Farm in Limpopo seized

A farm in Limpopo, which is part of an investigation into On-point Engineers, has been seized after the High Court in Pretoria granted a freezing order.

"The order [was granted on Wednesday and] was served this morning [Friday]," National Prosecuting Authority spokesman Makhosini Nkosi said in a statement.

It was served on Gwama Properties, which is registered as the owner of the Schuilkraal farm, and its sole director Lesiba Gwangwa.

The Asset Forfeiture Unit made the court application for the seizure of property based on an investigation by the Hawks and two independent reports into On-Point's activities.

The reports were compiled by Public Protector Thuli Madonsela and Price Waterhouse Coopers.

The court accepted the unit's submission that there were reasonable grounds to believe that the property was acquired with the proceeds of unlawful activities perpetrated against the department of roads and transport in Limpopo.

Gwangwa is also a director of On-point Engineers and faces charges related to tender fraud and corruption in the Polokwane Regional Court.

He previously appeared in court with axed ANC Youth League Julius Malema, who faces a charge of money-laundering and racketeering.

Several others, and four companies On-Point, Gwama Properties, Segwalo Engineering and Oceanside Trading were charged along with them. Gwangwa was released on R40,000 bail.

Court papers revealed that Malema allegedly benefited from corrupt activities amounting to R4 million and had "clear business ties" with Gwangwa.

The State charged that Gwangwa and three others misrepresented themselves to the Limpopo transport department, and a R52 million tender was awarded to On-Point.

Another R1 million gratification was paid for the securing of the tender.

Bid documents submitted by On-Point Engineers to the department contained several misrepresentations. Names given as executive and senior people at On-Point were for people not employed there. On-Point entered into secret agreements with service providers and in return received sums of money for these, the papers said.

Malema allegedly benefited from the tender by using it to fund a farm worth R3.9 million and to make a payment of R382,655 for a Mercedez Viano.

"...Most of the payments... were channelled through other entities... to pay for the farm," the charge sheet said.

It said R1 million was a part payment for a portion of the Schuilkraal farm by the Ratanang Trust.

Malema's Ratanang Family Trust was an indirect shareholder in On-Point and Gwama Properties, said court papers.

In October, Madonsela found that tenders awarded to On-Point were unlawful, and that the department did not follow proper guidelines in awarding them.

Source: The New Age

Miners give team cold shoulder

Angry striking workers at Lonmin's Marikana mine shunned President Jacob Zuma's inter-ministerial committee yesterday, rejecting help in organising a memorial service for those killed last week.

They said Zuma's failure to address them after the killings showed he did not care about their struggle for better living conditions.

Zuma has called for an inquiry into the killing of more than 40 people, including two police officers, and Minister in the Presidency Collins Chabane is leading an interministerial team to assist families affected by the massacre.

But Chabane's team received a hostile reception from the North West miners.

The striking workers vented their anger at the ministers and presented them with cartridges they had retrieved from the scene of the Thursdays' shooting.

Xolani Ndzuza, the leader of a committee set up to represent the striking workers, spat on the ground before telling workers to reject an offer for the ministers to be involved in preparations for the memorial service scheduled for tomorrow.

"The memorial service that you say you want to organise for us, we don't want it.

"We don't welcome your help. The person who helped us is Julius Malema [expelled ANC Youth League president]. He is the one who told us that Cyril Ramaphosa sits on the board and spends millions buying animals. We don't want the R2-million he said will assist with the burial services."

Defence Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, speaking on behalf of the ministerial committee, had earlier defended Zuma's failure to address the crowd, saying he had visited injured workers in hospital and "it was too late" in the day for him to meet the other workers.

"We agree with you that blood was spilled. It is not what we would have wanted. As the government, we would like to assist you to organise [Thursday's] memorial service," she said.

The committee had set up a desk at Rustenburg's municipal offices to help families track down missing relatives, who were either dead or injured in hospital, she said.

The ministerial committee said 33 of the 34 bodies had been positively identified, with one being a citizen of Lesotho.

Addressing journalists at the Marikana police station earlier, Malema said the workers had opened two murder charges, the first against the NUM security guards who had allegedly shot dead several striking workers two weeks ago. The second was against the police for the slaying of 34 workers at the Marikana hill last week.

Malema said he had helped workers open cases because he did not have confidence in the commission of inquiry set up by Zuma.

"Opening a case at the police is a process that we believe in . it will not be manipulated by political processes. With a commission of inquiry, we don't know the terms of reference, the judges that are going to be appointed or the criteria ."

Malema said a group of lawyers who had volunteered to help with the case were considering applying for an interdict to secure the release of 259 workers from jail to allow them to mourn the death of colleagues.

Source: Times Live

Ex-MEC ‘abused’ position to benefit Malema

Former Limpopo roads and transport MEC Pinky Kekana flouted the constitution and “abused” her position to “settle political scores” for the benefit of Julius Malema, says Public Protector Thuli Madonsela. According to the protector’s provisional report into the abuse of state power, Kekana had ordered an off-duty traffic officer to arrest Malema’s rival at the chaotic Limpopo elective conference in Makhado two years ago.

Former provincial ANC Youth League deputy secretary, Thandi Moraka, was arrested “unlawfully” on April 10, 2010. This was ostensibly for stealing conference documents even though criminal charges had not been laid against her. Acting on Kekana’s instruction, Takalani Sheriff Tshilongoane had arrested Moraka on the N1 north in Botlokwa, 60km north of Polokwane, Madonsela confirmed. He then drove her car “by force” back to Makhado, where she was briefly detained at the Mphephu police station. The court dismissed Moraka’s case after several appearances, prompting her to lodge a complaint with Madonsela. Titled “State Power-Political Games”, the provisional report said Kekana’s conduct was “improper” and amounted to “maladministration”.

“Kekana’s conduct amounted to maladministration, because she did not just report a crime, but abused her official position as MEC while attending a private, party political event to set state resources in her department in motion to settle a political score,” read part of the provisional report. Kekana has dismissed suggestions that she abused her power as “malicious”.

The arrest came after Moraka had left the politically-charged conference with documents after it degenerated into chaos, with rival supporters threatening, intimidating and swearing at each other. Police had also clashed with supporters of Malema’s arch-rival Lehlogonolo Masoga, firing rubber bullets and spraying them with a water cannon.

Kekana, who had attended the league’s conference in her capacity as Limpopo ANC deputy secretary, is an ally of Malema and Limpopo premier Cassel Mathale.

Source: IoL

'Youth must not fight old battles'

The youth in South Africa need to stop fighting their leaders’ battles, DA national spokesman Mmusi Maimane said on Thursday. “We have a new South Africa led by old South Africans with old South African thinking,” Maimane said in Johannesburg. “We need to look at what are we mobilising the youth to do.”

He said it was concerning when young people stood up and said they would kill for their leaders, and called to make provinces ungovernable. Former ANCYL leader Julius Malema said in 2008 that he was prepared to “take up arms and kill for [President Jacob] Zuma”. The league recently said it intended making the Western Cape ungovernable.

Maimane was speaking at a debate, hosted by the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, between the Democratic Alliance, the Young Communist League of SA, and the ANC Youth League, about youth participation and mobilisation.

YCLSA national chairman Yershen Pillay said the country’s youth needed bold and radical policy decisions. “We need less dependence on the State if we are going to drive change.” This was why the proposed youth wage subsidy would not work. “It doesn’t adequately respond to... the unemployment we face.” Pillay said the youth subsidy served the interest of business rather than the youth, and did not consider the education and skills gap. The YCLSA was proposing a medium-term, and a long-term plan for 2050. This included investment in co-operative development. “We need to give young people a chance,” said Pillay. “There needs to be a cultural change, make education fashionable.” He said the youth needed education and skills development, access to information, and entrepreneurship development. “You have a melting pot of interventions. A culture of service needs to replace a culture of entitlement,” said Pillay.

The ANCYL’s Vuyo Roji said there were people in South Africa who wanted the economic status quo to stay the same. “There are enemies,” he said. On the National Development Plan tabled in Parliament on Wednesday, Roji said the ANCYL did not believe a “political elite” could solve the problems. “We don’t think academics can sit in a corner and tell us what we need to do.” The ANCYL’s vision was to have an economy which eliminated poverty. He said the youth league still believed in nationalising strategic sectors of the economy, expropriation of land without compensation, and free education. Youth leaders needed to provide leadership. “They must be able to persuade and be persuaded,” he said.

