On selling arms to the Brother Leader Gaddafi

Muammar al-Gaddafi is clearly an unhinged, narcissistic, megalomaniac. The fact that he looks like a very scary, aged, version of Michael Jackson might be interesting and (for those of us not living in Libya) rather amusing, but the fact that he could appear on television this week and state that anyone who lifted their arm against the regime would be executed (those would be all you “rats” and “cats” who have had a cup of drugged Nescafe and was therefore acting as agents of both Western imperialist and al-Queda forces) suggest just what a thoroughly evil and unhinged man he is. He might have been generous to the ANC (and according to completely unconfirmed rumours, to President Jacob Zuma personally),  but that does not mean that he is not a very bad and dangerous man.

In its 2010 report on human rights abuses in Libya, Amnesty International concluded that despite some reforms the Libyan government continued to be involved in the systematic violation of the human rights of its citizens. It stated that freedom of expression, association and assembly continued to be severely curtailed and that the authorities showed little tolerance of dissent.

Critics of the government’s human rights record were punished. Former detainees at Guantánamo Bay returned to Libya by US authorities continued to be detained; one died in custody, apparently as a result of suicide. Foreign nationals suspected of being in the country irregularly, including refugees and asylum-seekers, were detained and ill-treated. An official investigation began into the killing of prisoners at Abu Salim Prison in 1996 but no details were disclosed and some of the victims’ relatives who had campaigned for the truth were arrested. Hundreds of cases of enforced disappearance and other serious human rights violations committed in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s remained unresolved, and the Internal Security Agency (ISA), implicated in those violations, continued to operate with impunity.

Human Rights Watch also found that in 2010 the Libyan government continued to imprison individuals for criticising the country’s political system or its leader, Muammar al-Gaddafi, and that it maintained harsh restrictions on freedom of assembly and expression, including penal code provisions that criminalise “insulting public officials.” The Human Rights Watch also criticised the security forces for its violation of international human rights law.

Last year the South African National Conventional Arms Control Committee (NCACC) authorised arms trade between South African companies operating in defence-related industry and the Republic of Libya. The NCACC can only authorise such a sale if the requirements of section 15 of the National Conventional Arms Control Act  41 of 2002 are complied with.

Section 15 of this Act states, inter alia, that when considering applications for the sale of arms to other governments the Committee must “avoid contributing to internal repression, including the systematic violation or suppression of human rights and fundamental freedoms”; and must “avoid transfers of conventional arms to governments that systematically violate or suppress human rights and fundamental freedoms”. The NCACC must also consider various other factors not relevant to the current sale of arms to Libya.

On the face of the available evidence, it therefore seems as if the NCACC unlawfully authorised the sale of South African manufactured arms to the clearly unhinged Libyan dictator — who happened to have donated a lot of money to the ANC in the past. This is the kind of thing that one obviously expects from the United Kingdom or the USA governments who put profit above principle no matter what, but which our progressive ANC-led government outlawed in 2002.

As the NCACC is legally required not to authorise the sale of arms to a government that systematically violates the human rights of its citizens, one might wonder why they agreed to the sale of arms to Libya. The NCACC consists of “such Ministers and Deputy Ministers as the President may appoint” and such other persons as the President deems necessary. The NCACC is headed by the Minister of Justice, Jeff Radebe.

By far the most plausible — but obviously not sustainable — justification for the sale of arms to the Libyan government would be that the Libyan government actually did not systematically violate the human rights and freedoms of its citizens. The facts obviously demonstrate that such an argument would be close to laughable but that would have been the only plausible argument open to the South African government to justify the sale of arms to the Libyan dictator.

One imagines that another argument that some untalented and not very bright hack (like the state law advisor) might come up with to try and excuse the inexcusable would be that although section 15 is phrased in peremptory terms, the section is headed “guiding principles and criteria” and therefore that the various injunctions contained in section 15 did not have to be obeyed by the NCACC. But the use of the word “must” as well as the use of the word “and” in the second last subsection makes it clear that every single requirement mentioned in section 15 had to be adhered to. Unless one has a rather shocking lack of knowledge about how to read the provisions of an Act the content of section 15 is pretty clear.

