South Africa:Malema Should Continue To Be Taken Seriously

 

Editor's notebook

ADRIAAN BASSON, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

It's easy to criticise Malema, but what about the thousands of EFF supporters? Let's be honest: Very few political parties in South Africa, bar the ANC, would succeed in filling up the 94 000-seater FNB Stadium in Soweto.   A fully occupied FNB Stadium is quite a sight. The stadium pumps with energy, and only a few pop stars and soccer matches have managed to secure full capacity.   On Saturday, a political pop star in the form of EFF leader Julius Malema, who even performed a mic drop from an elevated platform at the end of his rousing speech, succeeded in doing that. The demagogue warned his critics and pundits ahead of the watershed 2024 elections: Don't write the EFF off yet.   Despite the party's numerous troubles – and there are many – Malema didn't have to say a word to show the country the EFF is still a very popular and well-supported political home for thousands of South Africans.   Despite suffering electoral decline in the 2021 municipal elections (the party achieved 8.3% of the national vote compared to 10.8% in 2019) and a flopped so-called "national shutdown" event in March, the EFF pulled out all the stops on the weekend.   For democrats and constitutionalists, this is a hard pill to swallow. Malema has never hidden his fascist political beliefs and reiterated over the weekend that democracy would die under an EFF-led government.   He would shatter the independence of the criminal justice system (he said he would arrest President Cyril Ramaphosa for the Phala Phala scandal) and illegally take the land "from white minority rule and give it to all the people of South Africa".   This comes after the Constitutional Court ruled in March that Malema could not encourage his supporters from invading unoccupied land.   Malema has consistently failed in the courts and is now aggressively pursuing political power to fulfil his dream of a dictatorial regime where the state owns all the land and political opponents are arrested and jailed by decree.   Let's be clear: An EFF-led government would be the end of democracy in South Africa and would likely wipe out large parts of the economy overnight. Malema will ultimately alienate the democratic world and hand over the country's sovereignty to his political hero, Russian president Vladimir Putin.   He makes no secret of his admiration for the warlord who invaded the independent state of Ukraine in February last year. "We are Putin, and Putin is us", Malema proudly declared on Saturday at an event that must have cost the EFF millions of rands.   It will remain a secret who funds the EFF (disturbing rumours abound) until the IEC can enforce its political party funding legislation properly, which the EFF has largely ignored since implementation two years ago.   Malema's biggest known funder is a confessed cigarette smuggler, Adriano Mazzotti and Carnilinx, who was proudly acknowledged by Malema at the EFF's fundraising dinner on Thursday, disturbingly attended by the number two at Crime Intelligence, Major-General Feroz Khan.   When Malema says on stage he would arrest Ramaphosa for Phala Phala, he doesn't mean that he opposes crime or corruption, but only those who challenge him politically. Malema still faces criminal charges in several courts, including firing live ammunition at an EFF rally and encouraging supporters to occupy land illegally.   Despite Malema claiming on Saturday that the media falsely abused the VBS case to implicate EFF leaders in the bank's collapse, this is far from the truth. The VBS investigation is very much alive and I understand that the EFF is still on investigators' radar.   The National Prosecuting Authority has promised to institute charges in the On Point Engineering scandal that implicates Malema's family trust in receiving money from Limpopo tenders.   There are 99 reasons why nobody in their right mind should consider supporting him to become president of South Africa, but at least 94 000 people (assuming they all turn up to vote for the EFF) do.   Why did 1.8 million people in 2019 and 1.2 million in 2021 vote for the EFF? Common sense tells me there are at least three significant reasons.   I have just finished reading Justice Malala's excellent book, The Plot to Save South Africa, about the days following the assassination of SACP leader Chris Hani in 1993. Malala explains in detail how ANC leaders like Mondli Gungubele, Peter Mokaba, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and Tony Yengeni understood the real, visceral anger of black people in the wake of Hani's death and had to find ways to give an expression of that anger without burning down the country.   Nelson Mandela understood and allowed this.   Malema and his generation of ANC Youth League leaders were cut from the same cloth, albeit many years after democracy, and it seems to me that the ANC never replaced them after kicking them out of the party in 2012. Malema capitalised on the fact that he was now the only prominent black leader still speaking about apartheid and expressing the anger about white suppression, still felt by thousands of black people almost 30 years after apartheid had formally ended.   Secondly, and linked to the first point, the ANC had failed abjectly in creating the life and country it promised its supporters in 1994, 30 years later. The percentage of unemployed black people has not changed significantly in 30 years; inequality has worsened; white people still hold the majority of top management positions in the private sector, and our public education system has failed the majority of the country.   I don't find it surprising that traditional ANC voters, or the children of parents who voted for Mandela, would search for a new political home and be attracted to Malema's promises of free education and no corruption (although we know he is only opposed to the corruption allegedly committed by his political opponents).   Lastly, the rest of the opposition parties have failed to grip the imagination of aggrieved black voters who would traditionally have voted for the ANC. Cope, another ANC breakaway, came closest to forming a significant black-led alternative when it won 1.3 million votes in 2009, but the party imploded due to infighting and leadership squabbles.   On the other hand, Malema is a dictator in the EFF and doesn't tolerate any internal dissent.   With a declining ANC, the challenge for other black-led parties like ActionSA, the IFP, Rise Mzansi, and Build One South Africa is to ensure the votes of former or disillusioned ANC voters don't go to the EFF but to them. They have about nine months to go.