Source: Sowetan

Young Communist League - firing Angie Motshekga won't help

The cheapest political point for any youth formation to score at this time is to jump onto the bandwagon of hatred for Angie Motshekga. The minister of basic education, as the foremost educator in the government, is taking a lot of heat for the mess that is the Limpopo education department. Having failed to deliver textbooks for schools for Grades 1 – 3 and 10 for more than half a year, the department has become a mockery and even the intervention of a provincial task team and the national department has not cleared the mess up. This has become so big that alliance members of the ruling African National Congress have started to voice their concerns. Very loudly and publicly.

When it emerged that national treasury would have to fork out additional funds to support a catch-up programme and pay teachers overtime, the Congress of South African Students president Bongani Mani said, “We reiterate our call to Mama Angie to stop playing games and embarrassing the ANC-led government any further and resign immediately [to] spare President Jacob Zuma the pain of having to fire her… Minister Angie must not force the National Treasury to waste taxpayers’ money; rather she must take [it] from her salary and all those found responsible [should] pay for all that needs to be paid to remedy the crisis that has emerged on her watch.”

For its part, the ANC Youth League threatened action if Motshekga did not go. The deputy secretary general Kenetswe Mosenogi said, “Minister Motshekga is herself an obstacle to education; she cannot take responsibility for the most basic of challenges. She must resign within two weeks or we will mobilise our members and occupy the basic education department in Pretoria.”

Yet at the 91st birthday rally of the South African Communist Party on Sunday, the secretary of the Young Communist League Buti Manamela said that firing Motshekga may not be a smart move since the rot actually lies deep in her department.

In an interview with Daily Maverick, he said that he did not specifically call for the DoBE minister to be fired because this was really the prerogative of the president. “[Zuma] has commissioned a report on the matter and he will decide what action to take based on that report, whether it is a rap on the knuckles, or redeploying [Motshekga], or whatever,” Manamela said.

He continued: “Whether the president decides to fire her or not, there are people in the department who are responsible for this. Even if you fire her, you have to clear out these people as well. You can call for Angie’s head, but it won’t help the situation.”

The YCL secretary directed most of his ire at EduSolutions, the company that won the tender to deliver textbooks in Limpopo. He said, “The people who were given business by government – they should not have been working with the government in the first place if they cannot do something as simple as taking a textbook from A to B. This goes to the heart of the crisis in the system. It goes to our call to ban tenders in crucial services in government.”

At the birthday rally, communist party general secretary Blade Nzimande said that the government should not be outsourcing services in ‘priority services’ as identified by the ANC, like education and health, but the state should build capacity to deliver these services itself.

Manamela said that there were stories emerging that suggested the EduSolutions problem was not limited to Limpopo, but that the company was overcharging the government in other provinces, and delivering the wrong textbooks all over the country where it has tenders.

He said that they were not excluding the possibility that someone or some people in Limpopo were deliberately sabotaging this task so as to interfere with the Section 100 administrative action taken by the national government in several departments in Limpopo.

At the end of last year, the Cabinet took a decision to enact a provision of the Constitution which allows it to inject itself unilaterally into a provincial government. Since the same document is very strict about separation of powers between the different tiers of government, a lot has to go wrong before the uppermost echelon can take such an action. Unfortunately for the people of that province, premier Cassel Mathale and several of his key people chose to interpret this as a hostile political move (perhaps aimed at punishing Mathale for his longstanding support for Zuma’s enemy, Julius Malema).

Whether the textbook crisis could have been sparked deliberately is a question we may never be able to answer, but we do already know that several suspects in the department have tried to silence one of the key whistle-blowers.

Ironically, the YCL stance brings it in line with that of the opposition party Democratic Alliance, which has said that Motshekga is perhaps not the one person to blame in this.

Party leader Helen Zille wrote, “…we in the Western Cape have experienced Minister Angie Motshekga as one of the few – perhaps the only – education ministers since the dawn of democracy 18 years ago who genuinely understands the needs of the school system and is prepared to take some tough decisions to fix it. She stands virtually alone, in the wasteland of education's ‘shell state’, where many incompetent cadres masquerade as top officials with fancy titles, but have little understanding of and even less commitment to the needs of education.”

Despite this stance, the party has since called for her to resign.

Meanwhile, the outcomes of a report commissioned by Zuma, and another by the Limpopo premier, are still to be announced or released publicly. An independent auditor sent out by the DoBE found that many schools still hadn’t received textbooks despite a court order compelling the department to clear the mess up by June 27.

Perhaps calls for Motshekga to resign are not that misplaced. The buck ought to, after all, stop with her. Sipho Hlongwane


Source: Daily Maverick

President Jacob Zuma Laughs Alone

President Jacob Zuma has an infectious laugh. His guffaws break the ice and disarm the tensest situation. At that precise moment no answers are demanded on the infamous arms deal or police corruption because the nation has the giggles and the President laughs loudest. An ambassador – clearly charmed – once remarked to me that it is a ‘beautiful laugh’ – and then laughed from his belly. The spell had been cast and from that moment on he had a crush on my President.

However, for many South Africans the love affair with our President is on the rocks. The polls reflect a growing unease with politics that appears increasingly driven by self-preservation: preservation of power, preservation from prosecution and preservation of moneyed lifestyles. A potentially toxic mix and the basis of political impunity. How far are the President and those around him prepared to go in pursuit of this goal?

In the shadows, formal and informal security networks are settling scores and doing the dirty work of those in power. Something sinister is afoot. A collusion of interests between people who have guns and people who have money is starting to infect our politics in an undeniable manner. The murder of a dozen ANC politicians, including a whistleblower, in the past three years is an indication of this and the ruling party has appointed a task team to look into it.

Why is this left to an ANC task team to investigate when it should surely have been a matter that demanded attention from the country’s spies at the State Security Agency? They have unparalleled resources at their disposal, yet City Press reports that the ANC’s Deputy General Manager will lead this investigation. Why did the ANC leadership not call in State Security Minister Siyabonga Cwele’s spies? Or are they not to be trusted to lead an investigation and report to the President and to Parliament? Do the country’s elected political leaders not represent the aspirations of a nation and not only party apparatchiks?

One answer is that some politicians no longer trust the state spies. While undertaking research on the unfolding saga of alleged corruption and murder linked to suspended police crime intelligence chief Lt-Gen Richard Mdluli a few months ago, I was struck by the fact that some of the country’s highest ranking current and former police chiefs were afraid to speak on their cellphones. It was a case of ‘batteries out of cellphones first’. They, like former ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema, answer their phones with the rhetorical ‘Hello Mr Mdluli’. Are top cops really that afraid of an alleged criminal network that had come to control police crime intelligence? This directly under the nose of the Minister of Police, the Minister of State Security and the President?

What is certain is that a climate of fear is gripping politics in the country and it is being driven by securocrats. This is by no means a direct parallel to the machinations of the apartheid state. However, the trend is worrying. Some of the feared repression is coated in policy processes such as the Protection of State Information Bill (the Secrecy Bill), and the current draft of the General Intelligence Amendment Bill  – the Secrecy Bill’s ugly twin known as the ‘Spy Bill’. These pieces of legislation will block the free flow of information, protect the corrupt and allow for the monitoring of communication on email, MXit, Facebook, Twitter and Skype – providing more insight than spies sitting in shebeens and potentially more effectively controlling the politically disaffected urban population (those whose lives do not revolve around shopping malls). 

On the other hand, the proposed Traditional Courts Bill (the ‘Chiefs Bill’) will ensure greater power for unelected male traditional leaders at the expense of elected leaders. Thereby potentially drawing together the strings of a patronage network in rural areas that is largely accountable to the man who dispenses the money in Pretoria. These three pieces of legislation, in tandem, will ensure that a conservative-minded state apparatus inevitably works against the values of an open society. It has the potential to keep a lid on urban and rural social dissent while ensuring the possibility of unchecked accrual of wealth and power to those who loosely control the network. It is cynical politics. Is this what 100 years of ANC struggle was intended to culminate in?

This does not only manifest in policy. Consider the sinister manner in which the editor of the Mail & Guardian and senior members of the M&G Centre for Investigative Journalism (amaBhungane) have been made to report to the police in what appears to be a pre-arrest process in the past week. This foreplay to possible criminal sanction is all because of an exposé that links President Zuma’s spokesperson Mac Maharaj – a public servant – to corruption in tenders awarded while he was Minister of Transport. Did Mr Maharaj consult with his direct supervisor before pressing criminal charges? Is the intention to charge or scare investigative journalists? Either way, the matter is a disgrace to the Presidency.

