level, attests to an organisation in disarray, contorted in endemic factionalism, and its leaders accused of corruption. It is an entity that continues to fail the primary employment contract between itself and its staff. It is an organisation whose primary leagues are all dysfunctional, and its branch structures, in some instances, are suspect and open for abuse. However, if the organisation is in a deplorable state, it is perhaps best understood in the thick cloud surrounding its president.

Regardless of the tardy processes, we have heard Ramaphosa so often rely on for a convenient means to deflect from being accountable; leadership must inspire confidence. In a sense, these ‘processes’ appear to be carefully orchestrated schemes, with the December 2022 conference as the epicentre. Phala Phala appears more than wet diapers for Ramaphosa.

Ramaphosa and his cohort of coat tail riders find it increasingly challenging to continue propagating his leadership as fit to lead an anti-corruption campaign with organisational renewal and unity as its aim. The proverbial elephant in the room, among others, remains the unfolding criminal and constitutional investigations immanent in a panel-led legislative inquiry, SARB inquiries, SARS, and Public Protector investigations.

Ramaphosa, the darling of a specific crop of media, cannot continue misleading the ANC and South Africa that he is the antithesis of corruption, the signpost of transparent leadership, or a constitutional and law-abiding citizen. One of the central hallmarks of leadership is transparency; unfortunately, Ramaphosa, despite his usual platitudes, does not represent transparency. He stands accused of having committed crimes, some criminal, others of a treasonous description. These all warrant him not occupying the venerable seat of President of SA. Remember that in 2017, Ramaphosa decided to run his campaign for high office with anti-corruption and state capture as central themes. He associated his campaign with morality as a central premise when we all knew he had more than feet in the mud.

I guess I am asking for a contextualization of the ANC under Ramaphosa. If we today attempt to ask if Ramaphosa is fit to lead the ANC and SA a day further, we cannot do it without understanding Ramaphosa from the moment of his 2017 Campaign. While slates in the ANC attest to a long history and reality, it always remained informal. However, in September 2017, Ramaphosa distinguished himself as the first contender for the ANC presidency to formally announce his slate which he framed in typical corporate sector lingo of ‘a dream team’. While money was always part of the ANC elections, Ramaphosa’s CR 17 campaign funding presented something new to ANC politics. Never before in the ANC history did any candidate need R1bn to become president of the ANC.

Thus, Ramaphosa’s presidency legitimised and eternalised the undeniable role of capital in ANC politics as a deciding factor for its leadership. Shall we ever forget how the current Minister of Justice and Correctional Services, Ronald Lamola, was caught on a voice clip distributing money and buying candidates outside the Nasrec venue? Lamola is on record for buying delegates in the last Conference. We dare not take the empty rantings of a Lamola seriously on him or Ramaphosa working to keep anyone accountable. Unfortunately, this is Ramaphosa’s ANC.

Ramaphosa thus repurposed the ANC by eternalizing CR17 members to work for an agenda from 2017 until now. Meaning it is perhaps the first time that beyond a CR17 campaign supporters and backers continued to centralize the ANC programmes, NEC meetings, NWC sessions, and outlook around a previous campaign.

I understand what Ramaphosa’s term defines in the ANC party context better through the lens of the Republican Party Candidate Donald Trump One finds some similarities between Ramaphosa and Donald Trump striking. Both claim to be people in business and billionaires in their distinct national settings. Donald Trump came to power without ever disclosing his tax situation. Until now, Trump has not taken the USA into confidence on his tax situation. Ramaphosa, until today, has refused to reveal his funders for his CR17 campaign. With the help of a captured judiciary, these records are sealed and South Africans may never know. In his own way, Donald Trump repurposed the Republican Party in ways it was never understood even by lifelong Republicans. I am postulating that this claim is true of Ramaphosa too. Trump captured the Republican Party as his personal fiefdom; Ramaphosa is known as beholden to white and western global constituencies outside the ANC and has found a means to capture the ANC, its NEC, and structures until these attest pliant and willing partners in the state of leadership and arguably crimes of corruption as he stands accused for.

The NEC must share the blame if Ramaphosa is accused of destroying the ANC. To illustrate this point of capturing NEC members. The Sunday Times of last week carried an opinion piece from ANC Chairperson and Northern-Cape Premier Zamani Saul. He may sense that the road to the 55th Conference for his boss is littered with more than Karoo thistles, and unfortunately not as smooth as was predicted. Saul would now frantically attempt blackmailing the ANC with the following words; if Ramaphosa does not make it, the next NEC will disregard the State of Capture Report.