Unfortunately it does not seem to be clear at all to Minister Jeff Radebe. Maybe the Minister decided that it would not be good for his image to claim that certain facts existed when they clearly did not. After all, this might have made him appear only slightly less unhinged than Muammar al-Gaddafi and his sons in various speeches and interviews over the past few days. The Minister therefore had to find another interpretation of the applicable law to justify what, to me, seems unjustifiable. In justifying the sale of arms to the Libyan government Minister Radebe stated that:

All decisions taken by the NCACC are preceded by investigations that are undertaken by the subcommittees established in terms of the Act. These subcommittees have a legal duty to report to and advise the NCACC on matters that relate to its business, including the arms trade. In this way we can confidently indicate that in all transactions that were undertaken and concluded with Libya, we had satisfied ourselves, through a meticulous process, that there was compliance with the guiding principles and the criteria laid down in our law. As we have said in the past, in making decisions the NCACC considers in aggregate, all principles reflected in our legislation. No single principle is considered in isolation of the others.

At the time when the transaction was concluded with Libya, there was no evidence available to the effect that there would be any political unrest in that country; this extends to the region (North Africa and parts of the Middle East). Similarly, there was no evidence that if political instability were to occur, that it would turn out violent in Libya or in any of the countries with which arms trade had been concluded. Some in the media or through the use of media as a platform have been quick to conclude that the deaths that have been reported in Libya during the period of political unrest have a direct link with the arms sold by the South African companies to Libya. There is no evidence available to back up such a claim.

This answer suggests that the Minister is either unfit for the office he holds as he lacks the basic ability to grasp a pretty clear and unambiguous instruction contained in the relevant piece of legislation, or that he and his Committee have deliberately flouted the law and is now trying to mislead the public about this matter.

Section 15 does not allow the Committee holistically to take into account all the factors set out in section 15 and then to make an overall assessment of whether, on balance, it would be advisable to sell arms to the country concerned. The statement by the Minister that no single principle should be considered in isolation of the others when considering whether arms should be sold to a foreign government is therefore clearly and even embarrassingly wrong.

When an act orders that our government must avoid selling arms to a government that systematically suppress human rights and freedoms there is not really room for manoeuvre. Minister Radebe seems to want to interpret the word “must” to mean “need not” — a mistake no person with even a passing knowledge of English and a modicum of integrity would ever make.

Minister Radebe is correct that section 15 instructs the NCACC not to sell arms to a government likely to use arms to suppress political unrest in that country and that it could not have been foreseen that the Libyan government would start massacring its own citizens this year. (After all, since the Libyan government was systematically suppressing the human rights of its citizens one would not have been able to predict that an uprising this year would have threatened the very existence of the regime and that the regime would have started to murder its citizens – regimes who deny their citizens basic human rights are often quite stable.)

But section 15 of the Act requires the NCACC to do far more than predicting whether arms would be used against the citizens of a country to whom we sell arms. The Act Requires that South Africa MUST avoid selling arms to a government that systematically suppress human rights — regardless of whether this will include the use of arms to murder their own citizens or not.

Now, there was no international arms embargo against Libya when South Africa sold that regime the arms under discussion. If the National Conventional Arms Control Act did not prohibit the government from selling arms to governments who are serial human rights abusers there would have been nothing illegal with the sale. But that is not currently the law in South Africa. The fact that the Minister can claim that our law states something that it clearly does not, is rather astonishing.

But I guess that is what happens if the political party one belongs to receive a large donation from a nasty, authoritarian and completely unhinged dictator: one sells arms to that dictator in flagrant violation of the laws one has passed oneself and then pretends that the law does not state what it actually does state.

Source: Constitutionally Speaking

On the Line With Libya

By telephone, I reached a family in Tripoli, Libya, with deep roots in the armed forces there, and members of the family offered some insight into what we should do to help nudge Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi from power.

One member of the family is a senior naval officer who says that his ship and two others were ordered to sail to the major city of Benghazi, which has been liberated by rebels. The boats were instructed to attack Benghazi, he said, speaking through an English-speaking family member.

