How ANC treats state as its piggy bank
The ANC’s cadre deployment of political trustees into positions of leadership and power has been exposed for exactly what it is during the restarted Zondo commission.
In a session dealing with the political capture of state-owned Passenger Rail Agency of SA (Prasa), the commission, headed by Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, heard more details on just how state capture worked.
Prasa had a R3.5bn programme to upgrade its locomotive fleet with a little-known company called Swifambo, which subsequently got the dimensions of the locomotives wrong, while also providing stock that wasn’t optimal for SA’s railways. The contract was cancelled.
Swifambo’s director, Auswell Mashaba, allegedly approached then-chair Popo Molefe, fretting about a payment he’d made to the ANC at the request of someone representing themselves as a fundraiser for the party who wanted 10% of the contract paid over.
The ANC denied the claim in 2016 when it first surfaced and has not said more on the matter this week.
To imagine this is the only contract the government awarded through a stateowned entity and then expected some sort of kickback or favour for the ANC would be naive in the extreme.
Prasa is just one state-owned entity destroyed by corruption and incompetence that has resulted from the ANC’s policy of cadre deployment, putting pliable and sympathetic people into positions for which they had no aptitude.
Molefe told Zondo about his frustration at the lack of activity or interest of ministers in thenpresident Jacob Zuma’s cabinet when he raised matters of corruption uncovered in the rail utility, while law enforcement agencies switched investigators into the allegations to make sure nothing was done.
Molefe resorted to raising the corruption at Prasa with the ANC’s top six leadership, which included now-president Cyril Ramaphosa, and, on the evidence under oath by Molefe, nothing changed.
That Molefe had to turn to the ANC’s most powerful people to flag the corruption in a stateowned entity is by itself telling.
Clearly that was where he saw the true seat of power that could address problems in national assets — not the government, not parliament and not the police, which are there to serve the national interest.
More telling is that nothing was done by the ANC’s leadership and Molefe was eventually kicked out of the job where he was pushing investigations into corruption and fraud at Prasa.
In a country where the corruption and self-serving interests of the ANC are put ahead of the national interest, these allegations and frustrations are well known, having been aired for years.
But there has been little of consequence to come from the governing party in disciplining its members and leadership.
But to hear Molefe, a loyal ANC member himself, unburdening himself about the deep frustration he felt in trying to raise the corruption in Prasa with ANC leadership, government ministers and police, and singularly failing to secure any traction, again highlights how rotten things are in SA.
Based on testimony at the commission, cadre deployments and carefully picked transactions with grateful businesses are seen as a way for the ANC to raise funds for itself, enabling it to continue dispensing patronage and keep itself in power by helping itself to generous amounts of taxpayer money.
All the talk from Ramaphosa about corruption and the wasted nine years under Zuma remains just that — talk.
He was there when it was all happening. In this instance, he was told by Molefe about the rampant corruption at Prasa.
Ramaphosa is the smiling face of a rotten ANC. He says the right things, but without action to stop corruption in the party
— pulling it out, roots and all — nothing is going to change.
There is nothing at all coming from the ANC that there is a willingness to tackle corruption head on.
The cancer is in and the party seems to have no interest in lifting itself from the dangerous morass into which it has plunged itself and the country.
The real insult is for the millions of poor people who voted the ANC into power on the promise of a better life for all in 1994 and subsequent elections. It’s an outright lie.
The ANC winning elections is about the party holding onto the political, financial and economic levers for the benefit of the few in the party on the pretence that its actions are for the good of 57 million people.
The Covid-19 pandemic is going to expose the ANC’s failings like no commission could ever hope to do.
The state of public hospitals after decades of neglect and mismanagement is going to become evermore apparent as the virus spreads rapidly.
The ANC’s tired excuses, obfuscation and blaming apartheid will not, and cannot, be taken seriously any more.
The ANC has had 26 years and trillions of rand in budgets in that time to invest in health care, schooling, housing, water and electricity infrastructure.
Instead, it has largely squandered billions of rand with nothing to show for it apart from a severely compromised country.
Testimony at the Zondo commission shines a light on how the ANC raises funds from grateful businesses tapping into state contracts