Please permit me to cite another example of the capturing of ANC leaders under Ramaphosa. Do not forget it was the Minister of Finance Enoch Godongwana, who recently stood accused of sexual abuse on incident that played off on Women’s Day, took the liberty to tell us Phala- Phala is nothing but a political attempt to stop Ramaphosa from a second term. We cautioned Godongwana as one giving oversight to both SARS and SARB for being irresponsible in making such statements. We asked if he was not indirectly influencing the outcomes of the SARB and SARS investigations into Ramaphosa’s Phala Phala. I guess this is the state of the ANC, where NEC members and ministers, and premiers see nothing wrong or do not see any need for Ramaphosa to be held accountable.

I have elsewhere contended that COVID-19 had impacts on both Trump and Ramaphosa. In the USA, it marked the end of Trump when in SA, it initially gave Ramaphosa a reprieve since he could now use this to save his already failing presidency by March 2020. While I initially held that COVID-19 protected Ramaphosa, the Glencore corruption findings in the USA, and Phala-Phala crimes dating back to February 2020, it would appear like Trump is about to bury his presidency. It is a given that Trump loves the media attention, and Ramaphosa loves being celebrated in the media as a hero and messiah.

The words of Ludwig von Mises protest more than relevant in this epoch. Von Misses contended, “There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, and vile men.” At the hand of Von Mises’ conclusion on a particular type of menace that plausibly has a South African society in this epoch embodied in its executive leadership, namely President Cyril Ramaphosa. Authentic leadership must inspire trustworthiness, transparency, respect for law and order, and authenticity in serving as the custodian of justice. South Africa deserves nothing less.

In an earlier musing, I postulated that under Ramaphosa, South Africa has state capture for the first time since all three arms of the state executive, parliament, and the judiciary are all caught up in defence of the political survival of Ramaphosa. It would appear that those who stand for a Ramaphosa second term count on the idea that a case will never emerge as led by the NPA. In politics, you hedge your bets, and indeed this self-interested and serving group is almost arrogantly accepting that as the correct unfolding. If it is true that this is what it’s behind the CR22, the issue becomes from where this conviction is. Is it rooted in the knowledge that their faction is in control of the State investigative apparatus? Indeed, the integrity of ANC in organisational reputation does not remotely feature on the radar of the CR22 crowd.

It is accepted that another member of the CR coattail rider – crowd like Ronald Lamola will bark empty claims of accountability although tangible in factional hymnals and only about others but never allow that accountability to stand for Ramaphosa. Under the guise of charging and arresting their political foes, they will seek to deceive ANC and SA that they are working to clean up the ANC. They will parade and showboat in this silly season, pretending they hold the meridian and moral line when we all know they stand in the shadow of the naked emperor who hopes to avoid all forms of accountability.

In an unprecedented series of events, former presidents Thabo Mbeki, Jacob Zuma, both twice ballot-elected ANC and SA presidents, and Kgalema Motlanthe, who served as Deputy President of the ANC and for eight months as caretaker president following the recalling of Mbeki in 2008 spoke this weekend. In an emphatic sense, they asserted that Ramaphosa stood accused of corruption and had a case to answer. A month ago, Kgalema Motlanthe, in an interview, said that President Cyril Ramaphosa might be hiding something through his delays in responding to the controversial Phala-Phala Farm burglary.

At an SDG address, Mbeki asserts, “When you talk renewal of the ANC, you’re carrying too much baggage of wrong people. You have to have the courage to face that you have a renewed ANC led by criminals”. Our president is under a lot of pressure. I am talking about President Ramaphosa… around this matter of Phala-Phala farm. There are criminal investigations going on. Parliament has its own processes. The Reserve Bank has done what it wants to do… What relevance does that all have to the leadership of the ANC that will come out of Nasrec at the end of the year, or is it entirely irrelevant? Former president Thabo Mbeki says the ANC has to decide what must happen if a parliamentary process finds that President Cyril Ramaphosa has a case to answer regarding the Phala-Phala saga.

Mbeki contends the ANC’s top leaders should meet to discuss whether or not Ramaphosa should step aside if the independent panel investigating the Phala-Phala saga finds that he has a prima facie case to answer. He asks what happens when the Parliamentary Investigation’s panel finds that Ramaphosa has committed an impeachable offence.

Hearing Zuma, he is categorically clear “Conducting private business while holding the high office of president is nothing but corruption, which is inconsistent with the nature of that office and the constitution. It’s inconsistent with the oath of office taken by the president, and those who defend such deeds taken by the president both in the executive and legislature, commit treason against the constitution.” Your president has committed treason….”