Other attempts at intimidation happen when things go ‘bump in the night’ in a manner where nobody can pin the direct blame on the state apparatus. Earlier this year Constitutional Court Judge Sisi Khampepe and Advocate Muzi Sikhakhane’s homes were burgled and laptops stolen. According to Sikhakhane, who also acts for Malema, one of the documents stolen was an affidavit by Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale requesting a probe into Mdluli`s alleged abuse of state resources. He suspects foul play. I have personally been circumspect when such allegations are made. This is a country with high levels of crime and an urban middle class that has developed an appetite for the crime fiction genre. However, in the past eighteen months my own office has been broken into twice late at night using exactly the same method of entry, which requires the skill of a cat burglar. On one occasion my external hard-drive (containing a draft manuscript of a book on the arms deal) was stolen. In recent weeks the visitors took nothing, as the hard-drive was safely stored elsewhere (and for the record I am not sitting on some smoking gun). All other shiny objects were left untouched. It may be ordinary crime or coincidence. 

What is far more worrying is the alleged ‘suicide’ of Arms Deal Commission of Inquiry secretary Advocate Mvuseni Ngubane in May this year. On the same day he met the President he climbed into his luxury vehicle, with no know financial or personal problems, and shot himself, to the dismay of friends and family. A muted shock followed in the press at the death of a man who in practical terms would be the most powerful person in the commission. Whatever the reason for his death, it no doubt has delayed the work of the commission, which is unlikely to start its public deliberations before the ANC’s national conference in Mangaung  and will now probably only end its work after the 2014 general elections – a happy coincidence for corrupt businessmen, arms dealers and politicians alike.

We live in a country where enormous potential lies outside of its elite and within the ranks of ordinary people who want a more just, fair society. An important element to unlocking this potential is that we want to fear those with power far less. Without this none of us will ever be equal. It is a reflex acquired through centuries of jealously policed inequality that cannot be unlearnt overnight. But when a handful of securocrats, spies, politicians and police, together with their business associates, operate outside of the law they undermine the work of everyone in their ranks. They also send a signal to our society that repression remains central to maintaining power. This must have been present somewhere in the minds of the youth gang in Khayelitsha outside Cape Town on Sunday night, 29 July, as they intimidated learners and terrorized an entire community with knives and pangas. An ‘ordinary’ gang holding up the mirror to our politicians? These are no laughing matters. 

Hennie van Vuuren,  Director, ISS Cape Town Office

Source: ISS

A.N.C., Admitting Failures, Weighs How to Lift South Africans

During apartheid, in the coastal municipality of Overstrand, just east of Cape Town, whites lived in plush, seaside enclaves whereas blacks and mixed race people lived in ugly townships and shacks. Whites owned almost all the businesses, and had access to the best jobs, health care and schools.

Eighteen years after the end of apartheid, not much has changed, said Maurencia Gillion, a local politician who grew up and still lives in Overstrand.

“The rich white people live in their beautiful holiday homes,” Ms. Gillion said. “The rest are in slums, in squatter areas. Even after 18 years, in reality apartheid remains.”

That would seem a harsh critique of the party that has governed South Africa since the end of minority rule in 1994, the century-old African National Congress. It came not from an opposition leader, but one of the party’s own. Ms. Gillion is a senior A.N.C. leader in her province, and her words were simply an echo of what the party’s leader, President Jacob Zuma, said in a speech minutes earlier.

“The structure of the apartheid economy has remained largely intact,” Mr. Zuma said, in a speech to thousands of delegates to the A.N.C.’s policy conference, held every five years, before the presidential election, to work out the party’s platform. “The ownership of the economy is still primarily in the hands of white males, as it has always been.”

The four-day conference here, which began Tuesday, has been devoted to considerable soul-searching about what the A.N.C. has, and has not, achieved in 18 years in power. With unemployment at 25 percent, and much higher for young blacks, and corruption widespread, there is a growing perception that the A.N.C. has become the party of a small black elite interested only in its own enrichment. To counter this perception, the party has released a set of back-to-basics policy proposals that it claims will help deliver on its old election slogan: “A better life for all.”

The party’s own analysis had this to say about South Africa’s predicament nearly two decades after the end of apartheid: “Too few people work; the standard of education of most black learners is of poor quality; infrastructure is poorly located, under-maintained and insufficient to foster higher growth; spatial patterns exclude the poor from the fruits of development; the economy is overly and unsustainably resource-intensive; a widespread disease burden is compounded by a failing health system; public services are uneven and often of poor quality; corruption is widespread; and South Africa remains a divided society.”

Officials were quick to say that 18 years is a short time to reverse centuries of discrimination under colonial and apartheid rule that left black South Africans ill equipped to compete in a liberalized economy. And Mr. Zuma ticked off a list of major achievements: millions of new houses for the poor; millions more connected to the electric grid and piped water systems; and a growing and vibrant black middle class.

Embedded in the policy documents and Mr. Zuma’s remarks is an argument that the process of transforming the country’s economy to put more wealth in the hands of blacks was hampered by the need to make peace with the former white rulers.

“We had to make certain compromises in the national interest,” Mr. Zuma said. “We had to be cautious about restructuring the economy in order to maintain economic stability and confidence at the time. Thus the economic power relations of the apartheid era have remained intact.”

The party is thus proposing what it calls a “second transition,” this one focused on economic, rather than political, change.

The policy proposals take a hard look at some of the most difficult issues facing South Africa, and at the A.N.C.’s internal struggles. One asks whether the government should dispense with the current policy of land redistribution and replace it with a more aggressive one. Another contemplates nationalizing the country’s mines.

Taken together, the proposals would, if adopted, represent a sharp leftward shift for the A.N.C., which despite its roots has largely backed a free-market economy with minimal state intervention. The proposals are being discussed this week and will be decided upon when the party holds its convention in December.

Some A.N.C. members have been pushing for a more radical program of redistribution of wealth from whites to blacks. The party’s Youth League, under the firebrand leader Julius Malema, had demanded that gold, platinum and diamond mines be nationalized. Cosatu, an alliance of trade unions that is one of the A.N.C.’s main allies, has pushed for banks to be nationalized.

Yet, according to the A.N.C.’s own analysis, its failure to deliver economic progress may be its own fault. The party has experienced “a silent shift from transformative politics to palace politics wherein internal strife and factional battles over power and resources define the political life of the movement,” a far cry from its founding as a liberation movement built on socialist principles.

For all the fears of a leftward shift that could lead to the repossession of white-owned land, as happened in Zimbabwe, or the nationalization of mines, such moves are highly unlikely, said Steven Friedman, a political analyst at the Center for the Study of Democracy at the University of Johannesburg.

“There is going to be lots of fairly radical rhetoric, and the actual proposals are going to be actually quite meek and mild,” Mr. Friedman said. “This has been the pattern all along.”

Indeed, some delegates at the conference advocated a go-slow approach.

“I support the sharing of wealth, but I don’t think we should go for a radical approach,” said Tim Mkhari, a delegate from Limpopo, a province on the country’s northern edge.

“We should not take the Zimbabwe route,” he said.

Source: New York Times

The indomitable David Mabuza, still the king of Mpumalanga

ANC chairman in Mpumalanga David Mabuza was elected unopposed in the party’s congress over the weekend. Yes, in the same way that Malema was elected unopposed last year. The ANC clearly has no appetite to kick another troubling leader out. You’d think the lesson of waiting too late to ostracise such a man would have been learned. By SIPHO HLONGWANE.

The way the ANC is structured is that it always seeks to point power upwards. More centralisation is good. Even so, provincial structures do exist, and the amount of influence that a provincial boss can exert is almost endless, if certain legal niceties are ignored. This arrangement has proven to be the perfect incubation for powerful regional party leaders, who turn out to be corrupt as well.
This growing trend ought to worry the ANC leadership, if it doesn’t already.

Two examples of this trend stand out: John Block of the Northern Cape, and David Mabuza of Mpumalanga.

Mpumalanga held its provincial congress over the weekend, where Mabuza and his entire slate were elected unopposed. It was expected that provincial treasurer and health MEC Clifford Mkasi would run against the party leader after the ANC Youth League in Mpumalanga touted him as their favoured candidate, but he declined his nomination.

The alliance partners of the ANC as well as the ANCYL complained that the entire process had been tainted by Mabuza. The SACP and Mpumalanga branch of  Cosatu have accused Mabuza of using his position as premier to enrich himself and his allies. “The Youth League has also complained of being marginalised during his term. The provincial youth league, Cosatu and the SACP consider Mabuza unfit to hold the esteemed ANC position,” the Mail & Guardian reported.