Some of the senior officers were aghast at the idea of attacking civilians but feared summary execution if they disobeyed orders, by his account. In that tense situation, the officer said, four officials supporting Colonel Qaddafi staged a rally for him on the naval base. Other officers then hushed them up without explicitly condemning the government, my contact said, and there was a fierce argument that ended with the pro-Qaddafi group giving way because it was far outnumbered by the anti-Qaddafi forces.

There has been no mutiny, and in theory the naval officers accepted their orders, my contact said. But in practice they have not yet set sail. I can’t say more for fear of getting some very brave people in trouble.

Likewise, in another phone call to Tripoli, I was given firsthand information about an air force unit in the Tripoli area that is staying on base and refraining from getting involved in the fighting one way or the other. The unit’s leaders don’t dare disobey orders directly, but they are waiting and watching and sitting out the fighting for now.

Those are the people we need to send signals to: Libyan military officers who are wavering about which way to turn their guns.

We shouldn’t invade Libya, but there are steps the international community can take that may make a difference by influencing these officers who haven’t yet committed. Senator John Kerry, the Genocide Intervention Network, the International Crisis Group and others have laid out sensible steps that countries can take. These include:
•
Offer a safe haven for Libyan pilots ordered to bomb their country. For example, they could be encouraged to land on airstrips in Malta or neighboring countries. Even if not many took advantage of the offer, Colonel Qaddafi might be more reluctant to dispatch his air force if he thought he might lose it.
•
Impose financial and trade sanctions on Libya, as President Nicolas Sarkozy of France has suggested, and freeze assets of the Qaddafi family. In particular, military exchanges and weapons transfers should be canceled. Sanctions take time to bite (aside from a cutoff from the global banking system), but they would signal to those around Colonel Qaddafi that he is going down and they should not obey his orders.
•
Impose a no-fly zone, as Libya’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations proposed after he defected, to prevent the government from bombing or strafing its own people. This is what we did to prevent Saddam Hussein from attacking his Kurdish population, and in Libya we could do it without dispatching NATO aircraft to hover continually over the region. We can warn Libya (publicly or quietly) that if military aircraft or ships are used against civilians, Libya’s military assets will later be destroyed. The aim is to encourage the air force and navy to keep their assets from being used against civilians.
•
Encourage the Arab League and African Union to continue to pressure Libya in connection with the killing of its people. Such efforts undermine Colonel Qaddafi’s nationalist warnings that this is about foreign powers trying to re-colonize Libya and encourage his aides to appreciate that he is losing all his allies.
•
Seek a referral by the United Nations Security Council to the International Criminal Court for the prosecution of Colonel Qaddafi for crimes against humanity.

Skeptics will note that none of these moves would convince Colonel Qaddafi to be any more genteel. And these are uncertain levers, creating some risk that he would respond by going after citizens of the United States. But there are two reasons why I think it’s very important to pull these levers.

The first is that so many Libyans have defected or seem to be wavering. That military family in Tripoli estimates that only 10 percent of those in the Libyan armed forces are behind Colonel Qaddafi — and the rest are wondering what to do next.

The second is that as this democracy uprising spreads, other despots may be encouraged to follow Colonel Qaddafi’s example. We need to make very sure that the international reaction is so strong — and the scorched-earth strategy so unsuccessful — that no other despot is tempted to declare war on his own people.

So let’s not sit on our hands.

Source: New York Times

Art Exhibit Stirs Up the Ghosts of Zimbabwe’s Past

BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe — The exhibit at the National Gallery is now a crime scene, the artwork banned and the artist charged with insulting President Robert Mugabe. The picture windows that showcased graphic depictions of atrocities committed in the early years of Mr. Mugabe’s 30-year-long rule are now papered over with the yellowing pages of a state-controlled newspaper.

But the government’s efforts to bury history have instead provoked slumbering memories of the Gukurahundi, Zimbabwe’s name for the slaying and torture of thousands of civilians here in the Matabeleland region a quarter century ago. “You can suppress art exhibits, plays and books, but you cannot remove the Gukurahundi from people’s hearts,” said Pathisa Nyathi, a historian here. “It is indelible.”