The Ramaphosa defenders may reduce the commentary or analysis of former presidents to factional politics in an elective season, hoping to imprint their interest on the outcomes of the upcoming Conference. At the same time, one could make Mbeki, Zuma, and Motlanthe’s comments off as mere politicking. What they raised regarding the status of both Ramaphosa and organization warrants engaging as it relates to the health, sanity, and reputation of the ANC. It cannot be that the renewal of the ANC is entrusted to criminals, as Mbeki contends.

To underscore Motlanthe’s comment about Ramaphosa having something to hide, we see the weekend papers leading with Wally Rhode being charged as the fall guy for Phala-Phala The Sunday World reports that Head of Presidential Protection Unit Major General Wally Rhode is charged with over the Phala-Phala Cover up. Rhoode, it is claimed, was served a notice of suspension by Lt. General Samson Shitlabane. He was slapped with three far-reaching charges over his alleged failure to report the multi-million-rand theft in February 2020. Such includes,’ you allegedly committed misconduct on 2020-06-04 at or near Phala-Phala Game Farm by directing the police officers to do away with the Occurrence Book where the second incident was reported and that the incident must not be reported.’

The charges also include the following.: “On 2020-06-26 to 2020-06-27, you allegedly committed misconduct by misrepresenting the facts to the national commissioner when you indicated in terms of your itinerary that you were travelling to Namibia for protection duties of the president whereas in truth, you, the president, did not travel to Namibia and had no plans of travelling to that country.”

The Sunday Independent unravelled the recent reporting of the theft at Phala Phala in August of 2022. It is a given that the opening of the case two months after laying a criminal case by Arthur Fraser at Rosebank Police Station is more than a concession on the part of Ramaphosa and his team that it was wrong not to have opened a case. While Rhoode is facing suspension, as earlier alluded, we dare not exonerate Ramaphosa for the non-disclosing of money to the tune of millions, foreign currency in his possession, regardless of how he may protest.

We dare not turn a blind eye to the fact that Ramaphosa knew no case was opened. That he contacted his Namibian counterpart on the burglary, that Rhode, by implication, acted in the knowledge of Ramaphosa when he and Bejane Chauke [who is also vying for a Top Six position – nothing wrong with his ambition] decided to cross the border to investigate. It does not make sense to contend that Ramaphosa knew nothing if his political advisor and the trusted cupbearer were in on this.

These are the circumstances under which the ANC president seeks to emerge as the trusted leader at the 55th Conference in December.

Ramaphosa and his advisors pin their hopes on survival through a cluster of integrated state apparatus abuse, which is crystal clear. These include the NPA, SAPS, SARS, SARB, Parliament, Hawks, and the Public Protector. All of them have simultaneous investigations on the said matter, albeit for different aspects pertaining to their interests in it’s my of crimes he stands accused of. Ramaphosa, known for his appetite for obfuscation, hopes to let processes unfold apparently into eternity beyond the ANC Conference.

However, Ramaphosa, despite the allegations opened case and unfolding events of his former protection unit head Rhode being suspended and the hopelessly belated opening of a theft crime in August for what occurred more than 2.5 years ago, advocated himself as no constitutional delinquent. Neither is he owning up to his role in all of this. While he evidently hopes to continue deceiving ANC and SA with the idea that he is cleaning up the ANC when he stood when his predecessors in state officials told the nation and world Ramaphosa is corrupt and that corruption is tangible in the Phala-Phala allegations.

Why is Ramaphosa so protected? How does the ANC not appreciate that its president has a case to answer and has brought the organisation disrepute and warrants stepping down as SA president? Why would it not bother ANC defenders of Ramaphosa to call him to accountability? Why did SA have to beg him to share the titbits of carefully crafted information until now on the Phala-Phala crimes? The answer is simple the ANC under Ramaphosa is the Republican Party of Donald Trump.

The coat tail riders of Ramaphosa pin their hopes on the NPA and Parliamentary process, finding nothing to substantiate a case against Ramaphosa and using the State Capture Report of Zondo as only implementable by Ramaphosa. This claim is neither honest nor objective since Ramaphosa sits with the report in which some of his faction’s names appear. If he hopes to implement any of the report items, he will have to hurdle dealing with his brigade of coattail riders the same he needs going into December 2022. This cheap blackmail is now the new song, even by some political commentators.

This is the context and environment against which the ANC must decide its next leadership.

