Gupta mania turns cabinet into a farce

IF there was any doubt that the centre is not holding in President Jacob Zuma’s executive, the minister of mineral resources, Mosebenzi Zwane, put paid to it this week. Never in the short history of South Africa as a democracy has a minister been so brazen in serving the interests of his cronies as to issue a statement purporting to represent the views of the entire cabinet, when such a statement is not even supported by the president, the man at whose pleasure he is supposedly serving.

In a week in which two financial institutions announced that they were pulling the plug on new loans to parastatals due to growing concerns over governance and corporate independence, Zwane’s statement on Thursday only served to make the markets even more jittery.

It further fuelled the belief that sections of the government, if not the entire executive, have been captured by commercial interests that want to use the state as an instrument to further their own business interests.

In the statement, Zwane claimed that the cabinet had resolved that Zuma, who is at a G20 meeting in China, should establish a judicial inquiry to investigate the decision by major banks to close the accounts of Gupta-owned Oakbay Investments.

If Zuma were to establish such an inquiry he would be in breach of the government’s executive code of ethics, because it would mean that he was spending millions of rands of taxpayers’ money on an investigation designed to save a company in which his son Duduzane is a significant shareholder.

That Zwane thought he could get away with issuing the statement says a great deal about him, and about those in the cabinet who think like him.

They clearly believe that they are in their ministerial positions to advance their own interests and those of their close associates, and that the president will look the other way even if their actions undermine the rest of the government.

It is a mentality that derives from the fact that their presence in the cabinet is due not only to the choice of the president but also the influence of politically well-connected families who use their proximity to power to decide who becomes a minister.

The current cabinet will continue to be divided and will persist in issuing contradictory policy positions as long as the loyalty of ministers is divided between the constitution and the powerful business interests they serve.

Ordinarily, Zwane’s tenure as mineral resources minister would be ending this weekend following the public rebuke from the Presidency on Friday. He should either fall on his sword or, if he fails to do so, Zuma should sack him the moment he returns from China.

But that is unlikely to happen because the president himself is compromised. It is precisely because of his close ties to the Gupta family that ministers such as Zwane believe it to be their duty to go out of their way to promote the family’s interests.

The president has failed to rein in Zwane, Communications Minister Faith Muthambi and other members of the pro-Gupta faction in the cabinet who have used meetings of the executive to try to undermine Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan.

Meanwhile, the country’s economic woes continue, and the poor are condemned to further misery with no prospects of finding jobs.