As Zimbabwe heads anxiously toward another election season, a recent survey by Afrobarometer has found that 70 percent of Zimbabweans are afraid they will be victims of political violence or intimidation, as thousands were in the 2008 elections. But an equal proportion want the voting to go forward this year nonetheless, evidence of their deep desire for democracy and the willingness of many to vote against Mr. Mugabe at great personal risk, analysts say. In few places do such sentiments about violence in public life run as deep as here, and in recent months the government — whether through missteps or deliberate provocation — has rubbed them ever more raw.

Before the World Cup in South Africa in June, a minister in Mr. Mugabe’s party, ZANU-PF, invited the North Korean soccer team, on behalf of Zimbabwe’s tourism authority, to base itself in Bulawayo before the games began, a gesture that roused a ferocious outcry. After all, it was North Korea that trained and equipped the infamous Fifth Brigade, which historians estimate killed at least 10,000 civilians in the Ndebele minority between 1983 and 1987. “To us it opened very old wounds,” Thabitha Khumalo, a member of Parliament, said of the attempt to bring the North Korean team to the Ndebele heartland. “We’re being reminded of the most horrible pain. How dare they? Our loved ones are still buried in pit latrines, mine shafts and shallow graves.”

Ms. Khumalo, interviewed while the invitation was still pending last year, wept as she summoned memories of the day that destroyed her family — Feb. 12, 1983. She was 12 years old. She said soldiers from the Fifth Brigade, wearing jaunty red berets, came to her village and lined up her family. One soldier slit open her pregnant aunt’s belly with a bayonet and yanked out the baby. She said her grandmother was forced to pound the fetus to a pulp in a mortar and pestle. Her father was made to rape his mother. Her uncles were shot point blank.  Such searing memories stoked protests, and in the end the North Korean team did not come to Zimbabwe.

But feelings were further inflamed months later when the government erected a larger-than-life bronze statue of Joshua Nkomo — a liberation hero, an Ndebele and a rival to Mr. Mugabe — that, incredibly, was made in North Korea. Last September, bowing to public outcry over the statue’s origin (and protests from Mr. Nkomo’s family that its plinth was too small), the statue was removed from a major intersection in Bulawayo. It now stands neglected in a weedy lot behind the Natural History Museum here. Inside the museum hangs a portrait of a vigorous and dapper Mr. Mugabe in oversize glasses. He turns 87 next month. A massive stuffed crocodile, his family’s clan totem, dominates one gallery, its teeth long and sharp, its mouth agape. The signboard notes the crocodile’s lifespan exceeds 80 years.

Mr. Mugabe signed a pact with North Korea’s founder, Kim Il-sung, to train the infamous army brigade just months after Zimbabwe gained independence from white minority rule in 1980. Mr. Mugabe declared the brigade would be named “Gukurahundi” (pronounced guh-kura-HUN-di), which means “the rain that washes away the chaff before the spring rains.” He said it was needed to quell violent internal dissent, but historians say he used it to attack Mr. Nkomo’s political base and to impose one-party rule.

Mr. Mugabe’s press secretary, George Charamba, said the president had called the Gukurahundi “a moment of madness,” but asked whether Mr. Mugabe had apologized for the campaign, Mr. Charamba bristled. “You can’t call it a moment of madness without critiquing your own past,” he said. “I hope people are not looking to humiliate the president. I hope they’re just looking at allowing him to get by healing this nation. For us, that is uppermost. Our sense of embitterment, our sense of recompense may not be exactly what you saw at Nuremburg.”

Downtown Bulawayo has the sleepy rhythms of a farm town, but the psychic wounds of the Gukurahundi fester beneath its placid surface. At the National Gallery here, the stately staircase leading to the shuttered Gukurahundi exhibit is now blocked by a sign that says “No Entry.” But the paintings, on walls saturated with blood-red paint, can still be glimpsed from the gallery above, through the bars of balconies. The paintings themselves seem to be jailed.

