GWEDE’S MISPLACED LOYALTY
The ANC’s corruption ate up everyone and everything, including one of the staunchest defenders of ‘the movement’
Everyone is having a go at Gwede Mantashe, our combative, loquacious and rambunctious energy minister and chair of the ANC. They want him to step down from his positions. You can’t blame them. He is comprehensively damned in part 3 of the Zondo commission report, released last week.
It found that Bosasa — a criminal network masquerading as a corporate entity — paid for security upgrades at three of his properties. The commission said “the provision of free security installations was manifestly part of the corrupt modus operandi of Bosasa and its directors”.
Mantashe says he is clean. He has said in the past that the security upgrades were similar to a traditional wedding, where one didn’t know specifically who contributed to which part of the proceedings. In March 2021 Mantashe told the commission that his head of security oversaw the project and that he was not privy to full details of the agreements between him and the Bosasa bigwig who negotiated the deal. Ho hum.
What we know is this: security upgrades that cost about R300,000 were installed at Mantashe’s house by a corrupt company that regularly greased politicians’ palms. Mantashe also tried to distance himself from the company’s CEO, the late Gavin Watson, who was particularly close to former president Jacob Zuma. During his testimony before the Zondo commission, Mantashe took a long detour before he admitted that he knew Watson was given the clan name “Radebe” in ANC circles.
Given Mantashe’s protestations, it is worth noting that acting chief justice Raymond Zondo wrote the following about the company he so blithely dismisses as having not courted his influence: “[Bosasa] bribed politicians, government officials … Zuma and others extensively. Bosasa and its directors and other officials simply had no shame in engaging in acts of corruption.”
Now, I like Mantashe a lot. He is one of my favourite SA politicians. He is open, stands his ground, believes in having the argument over whatever contentious issue is at hand and doesn’t have conspiracy theories clouding his brain. He doesn’t play victim. He works hard and is open to persuasion.
As a journalist, I always appreciated that he was one of the very few ANC leaders during the Zuma years who was open to debate and dialogue, no matter how much he disagreed with you on any topic.
It is sad to see him caught up in this sordid affair, but it was wholly predictable that it would happen. You see, Mantashe is part of a rump of the ANC that made a fundamental mistake in the run-up to the ANC’s 2007 conference: they embraced damaged goods in the form of Zuma and his cronies, believing they could stop the rot before it spread. But the Zuma clique opened the door to all sorts of shady characters, from Bosasa to the Guptas.
They corrupted everything. While they did so Mantashe and others kept on believing that they should “protect the movement” by not saying a word. They defended Zuma on the shameful Nkandla upgrades. They chose not to listen to people like Themba Maseko, who blew the whistle on the Guptas. At every chance to do the right thing, Mantashe and this crew chose “the movement” over SA and thus protected Zuma and his corrupt crowd.
This approach meant that they, too, were entangled in the corruption. Evil devours everything, and from the facts in the Zondo report it consumed Mantashe too. He looked the other way when Bosasa gave him “free” security upgrades, knowing full well nothing comes for free in SA.
He is not alone. Mantashe is exactly like President Cyril Ramaphosa. At the ANC’s 2012 conference in Mangaung the current president threw in his lot with Zuma, becoming deputy president of the party. He knew exactly what Zuma was: a man deeply and fatally entangled in state capture. When he got into the state machinery in 2014 as deputy president, he chose to not confront Zuma because he wanted to “save the movement”.
Saving this “movement” has a price, though. The corruption of the movement can eat one up and make one lose oneself. Mantashe should look in the mirror and see what happened to him. The ANC’s corruption ate up everyone and everything, including him. He must resign.x
He knew exactly what Zuma was: a man deeply and fatally entangled in state capture