The DA Party In South Africa Has Some Great Accomplishments

 

Editor's notebook

ADRIAAN BASSON, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Putin: Why we should give the DA its due The Democratic Alliance's cloddish communications strategy shouldn't overshadow the immense contribution of the official opposition's litigation strategy to strengthen our democracy over the past 15 years.   Leaving aside the snooty comments of some DA leaders after this week's court victory in Pretoria, the party's efforts to hold the ANC government to account by enforcing rationality through the courts have done all South Africans a considerable favour.   Apart from ensuring that South Africans knew what happened behind the scenes to prevent Russia's President Vladimir Putin from attending the BRICS summit in Johannesburg next month, the DA has established a litigation strategy over the past two decades that managed to block or overturn major irrational appointments and decisions.   I vividly remember the DA's earliest foray into the legal terrain. It was 2009, and the ANC had just installed a corruption-accused Jacob Zuma as president of the republic.   One of Zuma's first priorities was to install a puppet national director of public prosecutions (NDPP) at the NPA, who would never charge him or his acolytes again. In Menzi Simelane, he found such a character. Simelane was the director-general of justice and proved his moral flexibility before the Ginwala Commission of Inquiry when he lied under oath to falsely implicate then NDPP Vusi Pikoli in wrongdoing.   Shortly after his appointment, the DA, then under party leader Helen Zille, challenged the decision in court. After successive hearings up to the Constitutional Court, the DA was vindicated. Consecutive courts found that Zuma and his justice minister, Jeff Radebe, failed to properly assess Simelane's fitness for office when they appointed him. Simelane had to step down.   Next up was the NPA's irrational decision to drop the arms deal corruption charges against Zuma, based on the so-called spy tapes. Almost immediately after then-acting NDPP Mokotedi Mpshe withdrew the charges, the DA went to court arguing that the content of the spy tapes was never a good enough reason to invalidate the serious charges Zuma faced.   Again, after years of expensive litigation, the DA was vindicated by the highest courts in the land, which ruled the NPA must reinstate the charges against Zuma. The former president is scheduled to appear in the Pietermaritzburg High Court on 15 August to face these charges. He is expected to make yet another attempt to remove the prosecutor, Billy Downer, from the case.   Some might ask what was the point of this case if Zuma had managed to evade his prosecution from starting for so many years. In a properly functioning democracy, it is critically important for the rule of law to be applied fairly to all citizens, from the pauper to the president. The NPA may not allow politics to influence its decision-making, and this case will (hopefully) prevent it from succumbing to the whims of a governing party in future.   Between the Zuma case and last week's Putin judgment, the DA has gone to court on a long list of other things, including forcing the EFF's so-called "national shutdown" march to be regulated by authorities; challenging electricity rate hikes; taking on Eskom's "state of disaster"; challenging the government's commitment to eradicate pit latrines; opposing suspended Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane's attempts to get her job back; opposing the ANC's cadre deployment policies, and ensuring Zuma returns to prison following the setting-aside of his illegitimate medical parole.   These are just a few examples in a long list of cases the official opposition has taken to court over the past 15 years.   To credit or malign the DA for claiming it stopped Putin from coming to South Africa is missing the point. Accusing DA leader John Steenhuisen and his colleagues of opportunistic behaviour in the wake of the government's success in convincing Putin to stay in Russia is like blaming soccer players for unruly behaviour after their team has scored a goal – it comes with the territory.   The importance of this case was the transparency the DA forced onto Ramaphosa and the government's efforts to negotiate with Russia and the other BRICS partners. Any true democrat should appreciate the value of absolute transparency in a case like this, and the DA gifted us with insights into what our government did and didn't do to prevent a diplomatic crisis (or nuclear war - if you believed Ramaphosa).   Simply put, the DA forced the government to do the right thing by asking for a warrant of Putin's arrest to be issued, which should be applauded.   Will this successful litigation strategy of the DA ultimately benefit the party politically, particularly in next year's crucial polls? Probably not. The reasons for this are the subject of a separate column - suffice to say, it could benefit the official opposition to ponder why its political and communications strategies are not as successful as they are in court.

