The Enemy Within: How the ANC lost the battle against corruption

By Mpumelelo Mkhabela

At a watershed meeting in 2000 the ANC committed itself to "the new cadre" project. A project to develop ANC members who are dedicated, selfless people with integrity. Yet 20 years later the ANC is consumed by corrupt cadres with the party losing the battle against corruption. What happened? Mkhabela tells a fascinating story starting with Mandela, the Scorpions and Tony Yengeni all the way to Zuma and the Guptas to explain how we got here.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tafelberg
• Release date: Jul 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9780624091257

Mpumelelo Mkhabela

Mpumelelo Mkhabela is a political analyst, journalist and columnist for News24. He is a former editor of some of South Africa's most iconic newspapers including the Daily Dispatch and The Sowetan. He holds an honours degree in Journalism, an MA in International Politics and a PhD in Foreign Policy. He lives in Centurion. 

Book preview

9780624089810_FC

Mpumelelo Mkhabela

THE ENEMY

WITHIN

How the ANC lost

the battle against corruption

TAFELBERG

Introduction

The African National Congress, South Africa’s ruling party since 1994, is as frustrated about its corruption as are the citizens it governs. If you are a South African angry about the rampant theft of public money, then you should know you have an ally in the ANC. That’s what the ANC wants citizens to believe. The party’s anger against corruption apparently reached boiling point on 23 August 2020, when President Cyril Ramaphosa made a bold and unprecedented public statement on corruption. The ANC may not stand alone in the dock, but it does stand as accused number one, he said in an open letter to all members. "This is the stark reality that we must now confront."¹ Ramaphosa was aligning his personal frustration with existing public anger about revelations that ANC leaders were involved in the looting of public money earmarked for South Africa’s Covid-19 response. They were profiteering even as families were losing their loved ones daily from the deadly virus. Understandably, Ramaphosa pleaded with party leaders to dip their heads in shame. But the public anger was not the result solely of the incidents of Covid-19 corruption. It was in fact the outcome of an accumulation of corrupt practices over the years, which reached morally reprehensible and intolerable extremes in 2020.

Citizens have begun to confront ANC leaders. During the campaign for the municipal elections in 2021, ANC leaders came face to face with a public backlash previously expressed mainly on media platforms. As ANC leaders, we walk into a place and you hear people say, ‘here come the thieves’, lamented Gwede Mantashe, party chairman and a minister in Ramaphosa’s cabinet, in a speech to a conference of the National Union of Mineworkers in October 2021.² Mantashe emphasised that he wasn’t making up the story. "It’s a painful reality," he said.³

In the same month, Blade Nzimande, a cabinet minister and leader of the South African Communist Party, an ANC ally, acknowledged the existence of thieves in the ANC. All thieves must leave the organisation because they are polluting our organisation, he told a rally. Nzimande was so convinced of the presence of the thieves that he even knew they styled themselves as businessmen. If you want to do business, you have a right to do so, but don’t use the ANC … Please stand out there.⁴

In March 2022 Paul Mashatile, ANC treasurer-general, told the party’s Mpumalanga provincial elective conference that the party was facing an existential crisis unless it renewed itself. He said this assessment wasn’t an exaggeration.⁵ Mashatile was a man with a burden. For more than two years, he had struggled to pay staff salaries regularly at the party’s headquarters at Luthuli House in Johannesburg. In addition, he had been saddled with unpaid unemployment insurance for workers as well as a tax liability bill running into millions of rands. As if this wasn’t enough, Mashatile was doubling up as acting secretary-general following the suspension in 2021 of Ace Magashule, who was then facing criminal charges of corruption in court. State prosecutors were eager to prove Magashule had received undue gratification from contractors who earned millions of rands in fees from the Free State provincial government for doing virtually nothing while he was premier.