Voti Thebe, who heads the National Gallery, said the artist, Owen Maseko, created the Gukurahundi exhibit to contribute to reconciliation. There was no money, so Mr. Maseko, 35, did it on his own time. He was just a boy at the time of the Gukurahundi, but he recalls the sounds of hovering helicopters and sirens. “The memories are still there,” he said. “The victims are still alive. It’s not something we can just forget.” In a large painting, a row of faces are shown with mouths open in wordless screams. In another, women and children weep what seem to be tears of blood. Three papier-mâché corpses, one hanging upside down, fill a picture window. Throughout the galleries are recurrent, menacing images of a man in oversize glasses — Mr. Mugabe.

The day after the exhibit opened last year, it was closed down. Mr. Maseko was detained, then transferred to prison in leg irons before being released on bail. Mr. Maseko’s case awaits the Supreme Court’s attention. He is charged with insulting the president and communicating falsehoods prejudicial to the state, a charge punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

David Coltart, a politician from Bulawayo who is arts minister in the power-sharing government of ZANU-PF and its political rivals, said he warned cabinet ministers that prosecuting Mr. Maseko could turn the case into a cause célèbre and inflame divisions. Mr. Coltart, who has long fought the Mugabe government, said he also appealed directly to Defense Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa, who was security minister during the Gukurahundi. “It is only when nations grapple with their past, in its reality, not as a biased fiction, that they can start to deal with that past,” Mr. Coltart said in a lecture delivered above Mr. Maseko’s show. He called the Gukurahundi “a politicide, if not a genocide.”

The Bulawayo playwright Cont Mhlanga knows the costs of free expression. His play “The Good President” was shut down on opening night here in 2007 when baton-wielding riot police officers stormed the theater. The lead character is a grandmother who lies to her two grandsons about the death of their father. He had been buried alive in the Gukurahundi. But the boys, ignorant of the truth, become beneficiaries of the Mugabe government, one of them an abusive policeman, the other a recipient of seized farmland. The play’s title refers, Mr. Mhlanga said, to African leaders who call Mr. Mugabe a good president, “this man who has blood on his hands.”

Mr. Mhlanga says he feels “like someone has put huge pieces of tape over my mouth,” but insists that artists must express what people are terrified of saying. “We live in a society where we’re so afraid, even of our own shadows,” he said. “To create democratic space in a society like ours, we have to deal with fear.”

Source: New York Times

Ahdaf Soueif: Protesters reclaim the spirit of Egypt

Egyptian novelist Ahdaf Soueif reflects on the determination of Egyptians, after the ousting of President Hosni Mubarak, to rebuild their country and reclaiming their national identity.

I have friends on anti-depressants who, over the last 20 days, forgot to take their pills and have now thrown them away.  Such is the effect of the Egyptian Revolution. On Friday night, Egypt partied. Chants and songs and drums and joy-cries rang out from Alexandria to Aswan. The defunct regime was only mentioned in reference to "we want our money back".

Otherwise, three chants were dominant - and very telling: One - "Lift your head up high, you're Egyptian" - was a response to how humiliated, how hopeless we'd been made to feel over the last four decades. The second was: "We'll get married, We'll have kids," and reflected the hopes of the millions whose desperate need for jobs and homes had been driving them to risk their lives to illegally cross the sea to Europe or the desert to Libya. The third chant was: "Everyone who loves Egypt, come and rebuild Egypt."

And on Saturday, they were as good as their word: they came and cleaned up after their revolution. Volunteers who arrived on Tahrir [Square] after mid-day found it spick and span, and started cleaning up other streets instead. I saw kids perched on the great lions of Qasr el-Nil Bridge buffing them up. I feel - and every parent will know what I mean - I feel that I need to keep my concentration trained on this baby, this newborn revolution - I need to hold it safe in my mind and my heart every second - until it grows and steadies a bit. Eighty million of us feel this way right now.

Eighty million at least - because the support we've been getting from the world has been phenomenal. There's been something different, something very special, about the quality of the attention the Egyptian revolution has attracted: it's been - personal. People everywhere have taken what's been happening here personally. And they've let us know. And those direct, positive and emotional messages we've been receiving have put the wind in our sails. We have a lot to learn very quickly. But we're working. And the people, everywhere, are with us.