They also said that they had intentionally been denied speaking opportunities at the congress on Sunday, apparently because Mabuza didn’t want their speakers to tell the delegates what they really thought of him. Ironically for the Mpumalanga ANCYL, its former national leader Julius Malema pulled a similar trick at the league’s national congress last year to ensure he’d run unopposed.
All of this happened against the backdrop of ANC president Jacob Zuma’s speech, in which he called for unity and asked for the enmity between different provincial factions to come to an end. It would appear that Mabuza happily complied by ensuring that his opponents didn’t get to speak or vote for another candidate.

Mpumalanga is not a stranger to what seems to be political assassinations. Caswell Maluleke, a council speaker in Ehlanzeni, was shot 14 times in April 2000. He was the mayor of Bushbuckridge at the time and had been appointed to help re-establish the defunct Bohlabela District Municipality in Limpopo. In 2009, Mbombela speaker Jimmy Mohlala was killed after he started speaking out against tender corruption around the construction of the world cup stadium in that city. Last year, Ehlanzeni chief whip John Ndlovu was murdered.

The most dramatic example of the rot in Mpumalanga was the highly public arrest of Sunday Times investigative journalist Mzilikazi wa Afrika in August 2010. He was arrested for reportedly having a forged letter sent to Zuma by Mabuza, in which he resigned as premier. The case eventually fell apart, but the arrest and subsequent interrogation by the Hawks and the police was seen as being politically motivated. The move was very stupid, but the truly chilling part is that Mabuza not only knew he could get away with it, but his own party let him get away with it.

All of this happened while Mabuza was in power, and amid widespread graft and very poor service delivery.

Let us not forget John Block, the Northern Cape party leader who was arrested for corruption in late 2010. He is the finance MEC for the Northern Cape as well as being the party chairman. At his trial, he not only enjoyed the support of picketing supporters outside (who claim that the case is politically motivated) but also that of premier Hazel Jenkins, who has made a habit of sitting in the front row of the court when Block’s case is being heard.

So where does Mabuza’s re-election leave the ANC? Zuma for one will be sleeping a lot easier: his staunch supporter has won. What this steamrolling and bullying of opponents will mean for Mangaung has yet to be seen, since another candidate has yet to officially present him- or herself. As for his opponents, Mabuza has grandly promised not to make a provincial reshuffle to punish those who didn’t support him.

Where it leaves the rest of us is uncertain. There is the very real problem that ANC members are using their positions in government to run the province as their personal fiefdoms, and it seems there is precious little that can or will be done about it. From a political perspective, Zuma has nothing to gain by upsetting a major ally. Intervention in dysfunctional provinces hasn’t exactly proven to be a miracle drug and has only served to soil relations between provinces and the national leadership within the ANC.

There’s the frightening thought that these provincial men and women might take this habit with them into national positions. And who is going to step in to stop them, what with Zuma himself finding the very narrow path of strict legality so hard to tread?

Don’t forget David Mabuza. His face could one day be that of our slip into a very bad place. DM

Defiant Juju thumbs nose at ANC's bid 'to silence him'

In open defiance of the conditions of his suspension from the ANC, youth league leader Julius Malema has addressed a church service in Butterworth in the Eastern Cape. The SABC reported that Malema had spoken out against what he called "individuals trying to silence him" at a second church service which he had attended.

"I will never be silenced. There is nobody who has a right to silence me," the Dispatch Online quoted Malema as saying on Friday. "The right to speak was given to me from the day I was born." According to the Dispatch Online, Malema said he was not at the Last Move Ministries church to speak politics. "When everything is difficult out there, the only safe place is church because in church you don't discriminate. We are here to receive blessings. We want the church to pray for us because those that used to be our friends have turned against us. They have not only turned against us but plan our death," he was quoted as saying.

In a statement on Thursday, ANC Youth League spokesperson Floyd Shivambu said: "In celebrating Easter Friday and commemorating the life of Solomon Mahlangu, president Julius Malema will visit the Twelve Apostles' Church in Christ in Butterworth."

Mahlangu was an Umkhonto we Sizwe soldier hanged by the apartheid government in 1979. Malema was visiting the church in his capacity as the league's president, Shivambu said. He said Malema had not spoken at the Twelve Apostles' Church in Christ, but the embattled youth league leader had reportedly attended a second church service at Last Move Ministries, where he did speak.

This was Malema's first public appearance since the suspension. According to the SABC he was accompanied by members of the league's national executive committee, the provincial executive and National Youth Development Agency chair, Andile Lungisa.

On Wednesday, Malema was gagged and temporarily suspended by the ANC's national disciplinary committee (NDC), a move which forbids him exercising any duty as an ANC member, president of the ANCYL or member of the Limpopo provincial executive committee. Malema's temporary suspension from the party followed comments he made at a centenary lecture at the University of the Witwatersrand last Friday. Malema called ANC President Jacob Zuma a dictator and said he was suppressing the youth league. The ANCYL leader was informed on Wednesday morning of his immediate temporary suspension, and that the NDC would bring disciplinary proceedings against him. The NDC had instituted special measures because of Malema's repeated behaviour. Malema is appealing his expulsion from the ANC for sowing division in the party and for bringing it into disrepute. The appeals hearing was expected to take place on April 12.

The two disciplinary proceedings are separate.

Source: Mail & Guadian

Today they come for Malema…..

President Jacob Zuma is not a person who seems to take kindly to criticism (and neither is he someone who can take a joke at his expense). One might even claim that he seems a bit, well, thin skinned (if not, dare I say, dictatorial) in his attitude towards those who say things about him that he does not like. Not that Julius Malema has shown a lot of tolerance towards those within the Youth League who have dared to criticise him or who opposed his leadership at one time or another. In fact, these two leaders, may, ironically, be cut from the same kind of cloth.

A few years ago Zuma announced that he was going to sue Zapiro for R5 million because he claimed the cartoonist had defamed him after the cartoonist had published a cartoon in which he suggested Zuma was violating the justice system to avoid facing fraud and corruption charges.

It therefore comes as no surprise that the National Disciplinary Committee (NDC) of the ANC – ostensibly acting completely independently of President Zuma (yeah right!) – announced this morning that it was temporarily suspending Julius Malema from the ANC with immediate effect. The purported reason for this suspension is that Malema allegedly brought the ANC into disrepute. (Malema had already been expelled from the ANC earlier, but his appeal regarding the expulsion is to be heard only later this month.)

Apparently the ANC as an organisation is brought into disrepute if one of its members criticises the leader of the party in public. (Criticism might be the lifeblood of any democratic culture, but public criticism of leaders has now suddenly become alien to the culture of the ANC – at least if that criticism is levelled at President Zuma.) How any political party can remain democratic and how it can renew itself and correct mistakes, when its members are not allowed to criticise the party leader in public, is unclear. Maybe criticism can be communicated in secret messages with the assistance of the intelligence services?

Of course, this ban on any public criticism of a sitting leader is not based on a principle that was followed by President Zuma and his supporters during his fight with former President Thabo Mbeki. But I guess consistency and an abiding respect for high principles is not really what is in play here. What is at play is President Zuma’s future survival. Remember, he might well believe that he will either get a second term or he will go to jail for 15 years, so (in his eyes) there might not be time for niceties such as respect for democratic debate inside the party.

Malema now faces fresh disciplinary charges, which will obviously lapse once the ANC Appeal Committee confirms Malema’s expulsion – surely only a formality. This is after Malema criticised Zuma on Friday in the following terms:

It is under President Zuma that we have seen the youth of the ANC being traumatised, being expelled from their own home. It is under President Zuma we have seen a critical voice being suppressed We have seen under President Zuma, democracy being replaced with dictatorship. We have seen an intolerance….people, who become impatient with the youth….

The NDC did not say who complained about the utterances made by Malema. It did stipulate the following (once again rather draconian and probably not entirely enforceable) conditions that Malema will be required to comply with during his suspension:

He will not exercise any duty in his capacity as an ANC member, President of the ANC Youth League and/or Member of the Provincial Executive Committee of the ANC Limpopo Province;
He will not attend any meeting of the ANC or any of its structures, including the Leagues, except for the purpose of the NDCA hearing and the pending disciplinary proceedings to be instituted against him.

He will not address any meeting of the ANC or any of its structures, including the Leagues, whether as an invited guest, in his capacity as President of the ANC Youth League and/or as a member of the ANC; and
He will not make any public statement on any matter pertaining to the ANC.

Of course, the first thing to note is that this will bring the clash between the Youth League and the mother body of the ANC to a head, as Malema is forbidden from attending any Youth League meeting, which the League insists can operate free from the discipline of the ANC.