An Excellent Editorial On South Africa's Vice President

 

Editor's notebook

ADRIAAN BASSON, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Sorry Mr Mashatile, but you cannot fool all South Africans all the time The famous American president Abraham Lincoln is credited with the wonderful saying, "you can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time".   I thought of this quote as I read the umpteenth "fightback" interview with Deputy President Paul Mashatile in the wake of News24's explosive revelations into the billionaire lifestyle of our kept second-in-charge.   You have to give it to Mashatile's spin doctors, of which there are many, inside and outside of government (including former journalists who have sold their souls to the highest bidder); they have kept the phones of the country's top editors and political journalists warm.   They have certainly succeeded in getting Mashatile into the headlines in response to every News24 revelation (of which there are many to come) with a one-word defence: CONSPIRACY!   Their strategy has been simple: portray News24's comprehensive investigation as part of a political conspiracy to prevent Mashatile from toppling President Cyril Ramaphosa and don't respond to any of the factual revelations or get into a debate about the details.   They believe they can "change the narrative" (the favourite saying of South Africa's chattering classes) by simply repeating the conspiracy theory over and over again: Mashatile is being "targeted" as part of a "political campaign" to hinder his political ambitions.   This strategy is, of course, not new.  Former president Jacob Zuma perfected the art of victimhood by using the National Prosecuting Authority's corruption charges against him as a rallying tool to become ANC president in 2007. Zuma convinced the majority of ANC delegates at the party's 2007 Polokwane conference the charges against him were engineered by his nemesis, Thabo Mbeki, and, by extension, the Scorpions to prevent him from becoming president.   Although it was a load of balderdash - some of Zuma's staunchest supporters of that tragic episode have since begged forgiveness for their sins - it got Zuma the political office he wanted.   Former US president Donald Trump is using the exact same playbook in his attempt to be re-elected next year.   He will use both his criminal trials (and more may be coming) to campaign against the so-called "establishment" that wants to prevent him from returning to the White House.   For these strategies to succeed, Mashatile and Trump assume a level of stupidity from the electorate to mindlessly buy into simple conspiracy theories rather than following the truth.   Neither wants to engage with the facts of the allegations against them because this may weaken their hands. And it's much easier to claim you are a victim.   In the case of Mashatile, this won't be that easy.   South Africa is still recovering from the lost decade of state capture under Zuma and the Guptas.   The damage wreaked upon the country by Zuma and his accolades is still raw, and as I write this column, the country is on tenterhooks to see what will happen if Zuma returns to prison.  The Zondo Commission has unearthed the depravity of Zuma's scheme to capture the state through his family, friends and captured allies in key government departments and agencies. The majority of South Africans, I believe, have no appetite to go there again. And so, the very real and deeply concerning questions against Mashatile will remain. There is no political conspiracy against the deputy president, and he knows it.   "He had it coming" is the common refrain from many people around him, who have warned him for decades about his lavish lifestyle and those funding it.   It is simply not okay for the country's deputy president to be hanging around one of the main characters from the state capture period in Edwin Sodi.   Here is the scary part; his relationship with the likes of Sodi had become so normalised Mashatile was shocked when News24 dared to question him about this potential threat to national security.   The Mashatile story has so many déjà vu moments to the beginning years of Zuma's unravelling.   When Zuma's relationship with Schabir Shaik was first exposed, it was portrayed as an innocent friendship between comrades. There was no way Zuma could afford the lifestyle he was living.   Of course, all critical reporting by the brave journalists who brought the scandal to light was glibly dismissed as part of a "conspiracy" at the time.   Today, we know there was never a conspiracy against Zuma.   Even after Shaik was convicted of bribing Zuma, the ANC still defended its deputy president against the indefensible. The governing party's ability to ignore the truth has cost it and the country dearly.   Will the party make the same mistake with Mashatile? Or will it interrogate the deputy president about his sources of cash that enables him to live like a king?