In the week before the protesters achieved their goal, Ahdaf Soueif reflected on some of the humorous and poignant moments in Cairo's Tahrir Square. What is happening on the streets and squares of Egypt is extraordinary; it's nothing less than millions of people re-finding their voice - and using it. They're using it to demand the removal of Hosni Mubarak and his regime - with everything that that regime entails: the corrupt cabinet, the fraudulent parliament, the mutilated constitution and the brutal emergency laws. And this common, over-arching demand is being given increasingly creative and individual expression.

The atmosphere on Tahrir Square is like - well, imagine a fair, where the product under scrutiny is politics, economics, governance, history and the law. Circles of people sit on what's left of the grass to talk, friends stroll arm-in-arm discussing, marchers go by chanting and singing, bands play old protest favourites and new-minted anthems. People carry home-made placards with their own messages.

The most common, of course is "Irhal!" ("Depart!"). But with the days passing, I've seen more impatient ones like "Irhal, my arm's hurting", "Irhal, I really need a shower", "Irhal, I can't find another joke", "Irhal means leave", and others. One man has outlined a huge airliner on the ground with used paper cups and keeps everyone out of its outlines because the plane's ready to whisk Mubarak away.
A huge sheet of plastic pockets has been hung up and the pockets are speedily filling with caricatures.

This revolution is so organic, so personal, so real, it has exploded reservoirs of creativity in everybody taking part. Each person coming to the square brings something: medical supplies for the field clinics which are still treating the people damaged by Mr Mubarak's police and thug militias, blankets for the thousands spending the night, cartons of water, biscuits. Teams of young volunteers collect litter. The resulting piles are labelled "National Democratic Party".

This is not to say that all is well with us. The government has, for the moment, withdrawn its police and its thug militias and the army sits on the periphery of Tahrir Square - to protect us. But the army has now put up barbed wire to narrow the entrances and exits and they're trying to move their tanks further into the square. When the young people lay down in front of the tanks Sunday night, they fired volleys of shots into the air and dragged away three young men and beat them. The situation was diffused when a well-liked public figure intervened.

This is what we older revolutionaries are doing - putting everything we have at the service of the brave young people who have cleared a space from which we can all join the effort to reclaim our state. Tahrir has become our civic space where leftists and liberals and Muslim Brotherhood discuss and sing and eat together. The other cities and towns of Egypt have sent popular delegations. The consensus is that the consensus will come out of Tahrir. And one thing that Tahrir has already given us is a sense of who we are.

People are actually articulating: "They said we were divided, extreme, ignorant, fanatic - well here we are: diverse, inclusive, hospitable, generous, sophisticated, creative and witty." In Philip Pullman's Northern Lights, the aim of the evil guys is to sever children from their spirits so releasing the energy needed by the government. Well, that's a brilliant metaphor for what we feel has been happening to us in Egypt. We were being deliberately severed from everything we hold dear, in the service of keeping the region subservient to American and Israeli interests.

And the only Egyptians to gain anything by this were the members and cronies of the regime who amassed spectacular wealth at the material, moral and emotional expense of their fellow-citizens. On Sunday in Tahrir, Christian masses were celebrated and Muslim prayers were said. We all prayed together for the young people killed by the regime since 25 January and before. Later, there was a wedding, and later still magicians and acrobats and small camp fires.

This enormous revolution that is happening in our streets and our homes is the Egyptian people reclaiming their state, their heritage, their voice, their personality.

Be with us.

Ahdaf Soueif is an Egyptian novelist and political and cultural commentator, who lives with her children in Cairo and London.

Source: BBC News

Manyi's clash of interests sidestepped

President Jacob Zuma's appointment of Jimmy Manyi as the head of government communications gives the controversial president of the Black Management Forum (BMF) almost unfettered access to commercially sensitive information. This comes on top of an unresolved allegation -- denied by Manyi -- that he abused his previous position as director general of labour to tout for business.

Manyi also chairs the BMF's business arm, the Black Management Forum Investment Company (BMFI), which has heightened concerns about his ability to avoid conflicts of interest.  The BMFI has wide-ranging interests, many of which are heavily regulated by the government and include companies involved in gambling, transport infrastructure, property development, procurement management and construction.