Members of the Youth League Executive (with or without Malema) will now have to decide either to defy this order of the disciplinary committee or face disciplinary charges and expulsion themselves. What happens if they continue arguing that the Youth League Executive members cannot be ordered around by the mother body and cannot say whether Malema should sit on the League’s Executive or not? What if the Executive continues meeting with Malema as its President? Surely they will all then have to be suspended as well and then ultimately expelled.

President Zuma seems to have learnt well from the “mistakes” of Thabo Mbeki and he is taking no chances with those who might oppose him. Cut off their heads before they can gather steam, seems to be his motto. Whether this is a democratic attitude or closer to the dictatorial style that Malema spoke about, I leave to the judgment of the readers.

Secondly, an order purporting to ban Malema from making any public statements on any matter pertaining to the ANC infringes on Malema’s right to freedom of expression. Our Bill of Rights can also bind private individuals, organisations and political parties and I am almost certain that when an organisation bans a member from making any statements about that organisation in public that organisation is in breach of the Bill of Rights. For this reason, the probably unconstitutional censoring of Malema by the NDC seems troubling, to say the least.

A further irony is of course that this immediate suspension and the draconian (and partially unconstitutional) nature of the “conditions” imposed on Malema during this latest suspension nicely seems to illustrate the point Malema was making in his speech about the intolerance of Zuma to dissent and the inability of the leadership to listen to and accept criticism of ANC leaders and policies.

By making these points I am not arguing that Malema was wise to make the statements that got him into trouble today. Neither am I claiming that I believe Malema is an eternal democrat who is saying these things because he really has the best interests of the ANC at heart. Yet, as I warned before, one must be careful to cheer on this silencing of debate and dissent inside the ANC merely because the person being silenced is someone with whose views one does not agree and whose downfall one might applaud.

Today they come for Malema. Tomorrow they might come for you or me.

Source: Constitutionally Speaking

African National Congress Acts to Silence a Critic

Julius Malema, the polarizing leader of the African National Congress Youth League, was abruptly suspended from the party on Wednesday, effectively silencing him within South Africa’s main political body as he fights for his political life. The announcement came after a speech on Friday in which Mr. Malema accused President Jacob Zuma of becoming a dictator, and after a highly unusual news conference on Tuesday by the party’s top leadership to denounce divisive squabbles.

The decision to silence Mr. Malema, analysts say, is less about finishing off his waning political prospects than an effort by Mr. Zuma to quell serious speculation that one or more senior party members will seek to unseat him as president of the A.N.C. and the country at the party’s leadership conference in December. Mr. Zuma himself rose to the presidency by defeating his predecessor, Thabo Mbeki, in a leadership fight in 2007 in which Mr. Malema and the Youth League played a central role.

“It was beginning to look as if Zuma wasn’t in charge of his own organization,” said Steven Friedman, director of the Center for the Study of Democracy. “He needed to show who’s boss.”

The suspension is the latest and in some way the harshest punishment meted out against Mr. Malema, who was once one of Mr. Zuma’s most ardent supporters but has become a harsh critic.

Mr. Malema was convicted at the end of February in an internal disciplinary trial of sowing division within the party, and was sentenced to expulsion. The A.N.C., which prizes its reputation for fairness, allowed Mr. Malema to keep his membership while he appealed the expulsion, a process that will continue despite the latest decision. In the meantime, he had been using A.N.C. events and the support of some top party leaders to press his case with the rank and file, casting himself as the victim of a stultified elite wary of his radical ideas to help the poor. With his suspension, he has lost access to that platform. He also faces multiple investigations into his personal finances: he has become a wealthy man while leading the Youth League, and has been frequently accused of corruption.

Mr. Malema is no stranger to outrageous remarks. He revived the anti-apartheid struggle song “Shoot the Boer,” a term for white farmers, leading him to be convicted of using hate speech. He called a BBC reporter a “bloody agent.” Back when he was close to Mr. Zuma, he declared himself ready to die for the man. But on Friday, Mr. Malema apparently went too far when he attacked Mr. Zuma at a Youth League event to celebrate the A.N.C.’s centennial.

“It is under President Zuma we have seen a critical voice being suppressed,” Mr. Malema told a cheering crowd at the University of the Witwatersrand. “We have seen under President Zuma democracy being replaced with dictatorship.”

Also on stage was Mathews Phosa, the party treasurer and one of six members of the A.N.C.’s national executive committee. Mr. Phosa has been a supporter of Mr. Malema and a critic of Mr. Zuma. Mr. Malema has also courted Kgalema Motlanthe, a former president and now Mr. Zuma’s deputy, who appeared at another Youth League event where Mr. Zuma was harshly criticized. But both potential rivals appeared at Mr. Zuma’s side at a news conference on Tuesday, which was held by Gwede Mantashe, the party’s secretary general, in an effort to project a united front. The fact that members of the executive committee who seemed to be at odds with the president could be compelled to show up demonstrated that Mr. Zuma, despite deep divisions within the party, is likely to be re-elected, said Karema Brown, a veteran political analyst.

“It was an important show of force,” Ms. Brown said. “And of course it wasn’t a show of unity. It was a real demonstration of power. If he didn’t have that power, he wouldn’t have been able to get them to sit there.”

The A.N.C., like any big political party, has always struggled to keep its diverse membership and ambitious leadership under one big tent, though not always successfully. The most acrimonious and public infighting was that which led to the ouster of Mr. Mbeki, Nelson Mandela’s chosen successor, as party president in 2007. He was soon pushed out as president of the country as well, temporarily replaced by his deputy, Mr. Motlanthe, and eventually by the man he had previously fired as his deputy, Mr. Zuma. Every attempt to undercut the party’s power by splitting it has ended in failure. The most recent effort, the Congress of the People, founded by disgruntled supporters of Mr. Mbeki, has struggled to attract votes and has been riven by rivalries.

Source: New York Times

'People's president' on the defensive

As the battle for leadership positions in the ANC intensifies, President Jacob Zuma has tightened up his security. His intelligence advisers are insisting that all who attend party and government events where he is speaking must be accredited, probably to avoid ugly scenes such as those witnessed during a speech in the Western Cape last month. Zuma's lecture on the ANC's second president, Sefako Makgatho, was disrupted by angry ANC Youth League members, who heckled him in front of international dignitaries and demanded to know why former league leader Julius Malema was expelled from the ANC.

Since then, Zuma's intelligence chiefs have been taking no chances and have barred anyone without proper accreditation from attending his public meetings. The decision has angered some ANC leaders, who accused him of using state security agencies to fight internal party-political battles in the run-up to the party's elective conference in Mangaung. Zuma is facing an internal revolt by militants in the party who want to replace him with his deputy, Kgalema Motlanthe. Last week, many ANC community members in Middelburg in Mpumalanga who could not produce accreditation were turned away by Zuma's heavily armed security detail. Zuma was delivering the Zacharias Mahabane memorial lecture, part of the ANC's centenary celebrations.

According to Clarence Maseko, the youth league's provincial secretary in Mpumalanga, hundreds of people were turned away at the entrance of the town's Steve Tshwete Hall. "The memorial lecture was convened under a big cloud of paranoia. The Steve Tshwete banquet hall has a capacity of 5 000 people but only 2 500 [people] were allowed because they were accredited," said Maseko. "[Even] people from around the area [Ekangala region] were turned away and not invited, as is tradition. They [ANC leaders close to Zuma] made sure people who attended were from outside. "They bussed in cronies from the Ehlanzeni and Gert Sibande regions [Mpumalanga Premier David Mabuza's strongholds] because they sing praises of him and President Zuma. The people close to Mabuza and some intelligence agents thought the people from around would embarrass the president and disrupt his speech," Maseko said.

ANC spokesperson Keith Khoza this week said that the accreditation of community members was part of the party's efforts to improve event management. He said the Middelburg and recent Human Rights Day Kliptown events were not the only ones where people had to be accredited. "We did this during the Siyanqoba rally held at the FNB Stadium last year," he said. "The ANC could account [for] each and every person in that rally. It's a [new] system we are using … Those without accreditations can listen to the president on TV or radio. A lecture is not like public meetings; it's intimate."

However, some ANC leaders and critics of Zuma said it was a clear sign that the president was losing touch with the masses. A senior ANC leader said Zuma had become inaccessible even to some of the senior members of the alliance. "To secure a meeting with President Zuma can take years now. In the past, he was available to the leaders of Cosatu and the SACP [South African Communist Party], rightwingers, church leaders, bereaved families, but all this is now impossible," the leader said.