Shortly after Mashatile’s address warning about the party’s existential crisis, the Mpumalanga conference went on to elect a man accused of murder, Mandla Msibi, as provincial treasurer. This prompted the ANC’s national leadership to remind him of party rules that barred criminally charged individuals from occupying positions of influence. The fact that Msibi contested the position and that conference delegates thought he was best suited to become the fundraising face of the party validates the concern about the ANC’s existential crisis. The Mpumalanga ANC delegates didn’t seem to be worried that they might be creating the perception that they were tolerant of violent criminals. To borrow from Mantashe’s dramatic expression, there was little concern that public judgement of ANC leaders might change from here come the thieves to here come the murderers.

The outcry over the election of Msibi had hardly subsided when Zandile Gumede, on trial for corruption after she had allegedly received kickbacks from a contractor while she was mayor of eThekwini, was elected ANC chairperson of the eThekwini region.

The ANC leadership’s concern about their party is warranted. The party is increasingly viewed as the home of looters. The warning bells from ANC leaders themselves have been ringing for some time – getting louder and louder each day. Many South Africans may be wondering how it could be that a party that seems to have figured out the symptoms of the ailment – that it is self-generated – is not able to cure it. Clearly, symptomatic diagnosis doesn’t automatically translate into remedy.

The chapters in this book set out to analyse how and why the ANC has for some time been fighting a losing battle against corruption. As corrupt practices have intensified within the party and the state, so has the rhetorical battle against them. For many ANC members and non-members alike, the situation has reached life-and-death proportions. The chapters are thus a contribution to the discussion in the broader society about why the governing party continues to exhibit corrupt practices, which also pose a threat to its existence. Although the crisis seems dire, there are signs that a new struggle is emerging for the very values betrayed by those corrupt elements that seem to have gained the upper hand within the ANC.

Chapter 1

The first test

We have committed ourselves to [being] leaders trying to lead a style of life

similar to those of the community. – Nelson Mandela

Two years and five months into democracy, the African National Congress under President Nelson Mandela and Deputy President Thabo Mbeki was put to a moral test. It was called upon to make a decision that would set the tone for the kind of governance it would pursue. The ANC had to choose between two conflicting paths: to pursue narrow self-interest regardless of the public implications or to install a new, unambiguous public morality that would set it apart from apartheid.

On the face of it, the choice was simple – or it should have been. After the ANC had fought for decades to change the way the country was governed, with many freedom fighters losing life and limb in the process, the time had come to effect the change that had long been in political gestation within the liberation movement. There should be no uncertainty about where the new governing party stood when confronted with moral dilemmas. After all, since the release of Mandela from 27 years of incarceration and the unbanning of the ANC in February 1990, the acclaimed global moral icon had criss-crossed the world, promising a new, ethical and responsible way to govern the country. There would be an accountable government. New constitutional values would define a new way of conducting politics under the guidance of the liberators turned democratically elected rulers. True to the promise, an interim constitution – an outcome of multiparty negotiations – was adopted, paving the way for the first democratic elections on 27 April 1994 and setting out a broad normative and legal framework for responsible governance and public conduct.

Campaigning to win hearts and minds, both Mandela and his political opponent, FW de Klerk, leader of the National Party, appeared on national television in an election debate on 14 April 1994. Mandela emphasised that the incoming ANC government would bring an end to financial wastage and the corruption that had become endemic to the apartheid government. The ANC government, Mandela said, would use public resources efficiently. The gravy trains into which most of the funds of the country had gone have come to an end, Mandela assured his audience. We have committed ourselves to [being] leaders trying to lead a style of life similar to those of the community. Mandela then undertook to reduce his salary if elected president of the country.⁶

It seemed a set of new values was in the ascendant in South African politics, embodying selflessness and service to the nation. It promised wise decisions taken by the incoming democratic administration which would enjoy popular legitimacy.

But the expectation that the ANC would do the right thing in government was dealt a blow when, on 30 September 1996, the Mandela administration chose to expel General Bantu Holomisa, a former military ruler of the Transkei homeland. Not only was he axed as a member of Parliament, but Mandela also sacked him as deputy minister of environmental affairs in the Government of National Unity, a power-sharing arrangement under the Interim Constitution.

