2017-07-04 08:41

If the Gupta family only came to South Africa to steal state money and become fabulously wealthy, we could have written off this tragic chapter in our history as a bad episode we could learn from.

But it is now becoming abundantly clear that they have a devastating impact on our democracy, our freedom, our economy and our political culture.

The Guptas’ toxic presence, their subversion of our public discourse and compromising of so many politicians and civil servants have torn our national fabric and will take a long time to undo.

I am one of a group of journalists who has to go to court today to ask for protection from a Gupta surrogate. The last time I felt threatened like this as a journalist was during the nasty late 1980s, when the PW Botha regime tried to neutralise me, literally and figuratively.

The ANC governments since 1994 have never given journalists the impression that they are under siege. And then the Guptas arrived and took over.

Black First Land First (BLF), a small group of vigilantes who are, we learnt recently, funded by the Guptas, last week physically intimidated two senior editors and threatened a number of us by name.

It was this same small gang that recently assaulted people assembling near the Guptas’ Saxonwold stronghold.

They call white journalists critical of the Guptas’ actions “racists” and the black ones “askaris” and threaten to “deal with us” at home and at our “place of worship”.

The fact that the leaked Gupta emails exposed the Gupta brothers as anti-black racists – one Gupta brother even called a black employee a monkey – makes the BLF campaign even more transparent.

Investigative journalists have established that the unprecedented onslaught of fake news – real fake news – and underhand social media campaigns we’re experiencing at the moment have their roots in Gupta-aligned circles.

They are also reported to be financing a website called WMCLeaks that is advertising on Facebook and is used as a base from which to launch mass attacks on Twitter.

The Guptas’ television channel, ANN7, is a malicious and crude propaganda tool with little regard for the facts and is being used to attack Gupta and Zuma critics.

But the Gupta toxicity goes a lot deeper than propaganda and the undermining of free speech and decent, open discourse.

Take the case of Mosebenzi Zwane, minister of mineral resources.

We know that as Free State MEC he assisted the Guptas in getting their hands on a multi-million rand dairy farm, and we know that some R30 million of the state’s money meant for the farm were then rerouted to pay for the controversial Gupta wedding at Sun City in 2013.

We have good reason to believe that the Guptas were behind Zwane’s appointment as mineral resources minister, and we know that they then flew him to Europe to help them buy a mine that does business with the state.

We know that they helped him pay his medical costs and our common sense tells us that they had him rewrite the Mining Charter in such a way that the Guptas now qualify as previously disadvantaged black businessmen. (They arrived in South Africa in 1993.)

And yet Zwane is still firmly in his powerful position; as we speak he sits in the front rows at the ANC’s policy conference as if it is the most normal thing in the world.

We know that the Guptas, with the help of President Jacob Zuma’s proxy, his son Duduzane, had offered Mcebisi Jonas R600 million and the job of finance minister if he was prepared to do their bidding.

Nothing has come of that. No investigation, no prosecution.

Several other senior ANC politicians and officials have told us similar stories, and nothing happened.

The Guptas have corrupted and compromised a number of very promising and talented politicians and public figures, like Brian Molefe.

In fact, the Guptas can take much of the credit for ripping the oldest liberation movement on the continent apart and turning it into a party at war with itself.

There is substantial evidence suggesting that the Guptas put pressure on Zuma to get rid of their nemesis, Pravin Gordhan, as minister of finance four months ago – an act that seriously hurt the national economy.

I believe reports that the Guptas pushed for Molefe to replace him with Malusi Gigaba their second choice. The ANC’s top leaders vetoed Molefe.

We know Gigaba was the minister who had swept his department’s objections  aside and granted some of the Guptas early citizenship and that he had appointed several Gupta proxies on some state-owned enterprises – mostly with disastrous consequences and reports of “commission” of amounts in the billions on foreign purchases.

We have ample reason to believe that the Guptas have enough clout at the top to get state bodies like the South African Revenue Service, the Hawks and the national prosecuting authority to do their bidding.

We remember the Gupta pawns’ orchestrated a campaign against the Reserve Bank and it shouldn’t have come as a surprise when the new Public Protector recently joined in.

This has become the new normal: a wealthy (they are, now) business family who had massively enriched the president’s son and have a close relationship with the president himself, has as much or more real power than the Cabinet or the top structure of the governing party.

This can only undermine the legitimacy and credibiity of the state in the eyes of the citizens.