More Protestors Die In Kenya

 

Taxing Decisions

KENYA

Unrest in Kenya may have killed up to a dozen people this week, as protesters took to the streets of many cities to demonstrate against a series of unpopular tax hikes proposed by the government, CNN reported.

Human rights activists cited by the BBC put the death toll at 12, double the figure that Kenyan police reported killed in the demonstrations, which the government had banned last week, Agence France-Presse wrote.

The violence sparked over President William Ruto’s plan to raise taxes to shore up public finances and increase domestic revenue in Kenya, as per the Finances Act 2023. A Kenyan court initially ordered a temporary halt to the implementation of the act and its measures.

However, the government defied the court’s order and increased fuel prices, which led to a rise in the cost of transport and staple goods.

Opposition leader Raila Odinga has called for continued protests over the tax hike. He has initiated a string of anti-governmental demonstrations this year after losing last year’s presidential elections to Ruto – a vote Odinga claims was “stolen.”

Zimbabwe Bans Opposition Party Rally

 

Concerning Pattern

ZIMBABWE

A Zimbabwean court upheld a ban on a planned campaign rally by the country’s main opposition party, a ruling that could raise political tensions as the southern African nation prepares for an intense election next month, Africanews reported.

Over the weekend, police banned the Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) party from holding its campaign launch in the town of Bindura, around 60 miles north of the capital Harare.

Authorities cited problems with the venue and a “high risk of threat to the spread” of communicable diseases.

The party challenged the matter at Zimbabwe’s High Court, but a judge referred the case back to the lower court Sunday. The Bindura court then upheld the ban, saying the CCC had failed to notify the police on time, Reuters noted.

The decision prompted criticism from CCC supporters and marked the fourth party meeting to be banned nationwide within a week.

The recent ban comes as the long-ruling ZANU-PF party faces a tense race in the August 23 polls. The party has governed Zimbabwe for 43 years since the country’s independence from the United Kingdom.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa – who replaced former strongman President Robert Mugabe in 2017 after a military-led coup – is seeking re-election.

Even so, political analysts and opposition lawmakers warned that the recent bans could reduce the credibility of next month’s polls.

The Wagner Group In Africa

 

Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop

RUSSIA

The Wagner Group, the Russian military contractor, arrived in the Central African Republic (CAR) in 2018 to help President Faustin-Archange Touadéra fight off a rebellion. Since then, the group has deployed thousands of soldiers to Libya, Mali, Sudan, and elsewhere in Africa.

After Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin recently launched a failed coup against Russian President Vladimir Putin, however, a cloud has hung over the organization’s forces on the continent, reported Al Jazeera.

But Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov recently said that Wagner troops would remain at their posts. He claimed they were private contractors who have signed contracts with foreign governments, the Moscow Times wrote – but the fact that Lavrov was discussing the group proved to many that Wagner fighters are not private contractors but extensions of Russia’s foreign and defense policies.

Of course, because folks like Lavrov insist that Wagner is a private company, Putin and other Kremlin leaders can claim plausible deniability for Wagner’s actions abroad, added the New York Times.

Nathalia Dukhan, an investigator for the Sentry, a non-governmental organization that recently published a report about Wagner entitled “Architects of Terror”, foresaw more Wagner deployments in Africa. “It is like a virus that spreads,” Dukhan told the Guardian. “They do not appear to be planning to leave. They are planning to continue.”

Wagner’s operations are too important for Putin and Russia for them to end anytime soon, the Asia Times contended. For starters, the financial benefits are great.

In the CAR, for example, where Wagner is essentially Touadéra’s security force, a company with ties to the group purchases gold and diamonds, then a second company in Russia buys the gold, providing Wagner with funding and Russia with a precious commodity that it can trade, evading sanctions.

Wagner allies in the CAR, incidentally, committed two of the group’s many alleged atrocities: the massacre of 15 civilians in 2021 in Boyo as well as the decapitation of the ex-mayor of Bambari and his family, according to La Marea, a Spanish newspaper, as reprinted in Worldcrunch.

Diplomatically, noted the Defense Post, Wagner is also presenting itself as an alternative to Western agents who send troops and equipment to developing countries to prop up or topple governments and grease the skids for business deals. Such actions evoke Soviet-era policies from the Cold War, when East and West sought to influence governments from Algeria to South Africa.

Wagner is a very dangerous tool. But it’s a Russian tool, so Putin will continue to use it.