Holomisa’s offence was his submission to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission – an institution established in terms of the new constitution to probe apartheid-era human rights abuses and to facilitate national healing – that one of Mandela’s cabinet ministers, Stella Sigcau, had likely been involved in corruption in the Transkei homeland, where she also served as a minister. According to Holomisa, Sigcau had received R50 000 from a R2 million cash bribe that the hotel magnate Sol Kerzner had paid to the Transkei prime minister, George Matanzima, to secure an exclusive casino licence in the homeland. Holomisa suggested that Sigcau, Mandela’s public enterprises minister, be investigated.

The ANC leadership was angry about Holomisa’s submission and accused him of bringing the party into disrepute. From the outset, the ANC was not keen on pursuing the allegations Holomisa had made. Deputy President Thabo Mbeki was at the forefront of pushing for harsh action against Holomisa. A disciplinary process was initiated and Holomisa was subjected to a party hearing chaired by Zola Skweyiya. Alec Erwin, a former trade union leader, prosecuted the case. On realising that the ANC had made a predetermined decision to axe him instead of investigating his claims against Sigcau, Holomisa made further allegations. These included the charge that the ANC had also received funding from Kerzner and that some other cabinet ministers had enjoyed the influential hotelier’s generosity. After submitting a document from Kerzner’s company confirming that some top ANC officials, including Steve Tshwete, had also benefitted, Holomisa walked out of the hearing and was then fired.

That was not the end of it. After it became apparent that Holomisa would launch an opposition party, the ANC actively campaigned to discredit him while defending Sigcau, the beneficiary of Kerzner’s bribe. In Sigcau’s defence, Mbeki cited a report by Judge Gerald Alexander who had investigated the allegations in the late 1980s and recommended that there was no need to investigate Sigcau further because the circumstances of her acceptance of the R50 000 cannot be assailed.⁷

As part of her evidence to the Alexander Commission, Sigcau had advanced the defence that it would have been un-African to reject the cash gift. She was quoted as having said: Knowing African tradition as I do, how could I as a leader of the Pondos reject a gift from the Tembu royalty [Matanzima] without offending the giver?⁸ While Kerzner denied paying a bribe in his evidence before Judge Alexander, he did admit doing so in two other separate inquiries – the Harms Commission (1989) and the New Jersey Casino Control Commission (1997), which was then assessing his application for a casino licence in the United States.

The New Jersey Commission, which voted unanimously to grant Kerzner a casino licence, did not dispute that he had paid a bribe in South Africa. Instead, it found that such payments were not unusual in the Transkei, where corruption was known to be widespread. But it did not excuse Kerzner’s conduct.⁹ The decision by the New Jersey Commission was preceded by intense lobbying by Kerzner and by his cultivation of influential political connections. The outcome was that Kerzner escaped the prospect of being charged. Meanwhile, in an unrelated case, Matanzima was convicted and sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment, of which he served three.

Had Kerzner been charged and put on trial for corruption under the new democratic dispensation in South Africa, it is more than likely that he could have kissed a licence to operate a casino in the US goodbye. While Kerzner was known for his generosity in greasing palms for influence – once, homeland leaders and, now, the ANC were all recipients – it’s not known who actually pulled the strings in his favour to avoid prosecution during the apartheid era as well as after the dawn of democracy, thus ensuring that he was able to grow his empire internationally. What is certain is that Holomisa was found guilty by an ANC tribunal and fired from the organisation for alleging that ANC leaders, including Thabo Mbeki, had accepted favours from the hotel magnate.

