Zuma’s ‘silent coup’
An explosive academic report into the ‘shadow state’ of South Africa shows the country has experienced a ‘silent coup’ and ‘underestimated’ President Jacob Zuma.
‘Underestimated’ president in silent coup to remove ANC as ‘primary force’.
An explosive academic report into the “shadow state” of South Africa shows that the country has experienced a “silent coup” under an “underestimated” President Jacob Zuma.
In the 63-page report released
yesterday, Betrayal of the Promise: How South Africa is Being Stolen, the word Gupta is mentioned 346 times.
Compiled by academics at some of the country’s top universities, it highlights four pivotal moments in recent history which defines a new era in which the silent coup has removed the ANC from its “place as the primary force for transformation in society”.
These incidents include the Marikana massacre of August 2012; the landing of the Gupta plane at Waterkloof Air Force base in April 2013; the “attempted bribing” of former deputy minister of finance Mcebisi Jonas to “sell the National Treasury” to the shadow state in late 2015 and the Cabinet reshuffle in March 2017.
“Resistance and capture is what SA politics is about today,” according to the report.
“…What started off, according to our findings, as collusion in relatively low-level corruption between the Zuma family and the Guptas has evolved into state capture and the repurposing of state institutions.
“In less than a decade, the Zuma and Gupta families have managed to position themselves as a tight partnership that coordinates a power elite that aims to manage the rent seeking.”
Zuma was often underestimated by commentators, opposition groups and ordinary South Africans “not simply because he is more brazen, wily and brutal than they expect, but because they reduce him to a caricature”, according to the report.
They perceive Zuma and his allies as a criminal network that has captured the state.
“This approach, which is unfortunately dominant, obscures the existence of a political project at work to repurpose state institutions to suit a constellation of rent-seeking networks that have been constructed and now span the symbiotic relationship between the constitutional and shadow state. “This is akin to a silent coup.” In March, former finance minister Pravin Gordhan and Jonas were fired from their portfolios through a midnight Cabinet reshuffle. An “intelligence report” accusing them of conspiring against Zuma had been used as a reason for their axing.
“This is a world where deniability is valued, culpability is distributed … and where trust is maintained through mutually binding fear,” the report states.
“Unsurprisingly, therefore, the shadow state is not only the space for extra-legal action facilitated by criminal networks, but also where key security and intelligence actions are coordinated.”
It points to “the ultimate prize” being the control of the National Treasury, which was gained by the Cabinet reshuffle.
This affords control of the Financial Intelligence Centre, which monitors illicit flows of finance; the Chief Procurement Office, which regulates procurement and activates legal action against corrupt practices; the Public Investment Corporation, the second largest holder of shares on the Johannesburg Securities Exchange; the boards of key development finance institutions; and the guarantee system, which is not only essential for making the nuclear deal work but with a guarantee, state entities can borrow from private lenders/banks without parliamentary oversight.
“At the nexus of this symbiosis are a handful of the same individuals and companies connected in one way or another to the GuptaZuma family network,” the report reads.
“The way that this is strategically coordinated constitutes the shadow state. Well-placed individuals located in the most significant centres of state power (in government, SOEs and the bureaucracy) make decisions about what happens within the constitutional state.”
It adds that those such as Jonas, outspoken whistleblower Vytjie Mentor, Gordhan and former CEO of Government Communications and Information Systems Themba Maseko, are taken out of the equation.
They are one way or the other “systematically removed, redeployed to other lucrative positions to silence them, placed under tremendous pressure, or hounded out by trumped-up internal and/ or external charges and dubious intelligence reports”, the report claims.
At the nexus of this symbiosis are a handful of the same individuals and companies connected in one way or another to the Gupta-Zuma family network.