As the government scrambled to defend his appointment, the minister delegated to respond to media queries, public services boss Richard Baloyi, said this week that he was not aware of Manyi's role in the forum’s investment company. Baloyi also struggled to explain why the disciplinary process brought against Manyi by former labour minister Membatisi Mdladlana was dropped, or how Manyi remained employed after Mdladlana reportedly fired him shortly before his own dismissal in President Jacob Zuma's October Cabinet reshuffle.

Manyi was suspended as labour director general in June last year following a formal complaint by Norwegian ambassador Tor Christian-Hilda that Manyi used an official meeting to tout for personal business. At the time Christian-Hilda would not discuss details but said: "There were certain things discussed and the way in which they were brought up in that meeting we did not appreciate." Manyi dismissed the claims and told the Times newspaper: "I do not have a business to promote." However, the allegations were serious enough for Mdladlana to suspend him on June 4 and begin disciplinary procedures.

It appears that these were subsequently dropped without a hearing and Mdladlana and Baloyi have given very different explanations for it. In an interview in early November after he himself had been dismissed as minister by Zuma, Mdladlana was quoted by the Saturday Star as saying that the charges had not been dropped. "Manyi is going around saying charges have been dropped. That shows a lack of understanding of the law. He still has a case to answer. If he feels that he is innocent, let it be proved by the disciplinary hearing."

Mdladlana did not return calls seeking clarification this week. But Baloyi claimed that, although charges were initiated against Manyi by Mdladlana, resulting in a short suspension on full pay, they were also withdrawn by Mdladlana, shortly before the Cabinet reshuffle that cost Mdladlana his job on October 31 last year. According to Baloyi, once the charges were withdrawn, "the cloud of impropriety" over Manyi’s head disappeared.

But a source familiar with the unfolding legal drama at the time told the Mail & Guardian that Mdladlana had withdrawn the charges only because he had seen an opportunity to dismiss Manyi without a hearing and had fired him. Manyi then aborted a legal challenge that he had been preparing and told people close to him that a "political solution" would be found.

A well-placed government source said this week that the solution appeared to be to let Manyi return to his job.  But Mildred Olifant, Mdladlana’s replacement, wanted to choose her own director general, which meant that Manyi remained on "special leave" until he could be deployed elsewhere. Baloyi confirmed that he had intervened and facilitated Manyi’s transfer to head the Government Communication and Information System (GCIS) as part of a larger reshuffle. According to Baloyi, the entire process was "above board" and he denied being placed under political pressure to appoint Manyi as chief government spokesperson.

He refused to comment on the nature of the charges against Manyi but said that they were related to "an allegation of misconduct" that the former minister felt Manyi should answer.  Baloyi denied having seen the letter that the Norwegians reportedly sent to Mdladlana about Manyi, but said that if such a complaint was "brought before him", he would deal with it. Asked about Manyi's directorships, his role as chairperson of the BMFI and conflicts of interest, Baloyi said he was not aware of these.

But, if evidence was brought to him, he, the Public Service Commission and Collins Chabane, the GCIS’s line function minister, would have to assess each case and "manage" it.

Earlier claims by the government that Manyi’s appointment posed no conflict are thin given the considerable extent of his business interests and obligations.  In his capacity as the BMFI chairperson he has a duty to advance its interests, including in sectors where the government plays a policy, political and investment role.

According to the BMFI, its strategic investments include a 20% stake in the Strategic Partners Group, which in turn has an interest in the Bombela Consortium responsible for the Gautrain project; a 25% stake in Matlapeng Holdings, with a stake in Raubex Construction and Hernic; a 26% stake in Computershare SA; a 10% stake in Uthingo Management Services, the past manager of the national lottery; a 10% stake in CKS Investments; and a 3% stake in Gold Reef Resorts.

Manyi is also listed as a director of Promanet and Computershare SA, in which the BMFI had, or still has, shares. Manyi did not respond to detailed questions, saying only: "Responding to your questions will be externalising our internal processes. It would not be desirable for me to respond to these questions. My role is to communicate government information and not to turn myself into the story."