Worst of all, the Guptas have cynically (and quite successfully) launched a campaign to divert attention from their abuse by positioning “white monopoly capitalism” as the country’s real enemy and taking an axe to the already fragile race relations in the country.

They know that if South Africa collapses into a Venezuela-type mess, they will be unaffected. Dubai the Beloved Country.

The saddest part of this whole saga is that it was made possible by the acquiescence of the president of the country and other senior ANC politicians and civil servants.

And still the show goes on.

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Johannesburg – Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa says there are no divisions among the more than 3 000 delegates attending the ANC’s six-day national policy conference at Nasrec, south of Johannesburg.

“The delegates are in good spirit, there’s unity of purpose and there aren’t divisions as many people would have suspected,” Ramaphosa told reporters during an exhibition of small business walk-about at the Nasrec Expo Centre on Sunday.

The conference is a gathering of about 3 500 delegates from branches across the country to discuss the party’s policies going into the elective conference in December where changes and new policies will be ratified.

The first two days of the conference, which began on Friday, were spent looking into a diagnostic report into the state it was in.

The report was presented to the plenary on Friday night by Secretary General Gwede Mantashe, who told reporters on Saturday that there had been attempts made by some members of the plenary not to allow him to present it to the gathering. After some discussion, it was agreed that the report would be read out and placed into the record.

It was believed that those who raised issues with having the report read out were from the Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal branches.

Earlier that day, minutes before President Jacob Zuma was set to give his opening address, members from Mpumalanga, KZN, Free State, Limpopo, North West and the Women’s League took part in a “sing-off” with delegates from the Eastern Cape.

This was after Eastern Cape delegates began singing songs calling for a change in leadership and using the substitution gesture. The battle took place in front of the podium where Zuma was set to address the gathering.

The other, much larger group eventually overpowered them and pushed the Eastern Cape group back to their seats, singing songs praising the leader. 

The conference got underway amid divisions over a fiercely contested leadership race between Ramaphosa and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.

Mantashe had told reporters previously that divisive songs which aimed at hurting certain leaders or appeared to be launching a campaign for others, would not be allowed.

‘Enriching process’

However, despite this, Ramaphosa insists that the conference had not been divisive.

“The first two days have been a really enriching process,” he said.

“This is the ANC at its best, when it looks at itself in a very critical manner and begins a journey of self-correction, of healing, of renewal and this conference is giving us that great opportunity.”

He said all the delegates were on the same page about trying to look at ways in which it could deepen unity within the ANC.

When it came to the ideas and proposals of policies, he said the objective was not to be self-centered.

“We are not just representing ourselves and we are not crafting policies for ourselves but crafting policies that are going to guide the whole country as we move forward.” 

Heated debates by the party’s factions were expected to take place over the definition of radical economic transformation, whether the domination of capital should be racially defined, the expropriation of land and whether the country’s, as well as the party’s Constitutions, needed to be amended.

Ramaphosa said the leaders of the party had come to the conference specifically to listen to the sentiment from the branches and the people on the ground.

“What we are doing here is a deep and overarching process of guiding society, of guiding us in government,” he said.

“The process of looking at policies has been bottom-up rather than top-down. This is a conference of branches, this is when branches have a voice [and] put forward their own views.

“And so as the leadership we are here to listen [and to] imbibe what our branch delegates are saying.

“The branch delegates are well armed by the experience of our people, by the poverty that our people are going through, the unemployment and the inequality. So everyone who is here is coming forward with ideas of how we can address these many challenges that our country and our people are facing.”

The conference continues on Monday and ends on Wednesday.

*To view the ANC stalwarts new appeal to the party, as well as their original appeal to the leadership on 25 October, 2016, go to the bottom of the article.

JOHANNESBURG – The ANC stalwarts and veterans on 1 July published on their Facebook page the document they presented to the President and the ANC’s top five officials on October 25, 2016.

At the same time, the stalwarts and veterans released a new plea to be empowered to convene and facilitate a National Consultative Conference in order to effect the renewal of the organisation.

Included among the stalwarts are all the remaining members of the Rivonia Treason Trial. Ahmed Kathrada was the documents first signatory.

The stalwarts noted that they remain loyal members of the ANC, and wish to “continue to serve all the people of South Africa and ensure the historical values and principlesof the ANC are restored.”

They noted their shock at being attacked by President Zuma at the ANC NEC and reject his assertions with regards to their motivations as patently untrue. 

