Nkandla is at it again...
I’m sure I’m not the only one to see a link between Jacob Zuma’s attack against the post-Nasrec ANC leadership; Tony Yengeni’s unwarranted criticism of Chief Justice Raymond Zondo and Julius Malema’s reiteration of Yengeni’s outburst. The Nkandla WhatsApp group is at it again, starting a war of words against Cyril Ramaphosa, who usually wouldn’t bother about them.
Zuma fired his usual diatribe from his hillside rural base, probably while sipping wine from his bunker’s bar. According to him, the Nasrec leadership under Ramaphosa had made no sense since elected – as if the Ten Wasted Years were any better. Instead, they brought us state capture, massive corruption, a polarised nation and heavily divided ANC.
One struggles to find substance in Yengeni’s complaint about the chief justice to the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) – even if you read it twice. It was an indirect attack against Ramaphosa. In Yengeni’s world, saying Ramaphosa’s election at Nasrec saved National Treasury from further damage by then finance minister Malusi Gigaba is not a fact, but a figment of Zondo’s imagination and his promotion of Ramaphosa’s political fortunes.
In the real world, the judge’s statement was not a finding, but an allusion to an issue we all know about the state capture. He simply restated a fact.
If Ramaphosa was not elected at Nasrec in 2017, the Zuma’s damaging status quo would have continued and the Guptas would have stayed in SA and continued with the looting of taxpayers’ money.
It is in this context that Zondo’s statement should be viewed and not as anything new or manufactured by him. Zondo spoke of the state capture he was investigating, rather than an attempt to promote a particular individual’s politics.
Ramaphosa’s election had rescued the country not only from the state capture, but also the abyss of political ruin it was already in. And Yengeni’s accusation that things became worse under Ramaphosa proved who his real target was.
He used the JSC as proxy to deal with the president, of whom he is a famous political opponent.
A comment about the Nasrec outcomes cannot influence the voting patterns by delegates at the next ANC conference. Delegates go there with predetermined positions: to vote on factional lines, not via some influence by a judge.
Does Yengeni mean that the commission should have ignored some of its observations that were crucial to the report merely because it could influence the outcomes of the next ANC conference? The judiciary doesn’t work that way. Judges work on evidence before them, even if Yengeni thought a commission is not a court.
There is plenty of evidence that, had former ministers Pravin Gordhan and Nhlanhla Nene not been appointed, National Treasury could have been captured by the Guptas. This was their aim – evinced by the appointment of “weekend special” minister of finance Des van Rooyen and an attempt to bribe Mcebisi Jonas.
Yengeni’s complaint is an attempt to start a political sideshow piece towards the next ANC conference. It’s not different to a similar complaint against Zondo by Arthur Fraser. It’s good that Zondo refused to entertain Fraser.
That Zuma and Yengeni made similar statements about Zondo and Ramaphosa – and Malema expanded on them – was no coincidence. Yengeni approached the JSC knowing well that he has friends and an axe to grind against Zondo and Ramaphosa on that side.