Source: Mail & Guardian

Land fraudsters charged

LADYSMITH businessman Roshen Sewpersad (39) has been charged with fraud relating to land claims. He was granted R50 000 bail by the Ladysmith Magistrate’s Court on the day of his arrest last Thursday. His co-accused are officials of the Rural Development and Land Reform Department, Promise Makhanya (41), Bhekumuzi Masoka (45) and Sbusiso Chapi (38). They were each granted R20 000 bail.

The four were charged with tricking labour tenants into signing forms without knowing what they were for. This follows last year’s move by the Asset Forfeiture Unit to put Sewpersad’s six farms under curatorship following allegations that he had colluded with his co-accused to gain the farms fraudulently.

The Witness was told that Sewpersdad arrived at the Ladysmith Magistrate’s Court in a wheelchair on Thursday. His legal representative, Viren Naidoo, said his client had back problems and had to be rushed to hospital. Sewpersad has been under investigation for his alleged involvement in fraudulently acquiring six farms. An affidavit by the crime investigating unit states that the Elands­jagt Billygreen Ranches were bought for labour tenants by the provincial government in early 2001 for more than R36 million, The Witness reported last year.

Between 1999 and 2000 the tenants allegedly filed an application for ownership with the Rural Development and Land Reform Department under the government’s land restitution and redistribution policy. The farms, situated in the Elandslaagte area near Ladysmith, were consolidated and a legal entity, Abrina 6822, was set up to take transfer. The labour tenant claimants were excluded.

In March 2010 the department opened a criminal docket with the commercial crimes unit. The investigations revealed that no trust or association was formed on behalf of the beneficiaries and they were not aware they owned the farms. Sewpersad’s name never appeared in the original agreement of purchase and sale as a beneficiary. The affidavit states that it appeared the compilation of the list of beneficiaries and the transfer of the farms were fraudulent. Naidoo, who also represents Makhanya and Masoka, would not comment at the time as he had not received police dockets to study the charges against his clients.

Acting regional head for the Asset Forfeiture Unit, Knorx Molelle, has said the KZN government has lost land to the value of R800 million to fraudsters who claim to represent the tenants.

The case has been adjourned to May 3.

Source: Witness

Manyi takes over as top govt spokesperson

Controversial labour department Director General Jimmy Manyi will replace top government spokesperson Themba Maseko.  The shock announcement was made late on Wednesday afternoon by the Presidency. "Mr Themba Maseko will join the Department of Public Service and Administration as director general from the Government Communication and Information System [GCIS] and Cabinet spokesperson. "Mr Jimmy Manyi, who is currently the Director General of the department of labour, will take over from Mr Themba Maseko as chief executive officer of GCIS and Cabinet spokesperson with immediate effect."

The announcement followed an intense meeting behind closed doors between Maseko and Minister for Performance Monitoring and Evaluation Collins Chabane. News that Maseko was due to be moved was first heard on eNews and Twitter and confirmed by the Mail & Guardian via sources in the Presidency.

The move was misinterpreted at first as Maseko being axed, which came as a surprise as the head of GCIS was considered largely competent in the job. Manyi, on the other hand, has been dogged by controversy given his dual role as head of the Black Management Forum (BMF) and labour DG. He was suspended by then-labour minister Membathisi Mdladlana in June 2010 after a fraught relationship between the two.

Before Mdladlana was axed from the position in President Jacob Zuma's October 2010 Cabinet reshuffle, he indicated that Manyi, who was receiving full pay following his suspension, would leave. However, Manyi seems to have fought his suspension and successfully negotiated being moved to an equally powerful position as top government spokesperson. But the Presidency maintained that the move was initiated by Maseko, saying: "Maseko requested to be moved within government following his four-year tenure in GCIS and Cabinet spokesperson." 

Maseko was appointed into the position on June 14 2006 under then-minister in the presidency Essop Pahad. He was also a top communications official under Thabo Mbeki, and one of the last people from that era still in the Presidency.

Manyi was suspended as DG of labour in June 2010 due to a conflict of interest with Mdladlana. Mdladlana was reported to have told Manyi, who regularly made the headlines thanks to his controversial statements as BMF head, to choose between the two. In September 2010 former BMF leaders called for his resignation as president, accusing him of eroding BMF values and being unfit to lead the forum. 

Source: Mail & Guardian