The ANC Stalwarts and Veterans Facebook page presented the stalwarts 27 point document, detailing their commitment to the organisation, and to “the principles that have been the hallmark of the ANC for over one hundred years.”

GALLERY: Liberation stalwarts out in force for Kathrada memorial

They noted the challenges, divisions and splits that had occurred during the ANC’s history and noted that on all occasions, “Its leadership, cadres and members rose to the occasion – protecting, defending and upholding the core values of the ANC.”  

The stalwarts noted that they had spoken out about “departures from the ANC’s values, and (had) counselled a process of introspection.”

They had “recently watched as the ANC abdicated its historically earned position as the ‘leader of society’ to opposition parties and other civil society entities… (had) observed the ill-begotten wealth among some of our leaders at all levels and the resulting ruinous effects on the organisation’s moral and political fabric and on society as a whole, (and had) watched as the leadership of the ANC became mired in a cycle of in-fighting occasioned not by any ideological or political difference but personal interest.”

They noted that these factors had contributed significantly to the increase in political assassinations and had noted that the NEC had accepted collective responsibility for recent electoral defeats.

But they cautioned “against the constant refrain that the ANC has the inherent ability to self-correct.” They said this led to complacency and disinclined the party from taking the necessary corrective measures. 

The stalwarts noted that the ANC leadership had failed the people of South Africa by presiding “over the downward spiral of the organisation and… defending… the personal interests of some leaders at the expense of the public good and the credibility of the organisation.”

LETTER: ANC has drifted from ideals of struggle stalwarts

The veterans said action was required. The stated that they “must be empowered to convene and facilitate a National Consultative Conference, similar in structure to the historic Morogoro Consultative Conference. The Consultative Conference must reflect on all aspects of the state of the organisation and prepare for the 2017 National Conference.

“The Conference will also need to discuss the selection and election of credible leaders – free of blemishes, factionalism and corruption based on the precepts expounded in the ANC document “Through the eye of the Needle”. The deliberations and resolutions of the Conference should contribute to the leadership that leads the ANC to the next national election.”

Their objectives and next steps, they stated, would be to call for the consultative conference prior to the 2017 elective conference; to create a credible ANC platform; To call for all genuine members of the ANC from all walks of life and structures, to return to the branches of the ANC; To ensure that elected leaders are not products of manipulated elections; to ensure that the elective conference would begin the process of renewal for the ANC and also mark the beginning of the process to “win back the confidence of the people”; to work with the ANC Youth League in order to motivate young people to support the ANC; to build worker unity; to protect and defend state entities; and to rid the organisation of corruption, ill-discipline, factionalism, arrogance, abuse of state power and resources.

READ: Zuma must go – ANC stalwarts throw down the gauntlet

The stalwarts noted that their “collective political and organisational experience… as cadres committed to improving the quality of discourse in the ANC and to promote purposeful dialogue with all sectors of South African society” was at the disposal of the ANC in realising these objectives.

The document below was released by the stalwarts on 1 July, 2017.

For the Sake of Our Future by eNCA.com on Scribd

The document below was delivered to the leadership of the ANC on 25 October, 2016.

The Anc Stalwarts Document Presented to the President and the Top Five Officials of the ANC by eNCA.com on Scribd

eNCA

Cape Town – Search operations are still underway for a 7-year-old girl who went missing around 16:30 on Friday after she was swept off some rocks by waves on the coastline at Betty’s Bay, a small holiday town in the Overberg coast while with her mother.

“Despite an extensive sea and shoreline search the missing child has not been found and only items of clothing belonging to the child have been recovered from the water during the search today,” said National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI) spokesperson Craig Lambinon in a statement.

It is believed that the minor, who was on a holiday getaway with her family from Claremont, may have drowned.

Rough sea conditions are said to be hampering the search operation, but the search will continue and police will investigate the incident, said Lambinon.

On Friday, NSRI Hermanus duty crew were activated, while NSRI Gordons Bay, Overberg Fire and Rescue Services and the Western Cape Government Health Emergency Medical Services ambulance and rescue squad joined in a search operation conducted in rough seas.

On Saturday, the South African Police Services, a Police Dive Unit, Cape Nature Conservation officers and the Betty’s Bay Neighbourhood Watch members continued their on-going search for the girl.
 
The family, from Claremont, Cape Town is said to be receiving assistance from family and friends.