It also emerged in a 1997 court case – in which Mbeki was not involved – that he had once used a jet belonging to Sol Kerzner’s hotel chain.¹⁰ But the ANC accused Holomisa of lying and behaving as if he was above the organisation. He confuses his membership of the movement with his [former] status as being a head of the Bantustan of the Transkei. He has turned the whole [disciplinary] process into a public circus, the ANC stated.¹¹

It was after the scandal first came to light, when it was revealed that Sigcau – who had succeeded George Matanzima as the prime minister of the Transkei – was among the beneficiaries of Kerzner’s largesse, that Holomisa led the Transkei Defence Force in a bloodless coup to topple her in 1987. Holomisa would thereafter rule the homeland until 1994 when Transkei, with his full cooperation, was reincorporated fully into the new, integrated South Africa.

After her ouster, Sigcau, seeking to hold on to her position as prime minister, had tried and failed to secure the assistance of the apartheid government in Pretoria to reinstate her in her seat of power in the Transkei.¹² After South Africa became a democracy, she, being of Mpondo royalty, a daughter of King Sigcau in a region that the ANC thoroughly dominated, was destined for a prominent position in the new government and found herself in Mandela’s cabinet alongside her rival and usurper, Bantu Holomisa.

In circumstances where the new party in government had committed itself to instilling new values, the ANC nevertheless proved to be lenient to Sigcau when she faced allegations of corruption. Strangely, the ANC also showed itself to be accommodating of malfeasance that had taken place under the old regime. It, in effect, took ownership of the Sigcau scandal and of a homeland feud of which it was not part. It then went on to castigate the person who had made the allegations and to defend the accused in a matter in which it had no skin. Why this was so is a question that remains mysterious. One could argue perhaps that the ANC’s receipt of donations from Kerzner, and the benefits some of its leaders had received from him, played a role in the way it assessed the allegations Holomisa advanced against Sigcau.

Whatever the reason, while defending Sigcau, the party went all out to attack Holomisa. The smear campaign gained new momentum when he began a consultative process to form an opposition party. Jeremy Cronin, a poet famous for his erudite pen and a long-standing communist who was a member of the central committee of the South African Communist Party (SACP), was roped in to draft The Rise and Fall of Bantu Holomisa, a propaganda pamphlet intended to discredit Holomisa.

This document described Holomisa as a demagogue involved in a demagogic project. It was distributed to ANC structures and its allies, the SACP and Cosatu, the Congress of South African Trade Unions. Meanwhile, Sigcau sat safely ensconced in cabinet despite, according to some reports, offering very little to the work of government. Kader Asmal, the chain-smoking cabinet minister who prided himself on his professional etiquette, has described in his autobiography Sigcau’s below-par performance in matters of state. According to Asmal, of the ANC’s seventeen cabinet portfolios in the Government of National Unity, some were occupied by cadres of real calibre, while others were merely placemen pandering to powerful constituencies within the broad church of the ANC. Of this latter group, Stella Sigcau, the princess from Pondoland and Minister for Public Enterprises, was the pick of the bunch, Asmal stated. Brought in by the ANC to represent the powerful traditional leadership element of the movement, Sigcau contributed hardly anything of value to the cabinet in her 10 years of service.¹³

While Sigcau received royal treatment within the cabinet, Holomisa, on the other hand, was struggling to eke out a living. He failed in his attempts to access his pension from the former Transkei Defence Force so as to support his family, and believed the ANC was behind this dirty trick.¹⁴

But why would the ANC go all out to discredit a whistleblower and honour a corrupt minister? There was a combination of factors at play. For one thing, political jealousy reared its head. Holomisa had been a rising star in the party’s popularity stakes and a potential future threat to other aspirant ANC leaders. For some, his rise couldn’t be countenanced given the fact that he hadn’t come up through the traditional ranks of the ANC. He had been a military ruler of the Transkei who had shown sympathy for and given practical support to the ANC and its armed struggle. The wind had to be taken out of his sails, in part through blackmail and character attacks.

It’s unlikely any of the things the ANC said of him would have mattered had he been malleable and resisted the urge to speak out about the corruption inherited from the pre-1994 order. But Holomisa’s unrelenting stance and rigid backbone proved to be his weakness in the nascent governing culture of the ANC, which valued party unity above all other noble considerations.

There was also the need to keep the party’s dirty linen out