Political analyst Zamikhaya Maseti said the first victims of inaccessibility to Zuma were the working class who made up Cosatu. "They supported him with their lives in the run-up to Polokwane and now they deeply feel a sense of betrayal and alienation from a man who they thought would be a better listening president than his predecessor, Thabo Mbeki. But now, like Mbeki, whom they accused of aloofness and arrogance, he is always on international travel and is nowhere to be found on the ground," Maseti said. "The second disconnection people feel with Zuma is born out of his decision to discontinue the presidential imbizos made famous by Mbeki. If he is a man of the people, why did he get rid of the presidential imbizos, which were a great opportunity for the president of the country to interact with people, councillors, mayors, and listen to issues affecting them?"

ANC Veterans' League president Sandi Sejake said the issue of accreditation for ANC and community members was new and foreign to the culture and traditions of the ANC. "The ANC has changed a lot," Sejake said. "ANC members become important only when the party wants votes. It used to be a voluntary party. Today you go and buy a person. This [accreditation issue] is part of buying people. We are departing from the culture of the ANC."

Presidential spokesperson Mac Maharaj said: "The ANC, like any other political party or civil organisation, is responsible for ensuring that its events and functions are conducted in an orderly manner, without untoward disruption and without endangering life and property. To this end it is also able to call on the services of the SAPS, which would respond to any given situation on the basis of their own evaluation."

ANC spokesperson Jackson Mthembu said accreditation was not "a new thing". "It has always been the norm. For each and every indoor activity of the ANC, such as public lectures, people are required to have accreditation so that we are able to manage issues such as capacity. We do not ask people for accreditation to [attend] rallies."

Source: Mail & Guardian

Malema vows to take fight against expulsion to court

Embattled ANC youth league president Julius Malema will seek redress in the courts if he is expelled from the party, he said on Sunday. Malema remains president of the ANCYL pending his appeal against a decision to expel him by the ANC's national disciplinary committee. Until now he has consistently rejected the idea of taking legal action against the ANC. "I said I would not go to court, but now I have decided to do so," Malema said. "I need no mandate and act as an individual whose rights have been violated." This would not contradict the principles of the ANC, as he would no longer be an ANC member.

Malema was speaking at an ANCYL centenary rally at the Nkowankowa Stadium, outside Tzaneen. He called on the crowd not to abandon the ANC, calling it the only hope for the country's poor. He reminded the crowd that while individuals would come and go, the ANC would continue. "I will never be welcomed in the ANC. I have been fired in the ANC. But I have no problem with that," he said.

He did not regret anything he had done, Malema said. "I did what I believed in and I did it on my own. I was not told by anyone to do anything. "I have not been chased from heaven, but from the ANC by a faction that can only do so as they currently have power."

The ANCYL was being victimised by its own leaders, Malema said. "They are trying to punish anyone associated with the ANCYL as if we are an illegal association." He would not accept being victimised by anyone, he said. Those who are supposed to support and protect the ANCYL were scared to do so. "We are orphans standing alone. Our leaders are scared. They prefer their positions above speaking out for what is right," he told the crowd. "There is no longer a youth league of the ANC. We are a former self. They have succeeded in killing us."

Also speaking at the rally, Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe said revolution was deliberate and methodical, and never accidental. He could barely be heard in the stadium above the conversations of the crowd. "The ANC has no use for a passive youth league. We need our youth league to be militant, creative and determined. When the call is given, the youth must answer rapidly," he said. The youth had to be afforded space to generate new ideas.

The ANC expected the ANCYL to recruit youth and remain relevant to the youth. "It is the ANC's duty to show and lead the ANCYL if it strays from the path. We must guide them all the time. They can't stray off the path and go off on their own," Motlanthe said. The ANCYL had been formed by the ANC to feed and form the youth in preparation for becoming ANC members, said Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula, himself a former ANCYL president. "No one will destroy the ANCYL," he said. "You are here to create new ideas. Once the ANCYL ceases to think we will be in danger. Once they suffer political dwarfism the revolution will be in danger."

Messages of support for the ANCYL were sent by the ANC Women's League and the ANC Veterans' League, as well as youth organisations from all over Africa, including Zimbabwe, Ghana, Namibia and Ethiopia.

Source: Mail & Guardian

Trade Union Group, A.N.C. Ally, Holds Strikes in South Africa

Tens of thousands of South Africans marched in the streets of the nation’s major cities on Wednesday in a national strike called by Cosatu, the powerful group of trade unions, a crucial ally of the governing African National Congress that is growing increasingly critical of its policies. The stated reason for the strike was to protest new highway tolls and the practice of contracting out jobs through temporary-employment firms, at lower pay and with fewer benefits than permanent workers get, a practice known here as labor broking. But the strike tapped a deep undercurrent of dissatisfaction with the A.N.C., which has governed South Africa since white minority rule ended in 1994. “We voted for the A.N.C., but we can’t even send our children to school because of their corruption,” said Thabiso Bopape, 30, a contract worker for the postal system who earns much less than regular government employees doing the same work.

Mr. Bopape and thousands of others gathered in downtown Johannesburg on Wednesday, wearing the T-shirts of their unions and waving placards denouncing corruption and capitalism. Zwelinzima Vavi, the secretary general of Cosatu, said in a fiery speech that racial apartheid was increasingly being replaced by economic apartheid. He said there would be civil disobedience if the government went ahead with its plans to charge tolls on highways that were built with tax money. “We have fired our first warning shot,” Mr. Vavi told the cheering crowd. “There are still many bullets in our chamber.”

The marches come at an important moment for the A.N.C., which is celebrating its centennial this year. The party faces growing doubts from a public that has historically returned it to power with huge majorities. The party will hold its conference to choose a leader in December, and in June it will hold a policy conference to discuss ideas for how to tackle some of the country’s most bedeviling problems, like unemployment that reaches 40 percent among young people.

South Africa is often roiled by protest. Demonstrations, sometimes violent, happen almost daily in the townships where the poor struggle to live without basic services like electricity, water and toilets. But the outpouring on Wednesday came from working people, not the destitute, and their protests took place not in distant townships but in the heart of South Africa’s cities. The toll issue was a flashpoint for their anger. “We already paid once, why should we pay again?” said Busi Harishe, 34, a shop clerk who joined the protest. “Petrol prices are already high. Working people are suffering too much.”

Julius Malema, the contentious former leader of the A.N.C.’s youth league, also spoke to strikers on Wednesday. Mr. Malema was expelled from the party for breaking rules and espousing controversial positions contrary to party policy, like calling for mines to be nationalized. He also faces an investigation into his personal fortune, which has expanded along with his political influence.

Young marchers like Mr. Bopape said Mr. Malema, who is appealing his expulsion, should stay in the party. “He is the voice of the youth,” Mr. Bopape said. “No one else is speaking for us.”

Source: New York Times

Let justice, fairness be our guide

FIRST up, I must confess that I am one of those who secretly (or maybe not so secretly) celebrated the unceremonious ousting of Thabo Mbeki from the presidency of the South African republic. He had caused so much harm to the country that it seemed okay for the ANC to give him a solid punch in the ribs and make him feel the pain that he had made others feel. As I watched his farewell address that Sunday night in September 2008, a part of me sadistically enjoyed seeing the humiliation he was being subjected to. Never mind that it was all wrong, unprocedural and, most likely, unconstitutional. I, and many other South Africans, were just happy to see the back of someone, who had suffocated the nation with his near tyrannical leadership style and his icy heart. Yes, today we miss his intellect and vision, but we should never forget the ditch into which he nearly drove us. However, nothing can detract from the fact that the bloodless 2008 coup set a bad precedent for our republic.

We should make sure that even if the ANC does not give President Jacob Zuma a second party term in December, the party should under no circumstances be allowed to cut short his presidency. As torturous as this might be, principle should trounce passions. In the past week, the demise of ANC Youth League president Julius Malema was widely celebrated. When ANC bigwig Cyril Ramaphosa - who chairs the party's national disciplinary committee of appeals - confirmed the youth leader's guilt and sentence on Saturday, there was a collective sigh of relief from Constantia to Khutsong. Finally, the Mario Balotelli of our politics had been red-carded. One might argue that this was rightly so.

Like Mbeki, Malema has done a lot of harm to the country. It is therefore easy to understand why we are all inclined to ululate as he is blindfolded and led to the raised platform where he will hang until his neck breaks. Except for the fact that he swears by the skull and crossbones that symbolise the venerable 75-year-old South African institution called Orlando Pirates, Malema has no saving graces.

