The ANC path to making a king’s ransom or two

So I was watching television the other day and, as is their wont, the local news stations were on a loop with the same things coming round every 30 minutes or so. One was an edit of remarks by the Gauteng ANC provincial secretary, Jacob Khawe.

He was expounding on a story that has South Africans upset and angry. Essentially, a young man named Thandisizwe Diko (who describes himself as King

Madzikane II Diko), chief of the amaBhaca, a tribe living around Mount Frere in Transkei, tendered for and won a R125m contract with the Gauteng department of health to supply personal protective equipment (PPE) to the provincial health department as it prepared to face the rush of Covid-19 patients it expected when the pandemic broke.

His partner in another business, Loyiso Masuku, is a member of the Johannesburg mayoral committee. She is MMC for group shared and corporate services. Her husband, Bandile Masuku, is the Gauteng MEC for health. And his department gave a fat middleman contract to the husband of one of his wife’s best friends.

None of this would have set off any lights were it not for the fact that the best friend in question is Khusela Diko, spokesperson for President Cyril Ramaphosa and wife to Thandisizwe Diko. She and the Masuku couple have been placed on leave (or requested it, depending on what you believe) and Thandisizwe has both repented ever having become involved with the PPE tender and also said he has no regrets about it. He says he delivered on the deal but was never paid.

We shall see.

Thankfully, the ANC’s gift for hypocrisy has not deserted it. Khawe was telling viewers that the provincial ANC took the matter very seriously and that it had asked the Special Investigating Unit to probe all Gauteng’s tenders for PPE and that the provincial executive council had instructed its own integrity committee to investigate Khusela Diko and the Masukus.

ANC networks run deep. The heart of the story here is an old friendship between Khusela Diko and Loyiso Masuku. But Khawe himself was once married to Khusela and, presumably, will not be participating in an integrity inquiry.

I once watched the journalist Richard Poplak interview his then political hero, Julius Malema. Back in 2017. The questions were fawning and hard to watch, but Malema loved it.

One of the answers stuck in my mind because it was just ahead of the ANC 2017 leadership election in which Ramaphosa narrowly beat Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma.

This was not, Malema said cheerfully, a party electing a leader so much as a mafia electing a don. A child of the ANC, Malema knows it well. And watching the web of lies and theft over sweetheart tenders and overinvoicing that have run rampant not only in Gauteng but throughout the country while we have been under Covid lockdown, you wonder if the party can ever be fixed.

People join the ANC to steal, former president Thabo Mbeki once said. And endemic corruption will kill this country. The network of relationships between friends like Khusela Diko and Loyiso Masuku is multiplied thousands of times in the ANC and it will take a leader of exceptional quality to stop it. Either that or the party gets voted out of power.

Neither is likely. Don Cyril shows little appetite for internecine war and worse, no-one is scared of him. Dons are supposed to inpsire fear. Hollywood makes comedies about innocent guys becoming accidental gang bosses and hilarity ensues. Except now our country is at stake.

Local elections are due next year. It has been mere months since the ANC resumed control of DA-run Johannesburg and already the municipality has flirted with being taken over and run by the province. In Port Elizabeth, once run soundly by the DA, the ANC municipality is close to total collapse and will have to be rescued. The opposition had better get its act together.

You would have thought it easy to make a clear rule that if you or any member of your family works in any sphere of government you can simply not do business with any sphere of government. Mr Diko may need some help here. Independent Online reports that when asked if he would still bid for contracts from the state, he said he would.

Maybe he figures that his wife will not be returning to her old job any time soon.

“I will still do it therefore, but where there seems to be a conflict of interest, I will consider,” he reportedly said.

“Royal Bafokeng is in business, why shouldn’t royalty venture into business?”

Maybe a friend should take him to one side and explain. This isn’t hard.

The network between friends like Khusela Diko and Loyiso Masuku is multiplied thousands of times in SA