Purchasing a presidency
The ANC has a rented president who is dangerous for South Africa
THE recent factual and accurate reports about the funding that was mobilised from rich white businessmen, to assist the incumbent Mr Cyril Ramaphosa to campaign for ANC presidency, reveals the fact that he is a rented president.
Ramaphosa, the white capitalist establishment and its comprador tentacles, used money to persuade ANC branches, delegates, regions and provinces to vote for him as ANC president.
If CR17, which stands for Cyril Ramaphosa 2017, did not have the hundreds of millions it used to hypnotise delegates prior to and at the 54th conference, the outcomes would have been different – the ANC would have elected its first female president.
The white monopoly faction of the capitalist establishment realised that their ruling class status was being threatened by the less sophisticated, greedy and flamboyant Gupta capitalist faction.
Faced with this reality, the white capitalists united in support for Ramaphosa to win over the ANC, with the end goal being the capture of the state and subjugation of its direction, form and content to profiteering.
This happened through the usage of money, patronage and capture that hypnotised ANC Conference delegates, therefore setting an unsustainable precedent of external money interests used for internal ANC politics.
What is worse is that such happened against an observation by the ANC’s Diagnostic report which, among many other observations, said, “the use of money, to buy votes for elections in the party, is at the heart of the decline of the quality of structures across the board. Money has replaced consciousness as a basis for being elected into leadership positions, at all levels of the organisation”.
Because capitalists control the media, an almost 100% unanimity was created in society that he is the modern-day messiah, who will salvage South Africa from Gupta capture, misnamed state capture for political and discursive convenience.
Discontented with former president Zuma’s miscalculated and rabid abuse of power, in all key state institutions, a significant component of South Africans were fed up with Zuma’s rapacious and almost militaristic usage of political power and wanted him gone.
In several instances, key appointments into state-owned entities were dictated by the Gupta capitalist faction, whose appetite for wealth accumulation was inconsistent with the collective vision to defeat poverty, create jobs and reduce inequalities.
Ramaphosa, and the manner in which he was elected as president, is dangerous for the country and certainly an infiltration of the ANC. His philosophy and the philosophy of those who rented him as president is; get rich, stay rich and reproduce wealth in the same patterns designed under colonialism and apartheid.
You need not go further to realise this than the recent appointment of Jabu Mabuza as executive chairperson and acting chief executive officer of Eksom, South Africa’s largest domestically-based corporation with deep systemic and systematic vitality. Mabuza is appointed into that position because, even under apartheid, he was in alliance with the capitalist establishment.
Mabuza began to serve in the First Rand Board in 1992 and was a leader of Foundation of African Business and Consumer Services (FABCOS), an organisation of aspirant black business people that worked with apologists of apartheid to oppose the economic sanctions that were meant to put pressure on apartheid to end.
The fact that Ramaphosa wants to hide the identity of those who gave him money to cajole ANC delegates should be a cause for concern.
His association with the capitalist establishment backdates the end of apartheid and formation of the National Union of Mineworkers, which brought him into political prominence.
Both Anton Rupert and Harry Oppenheimer brought Ramaphosa closer from the time of the Urban Foundation in the late 1970s, through to the formation of the NUM and, subsequently, to leading negotiations – he publicly said the opponents were happier than those who represented the liberation movement.
Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng correctly observed this when he said: “We need to allow ourselves to be captured by the idea of a democratic and free society. I’m in the habit these days of saying what is democracy? A government of the people, by the people and for the people. Does it continue to be so when you stand no chance of winning elections unless you are connected to the financially well-resourced?”
By all measure of standards, the Chief Justice is correct.
Cyril Ramaphosa is embedded in dangerous capitalist networks and will not work for the people.
Ramaphosa is embedded in capitalist networks and will not work for the people