I had hoped against all hope that the honourable men and women on the ANC's appeals committee would rise above self-interest politics and allow their integrity to dictate their decision-making. At this juncture, as the comrades are wont to say, we should pause and ask ourselves if it is right and proper that Malema should be executed in this fashion for the sake of political expediency.

No doubt the country will be a much better place without Malema on newspaper front pages and at the top of broadcast bulletins every other day. His divisive verbosity will not be missed. Investors will nod. Ministers and policy-makers will no longer have to waste their breath explaining that nationalisation is not official policy but one young man's thoughts in the bath. Minority interest groups will have to find a new bogey. Farmers will not see Robert Mugabe on their doorsteps. The cantankerous chief from Ulundi will be less concerned that his grandchildren will be recruited into the ANC against his will. Hellen Zille and Lindiwe Mazibuko will be subjected to fewer insults. Mazibuko can make her tea and Zille can inject herself with botox with gay abandon. South Africans will not be subjected to to the sewer rhetoric that Malema had reduced political discourse to. Most crucially, Zuma's re-election strategists will sleep easier and plan better for the ANC's Mangaung elective conference. (That is all, of course, assuming that Malema is finished, which is far from conclusive at this point. Like Mgqumeni of Nquthu, Malema might rise from the dead and wow the masses again.)

But is the imminent execution right and proper? Is the elevation of political short-term gain above principle the right thing for a country that is trying to deepen and entrench a democratic culture? This lowly newspaperman thinks not.

Let's just take a cold look at the sins Malema is said to have committed against the ANC. As leader of the ANC Youth League, he led the charge against Botswana's governing party. He called for regime change in that country, labelling Ian Khama's government a puppet of Western imperialism. He did not call for a military overthrow of the government, but rather the unification of opposition forces for the democratic removal of the Botswana Democratic Party. By the way the "D" part of the party's name is almost as appropriate as North Korea's depiction of itself as democratic.

Now many in the ANC - including the secretary-general, members of the national executive and officials of other party structures - have pronounced themselves on foreign policy issues. Be it Zimbabwe, Israel, Swaziland or Tibet, we have heard differing views from individual members of the ANC leadership. Having read the national disciplinary committee's reasoning on the matter, I am still none the wiser as to why Botswana should be a holy cow, other than the fact that it has more cattle than human beings in its sovereign territory.

Malema's other serious offence was the unfavourable comparison of Zuma's leadership to that of Mbeki. Now what, pray thee, is the crime comparing the talents of the country's leaders? How are we to grow if we do not publicly share our views on the respective qualities of those who lead us? It would be a travesty if we were to create a culture where South Africans - and ANC functionaries in particular - were not able to evaluate the contribution of leaders to the development of our republic and our world. There were many other pots, spoons and saucers (euphimistically known as charges) thrown at Malema during a process in which the kangaroo court label can be deemed apt. It is a process that, as much as we may resent Malema, we will live to regret.

Rather than rushing to execute Malema, the ANC and the country should take some lessons from his rise and fall. In the rise of Malema, we should take care not to empower a demagogue to occupy centre stage in our discourse. Malema the hero and Malema the ogre were not the creation of the media and the South African public. The ANC gave birth to him, fattened him and unleashed him on an unsuspecting nation. It suited Zuma and his leadership to have an uncontrollable bloodhound to take on their opponents and external opponents. He was empowered to be the Malema that he was. The more despicable he became the more useful he was. Not once did the ANC give a care about the negative effect he was having on our body politic or the damage he was doing to our international standing. In its centenary introspections, the ANC should give careful thought to how it creates and nurtures monsters such as Malema.

Those outside the ANC should also think about how we deal with the monsters that the governing party creates. Do we empower the monsters by demonising and fearing them? Do we in the media give undue attention to the monsters that the ANC or any other societal force creates? Do we have a choice? Having done so, the ANC and the country should think seriously about the place of principle in our public discourse and the conduct of our politics.

We should make sure that no matter how much we resent, hate and fear an individual, these emotions should never compromise our commitment to justice and fairness.

Principle should always be our guide. Yesterday it was Mbeki. Today it is Malema. Tomorrow? ...

Written by Mondli Makhanya, editor-in-chief of Avusa Media newspapers

Source: The Sowetan

Malema cronies looted Limpopo: report

Limpopo-based cronies of ANCYL president Julius Malema allegedly spent millions of rand of taxpayers' money on properties, cars and parties, a weekend newspaper reported. It claimed that engineer Lesiba Gwangwa was at the centre. Gwangwa was Malema's business partner and the sole director of On-Point and SGL Engineering Projects. The two companies were previously or currently owned by Malema and his Ratang Family Trust.

According to the Sunday Independent, both companies have scored more than R400m worth of known Limpopo municipal tenders since 2007. The companies are being investigated for tender fraud and corruption by the SA Revenue Service, public protector Thuli Madonsela and the elite investigating unit, the Hawks. The national government stepped in and placed five departments in Limpopo under administration last month after tender fraud brought the province to the brink of collapse. Madonsela has ordered the provincial roads department to suspend On-Point's participation in the tender awarding process. She is apparently looking into how Gwangwa allegedly forced contractors to sign secret back-to-back agreements which entitled his company to a share of the proceeds of the tenders it awarded. According to analysts quoted by the newspaper, President Jacob Zuma, was aware of what was happening in Limpopo, but was allowing the investigation to take its course rather than recalling the province's political leaders.

Political analyst Somadoda Fikeni told the newspaper that the ANC leadership would rather let the investigation expose links between the leadership in Limpopo and the tender irregularities.

"In that manner it would be seen as a technical administrative process that deals with governance and corruption issues without being seen as politically manoeuvred."

Source: Times Live

Malema verdict might not be something to celebrate

It is understandable that members of the chattering classes as well as other members of the public (including many rank and file members of the ANC yearning for a, perhaps mythical, simpler time when ANC Youth League members behaved properly and listened to their elders) on Saturday applauded the verdict of the ANC National Disciplinary Committee of Appeal (NDCA) which confirmed the guilty verdict against Julius Malema.

It could not have hurt that the verdict was delivered by a confident and in charge Cyril Ramaphosa, who reminded us again why so many of us have regretted the fact that he lost out to Thabo Mbeki when Mandela’s ANC had to appoint a Deputy President and why some of us still wistfully wonder what might have been if he had become our President instead of either Thabo Mbeki or Jacob Zuma.

Although some newspaper editors might miss Malema (given the fact that he has the ability to make news and sell newspapers), most of us might feel slightly relieved that this hypocritical demagogue has been dealt with so effectively and seemingly so decisively by the ANC senior leadership.

Yet, there is something about the way in which Jacob Zuma and Gwede Mantashe managed to clip Malema’s wings that sits uneasy with me. If they could do it to him, I wonder, could they do it to anyone else – including every single one of us who are members of the chattering classes and sometimes mock or criticise our dancing and singing President and every single ANC member who fails to toe the party line or who speaks out against the abuse of power or incompetence by some members of the leadership?

Is there not just a whiff of Stalinism about the way in which Zuma and Matashe got rid of a political enemy? Can we expect the pictures to be airbrushed next so that Malema will disappear completely from official ANC history?

Recall that Malema was convicted on three charges, two of them having been confirmed by the NDCA. First, he was convicted of contravening Rule 25.5 (1) of the ANC Constitution “by behaving in such a way as to provoke serious divisions or a breakdown of unity in the organisation”. His sin was that he addressed a press conference on 31 July 2011 at the conclusion of an ANC Youth League NEC meeting where he said amongst other things “in the past we know President Mbeki used that agenda very well …. The African agenda is no longer a priority and we think that there is a temptation by the coloniser and the imperialist to want to recolonise Africa in a different but sophisticated way and President Mbeki stood directly opposed to that type of conduct.”

The NDC found that through his utterances Malema sought to portray the ANC government and its leadership under President Zuma in a negative light which therefore had the potential to sow division and disunity in the ANC. The NDCA confirmed the reasoning of the NDC. The implications of this verdict are rather stark. Any ANC member who now suggests that an out of favour former President may have done some good and that he might have been better than an incumbent leader can now be kicked out of the Party for contravening Rule 25.5(1). If this principle had been applied consistently in the past, Mbeki would have been able to get rid of Zuma and most of his opponents long before the votes were counted at Polokwane. To his credit, he never used such tactics against them.

The verdict comes perilously close to suggesting that no ANC member will henceforth be allowed ever to criticise the incumbent ANC leadership in public. This is a rather handy precedent to set if one intends to stand for a second (or third) term in office or if one wishes to “manage” future leadership elections. To my mind the ruling on this point seems profoundly undemocratic and deeply dangerous and both ANC members and other members of the public should feel more than a bit worried about this move. One should not confuse approval for the outcome of this case (silencing Malema) with what is good for the ANC and South Africa and if one does, one underestimates the possible ruthlessness of the current bunch of ANC leaders aiming to secure a second term for themselves at Mangaung.