So disingenuous are the backers of Ramaphosa like Saul. Similar to his boss [Ramaphosa], Saul fails the accountability test on a grand scale. He parades as a ‘moral beacon’ while sitting for the last six months on the SIU report that incriminates his Provincial Secretary Deshi Ngxanga in violating Supply Chain Management Policy in the David Kruiper Municipality. Instead of signing the report, which Ramaphosa already informed him of, he is seeking meetings to find out who the whistleblowers are. In August this year, Gauteng whistleblower Babita Deokaran for doing the right thing was killed. The question is, why is it essential for Saul and his interest group to know who the whistleblowers are on the violation of SCM policy in the Dawid Kruiper Municipality or any of the provincial departments? It is clear from standard SIU processes, which include Lamola and Ramaphosa that both are aware of this SIU Investigation. Yet Saul is hosting Ramaphosa every week in the Northern Cape; this is the accountability the coat tail riders and Ramaphosa represents.

Following Mbeki, Zuma, and Motlanthe speaking, it was evident that he would create an opportunity also to speak. A hastily put-together moment to address was necessary according to his spin doctors. Ramaphosa, in his usual web of obfuscation, tried to mesmerize fools with this address. What, then, did he do but give us the summary of the actual report?

He tried to show the complexity of what is asked to be implemented when he could not do the most basic thing letting go of his cohort.

Why could he not tell cabinet ministers. I know you are taking this report on review, but you cannot serve in my cabinet since I take this report seriously. Cabinet members have no union representation, so it was the easiest thing to do – and he failed spectacularly at that.

Why Parliament needs a bigger budget to perform its constitutional oversight remains a mystery. Establishing another unit here and there to combat corruption is part of his obfuscating agenda. If the existing infrastructure measurable in state institutions cannot fulfill its roles, what strength will another unit in the NPA help? These units of anti-corruption are simply a waste of money and fresh air. The master of obfuscation is at it again. He is always big on talking about billions of cash to be spent; he pretends he is working. Duplicating structures makes SA think he is hard at work to improve things.

Why did Ramaphosa not come to tell us before coming here that I had already acted against ministers in my cabinet? I have asked Gwede Mantashe, Zizi Kodwa, David Mahlobo, and Thabang Makwetla, to name a few, to leave the cabinet since they are implicated in the Zondo Report.

Well, he can’t because he needs them to help him get to a second term. He will fool the ignorant into thinking he is serious with his friend’s report. In the end, state capture, while mentioned one million times by him, remains a smokescreen understood in fictional and factional accusations.

Section 3 of the State Capture report categorically asserts that everything Bosasa did was corrupt. He then flags some I already mentioned, but as expected, he jumped the R500k minimum Ramaphosa, and his son benefitted directly from the corrupt Bosasa. Ramaphosa himself failed to explain his benefitting from Gavin Watson’s corrupt Bosasa.

Zondo’s report strays from speculations via politics to electoral reform. In a preconceived mind rejecting those he disliked. On PRASA, we are told a special Commission is possible because of the suspicion of Zondo. Unfortunately, Zondo does not explain why he blissfully ignored the Auditor General, a Chapter 9 institution’s report for the financial years 2016 and 2017. The AGSA’s report found the appointment of Werksman Attorney’s an irregular exercise. This information is contained in the Final Management Letters issued by the A-G for both of these years. Effectively Zondo says we must strengthen public institutions but goes in his report to undermine the findings of the A-G, a chapter 9 institution to protect Werksman and allies of his hero Pravin Gordhan and Ivan Pillay. All these were directly involved in the Werksman investigations. According to his logic, Werksman Attorneys are corruption busters. By the way, Werksman Attorney’s charges were more than R400m.

Yet I told you long ago the “Cyril and Raymond R1bn show” was about his second term and the latter’s occupying the CJ big office. You scratch my back, and I scratch yours. Zondo ignores all of this. Zondo’s report, with its natural appetite for politics more than law, deserves the dustbin.

Ramaphosa said absolutely nothing; it was, as usual, hullabaloo and an empty presentation, just broad strokes on a canvas we as citizens must interpret for art. In between claiming success on corruption when the Afribarometer is emphatic, corruption under Ramaphosa has increased.

Why did he not just release a statement? Ramaphosa had to speak because three presidents told him he was corrupt and not fit to lead further. Even if it was going to be dog lunch, he was dishing up.

If no case emerged, Ramaphosa’s leadership presided over the destruction of the ANC, the movement entrusted to work to obliterate unemployment, inequality, and poverty. A dream until now deferred.

Indeed as I long ago observed, Cyril Matamela Ramaphosa attests to a failed leadership suspended in a crisis of legitimacy and distrust.