President Cyril Ramaphosa is often accused of being the archetypal cadre, putting the interests of the ANC ahead of those of the government he leads, which must serve everyone. Well, not so. He’s hugely misunderstood, I posit.
No-one has done more to help us understand the septic nature of ANC corruption than Ramaphosa. Look at how the edifice around suspended police minister Senzo Mchunu is coming apart publicly, and with it the image of the ANC.
When Bheki Cele, an ANC leader, tells a parliamentary committee he was informed that Mchunu wanted funds to campaign for the ANC presidency, and his claim is corroborated by Witness C, who says the funds involved a corrupt police contract, the ANC’s reputation is dragged through the mud.
Ramaphosa had choice words about this phenomenon several years ago: “The ANC may not stand alone in the dock, but it does stand as accused No 1. This is the stark reality we must now confront.” Ramaphosa acknowledged that corruption was eroding public support for the ANC, and his intention was to force the party to adopt a more effective anti-corruption agenda. In doing so he, inadvertently or not, opened many people’s eyes to how deep the rot runs.
And his way of fighting corruption is through what now appear to be endless commissions of inquiry. They don’t seem to achieve more than exposing ANC leaders’ involvement in graft and aggrandisement. The big fish exposed at the state capture commission of inquiry still run around, to quote ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula, like K-Ci & Jojo on a dance stage.
The Madlanga commission, taken together with the ad hoc parliamentary committee, is helping to uncover the truth about police corruption and, for emphasis, how the ANC is entangled in it. This means the ANC’s chances of recovering from a slump to 40% in the last general election are diminishing.
He wanted Mchunu to stew in his mess in full view of everyone. He was self-serving. He did not want to be the leader who pulled the trigger.
With the commission and the committee running into next year — a year of very important local government elections — the coverage of how millions in cash is moved around in bags becomes fodder for opposition parties’ election campaigns.
This is why Mbalula, aware of the brand damage, recently tried unsuccessfully to distance the ANC from the shady figure known as Brown Mogotsi — who himself claimed the ANC was never distanced from Mbalula when he was entangled in his own shady activities.
The question, however, is whether what we are discovering from the Madlanga commission and the parliamentary committee is something Ramaphosa did not know (and therefore needed a commission himself to uncover).
They say presidents get intelligence briefings every morning (followed by a communications briefing) before they engage with the world. Did the State Security Agency, whose minister, Khumbudzo Ntshaveni, is now minister in the Presidency, not know and therefore not brief the president about Mchunu’s entanglement? I doubt it.
I believe Ramaphosa just did not want to fire Mchunu, especially because he is a senior party leader from the ANC’s biggest province (who may also know where the proverbial political bodies are buried). He wanted Mchunu to stew in his mess in full view of everyone. He was self-serving. He did not want to be the leader who pulled the trigger. He wanted to say, “You all saw what transpired, I could not save our comrade from his wayward ways.”
But what Ramaphosa didn’t pay attention to was how the ANC, too, would be clothed in corruption. He probably did not foresee how disposing of Mchunu in this way would further destroy the ANC in the eyes of the voting public. If he did, then he didn’t do much to shield the party — which is not to say he should have. But if he was the party man he is often labelled as, he would have.
Think too of how the commissions before this one, most notably the state capture commission, further exposed ANC complicity in corruption. That commission showed that the proceeds from corrupt tenders and contracts were diverted to the ANC, making it a direct beneficiary of state capture corruption. This hugely damaged the ANC’s name. The ANC’s inertia and protection of then president Jacob Zuma and other high-ranking ANC politicians revealed the party as a key enabler of state capture.
It is plain that Ramaphosa’s initial idea was to expose Zuma and how un-ANC he was, set in motion a transparent process to identify and later prosecute those who benefitted from state capture and, in this way, show that the ANC was acting against those who are corrupt. Yet the effect of endless televised accounts of high-ranking officials getting undue benefits and wads of cash cemented the view that the ANC is a party of thieves (amasela). When it was time to vote two years after the handover of the final Zondo report, the plunge in the ANC’s electoral support surprised no-one.
As we approach the local government elections, the evisceration of the ANC is on offer, thanks in part to confirmation from the Madlanga commission and the ad hoc committee, which have become latter-day versions of the Zondo commission.
The Madlanga commission is, with every passing week, proving that Ramaphosa has in fact acted in the interests of all of us and, in doing so, moved the ANC closer to its grave. He has helped us develop a fuller appreciation of just how deep the rot runs in his party. Not a typical cadre, this.
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