Malema was also convicted of contravening Rule 25.5 (c) of the Constitution of the ANC by behaving in such a way as to bring the organisation into disrepute. This was done for ostensibly slightly more plausible reasons, namely because he addressed a press conference on 31 July 2011 by making announcements amongst others:

* That the Botswana leadership of government poses a serious threat to Africa so we need a progressive government in Botswana;
* We are not going to sit with neighbours that conduct themselves like that. Botswana is in full co-operation with imperialists and the government is undermining the African agenda;
* The ANC Youth League would establish a Botswana Command Team which would work towards uniting all opposition forces in Botswana to oppose the puppet regime of Botswana led by the Botswana Democratic Party.

Now, imagine, for a moment that the statement did not relate to Botswana but to Zimbabwe and that Zwelenzima Vavi had made it and not Malema. Imagine Vavi had said that Robert Mugabe and his Zanu-PF had ruined Zimbabwe and that Cosatu would mobilise ANC members to oppose the murderous regime in Zimbabwe and to unite opposition forces in that country to try and oust Mugabe. If the Zuma and Mantashe had then proceeded to discipline Vavi and if he was then suspended from the ANC, would we all be cheering this on as we are doing with the Malema case?

Surely ordinary ANC members (yes, also those who helped to get rid of Thabo Mbeki at Polokwane, ostensibly because of his dictatorial tendencies) should feel more than a bit uncomfortable by the manner in which Malema had been dealt with? I ask again: will there be other casualties and will the same principles be used to get rid of other opponents who do not shut up? Will they go after Matthews Phosa? Will they go after Kgalema Motlanthe if he ever grew a backbone and actually indicated that he was interested in presidency of the ANC? Will they go after our charming, but arch-opportunist, Tokyo Sexwale, for showing rather too much ambition?

And should this not all be read against the background of the pending suspension of a senior NPA prosecutor, reportedly because she refused to drop charges against crime intelligence boss Richard Mdluli who is said to enjoy protection from “right at the top”? Remember that last year a secret report prepared by Mduli was leaked to the newspaper and that this report claimed that various ANC leaders met in January 2010 in Estcourt, KwaZulu-Natal to plot the ouster of Jacob Zuma. (Why crime intelligence was involved in such a story is unclear as it is perfectly legal in a democracy for political contenders within a party to plot against each other – as long as they use only legal means.)

Key members of the group that is said to have met are KwaZulu-Natal provincial premier Zweli Mkhize and Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale.

Remember also that the Secrecy Bill has just as much if not more to do with attempts by the intelligence agencies (firmly under the control of Zuma and Mantashe) to protect their agents and to prevent any exposure of their – legal or illegal – activities which we now know (thanks to Mduli) also focus on the succession race inside the ANC.

It might be that Malema is a special case and that the extraordinary precedent set by this disciplinary case against Malema will not be used against other critics of the current ANC leadership or against anyone who dares to show any ambition to take over the job of President or Secretary General of the ANC. But do not count on it.

Source: Constitutionally Speaking

SIU probes graft and corruption in Limpopo

The treasury has called on the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) to begin probing some of the damning evidence unearthed by central government's intervention force in Limpopo. A letter of understanding was issued by Lungisa Fuzile, the treasury director general, on January 24, paving the way for the investigators to begin their work. Fuzile confirmed the letter to the Mail & Guardian, but said the treasury was "not in a position to comment on the investigation". He referred the M&G to the SIU, which was not prepared to comment.

This is the first time treasury has commissioned the SIU to investigate irregularities in the province. It follows a decision by the Cabinet on December 8 last year to effectively take over the cash-strapped Limpopo government and bring five of its 11 departments under administration. Within weeks of the books being opened, the province was declared bankrupt and a trail of maladministration and gross abuse of public funds uncovered.

It is expected that there will be considerable overlap between the SIU investigation instigated by treasury and the probes that are already under way into the financial affairs and business dealings of ANC Youth League president Julius Malema who, together with his friend and political ally Premier Cassel Mathale, is highly influential in the province. The two have been linked to a string of companies that have been trading off the public purse for a number of years. Last year the M&G revealed how On-Point Engineering, part-owned by Malema, had secured a programme management contract at the provincial transport department through which tenders were doled out to friends and party cronies, as well as to business partners of Mathale. The M&G later exposed attempts on Malema's part to pressurise staff at the local health department to pay out on multimillion-rand contracts that were being investigated for fraud. Both men have also built impressive property portfolios and lived lavish lifestyles that eventually demanded scrutiny.

The SIU has not been given a deadline to complete the latest probe and it is too early to predict what consequences, if any, its findings might have. However, in a recent radio interview, Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan said "there certainly will be consequences if there is wrongdoing, including putting people through the necessary disciplinary processes or criminal processes".

It first had to be established "whether the evidence really strongly and decisively takes us in that particular direction". Gordhan is due to brief the National Council of Provinces on the intervention and its progress in Parliament on Thursday.

Source: Mail & Guardian

Criminal case against Malema, others for 'land grab'

Suspended ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema has been accused of stealing a prime piece of land in Polokwane, Limpopo in the suburb of Ster Park, police said on Sunday.

Brigadier Hangwani Mulaudzi said Polokwane police and the commercial crimes unit were investigating the case.

Businessman Matane Mphahlele has opened a criminal case against Malema, lawyer Maboku Mangena, Clifford Motsepe, the head of Limpopo's housing department, as well as senior municipal officers, City Press reported.

According to Mphahlele, Malema illegally transferred the plot into his own name in 2007 and resold it the following month for more than three times the price.

The newspaper further reported that Mangena and municipal officials allegedly helped Malema with the transfer. -- Sapa

Source: Mail & Guardian

Power, patronage and the provinces

Say what you like about the politics of the national government's intervention in three provinces, one thing is clear: a scaled-down analogue of the eurozone crisis is unfolding within the borders of South Africa. Limpopo literally ran out of money three weeks ago, maxing out its overdraft at the Corporation for Public Deposits and exceeding its half-a-billion-rand facility at First National Bank. The treasury had to move forward its payment on one of the province's regular tranches of funding so that teachers and nurses could be paid.

The province blames unexpected increases in civil service wages and the implementation of the occupation-specific dispensation for health workers. These were provided for at central level, but seem to have been implemented amid real confusion and, on a charitable interpretation, unexpected wage payments in a context of rampant corruption and mismanagement may have finally tipped the provincial fiscus over the edge.

The treasury effected a hostile takeover of the Limpopo this week, placing five key departments under administration. To all intents and purposes the province has been stripped of its basic functions. Premier Cassel Mathale is now a figurehead, presiding over a shell of a government run from Pretoria. No doubt the emergency was real and drastic intervention was warranted, but there is no escaping the fact that the move deprives one of President Jacob Zuma's most important opponents of almost all his power and, crucially, of his patronage machinery.

Supporters of Mathale, Julius Malema and Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula are fuming over the coup, which they insist is driven purely by politics. They point to other provinces with large overdrafts and rickety finances that have not suffered the same fate. There is no gainsaying the political advantage secured by Zuma with this move, but Mathale and his government opened themselves up to it by allowing Limpopo's finances to deteriorate beyond the mere mess we have come to expect into real crisis.

In contrast to the takeover of Limpopo moves to stabilise the finances of Gauteng and the Free State, with their Zuma-aligned premiers, look more like friendly bailouts. Gauteng, despite a health service that the treasury described to Cabinet as being in "disarray", will be dealt with via an "agreement" between the province and the national government. And in the profligate, but less disastrous, Free State the intervention is limited to the roads department. Those Gauteng projects that do face major cutbacks date from the tenure as finance MEC of Paul Mashatile, another Zuma opponent. Premier Nomvula Mokonyane, who is at loggerheads with Mashatile, may not be very sorry to see them trimmed or abandoned.

The politics then are real and they are vicious, but so are the impacts of mismanagement, and they stretch deep into other provinces. KwaZulu-Natal and the North West are said by the treasury to be on track for recovery. Meanwhile, in municipalities across the country similar failures are compromising access to clean water, basic infrastructure and housing.

As the treasury warned Cabinet on Monday: "Non-delivery and slow delivery of services poses a security risk for the country." That is a welcome recognition but, if risk is really to be diminished, interventions from the centre will have to move beyond politics.

Source: Mail & Guardian