It’s all hammer, no sickle, as Solly beats the Zuma drum again:
Thursday.
The greatest threat to the success of Cyril Ramaphosa’s government of national unity appears — as predicted — to be from his comrades, rather than from the parties who contested the ANC going into the general elections.
More shots have been fired in the ongoing sniping taking place between the ANC and its alliance partners over who it turned to in order to remain the governing party after it lost its majority nationally on 29??May.
Bullets are flying — verbally speaking — along with insults, lawyers’ letters and invites to explain utterances as the members of the tripartite alliance deal with the process of adjusting to life below 50%+1.
It was always going to be tough.
The South African Communist Party (SACP) says the ANC has ignored it during the process of constituting a government — or at least its leaders who didn’t make it into cabinet alongside John Steenhuisen and Pieter Groenewald do.
John Deere and Oom Piet have been too busy doing their jobs to pose any threat to the stability of Ramaphosa’s government — no surprises there — with the boat-rocking now being left up to Ramaphosa’s comrades.
The ANC’s imaginary friend — electorally speaking — is feeling left out (Blade Nzimande excluded) and believes that Ramaphosa should have reached out to the parties who broke away from it instead of those to its right (allegedly) to stay in the governing game.
SACP general secretary Solly Mapaila kicked things off with an address to a National Education Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) gathering earlier this month in which he said the ANC failed to consult it when deciding who to partner with in the unity government.
Mapaila said he had attempted to convince the ANC to work with the Red Berets — and vice versa — instead of opening the door to the Democratic Alliance (DA) and the Freedom Front Plus (FF+).
Comrade Solly believes that the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party is less of a threat to the ANC than the DA and the FF+ are, despite the fact that it was Jacob Zuma — and not John and Oom Pieter — who took away its ability to govern solo.
Perhaps the comrade was too busy re-reading Das Kapital to have noticed the election result — and has conveniently forgotten what took place in our fair Republic back in November 2005.
That was the first time the SACP failed the test when asked the fundamental — make that existential — question: is our flag red or JZ?,
by its then national deputy secretary, Mazibuko Jara.
Zuma had just been indicted for corruption for the bribes he collected from Schabir Shaik and arms dealer Thint and was trying to turn his arrest into a presidential campaign by using the SACP and labour federation Cosatu.
Jara posed the question in an internal discussion document in response to a move by the SACP leadership to back Zuma and put him in the presidency — and keep him out of prison — in return for the promise of a shift to the left by the government.
It turned out that the only red flags involved were the ones being raised by Jara — he opposed backing Zuma, whom he characterised as a criminal and counter-revolutionary — and the SACP backed Nxamalala to the hilt.
Mazibuko was hounded out of the SACP, Zuma took over the ANC — and the country — and the rest of us are still paying the price of their inability to read the political room today.
The promised political power never materialised either.
Zuma appointed Nzimande and a few of his drinking partners to the cabinet, but it was the Gupta brothers who ended up telling uBaba who to appoint — or fire.
All hammer, no sickle.
Nearly 20 years and a halfway failed state later, Solly’s banging the same old JZ drum, talking up the old man as an ally rather than the threat that he has again proved himself to be.
Some people don’t — or won’t — learn.
The SACP has lost most of the influence it had on the ANC — and society — since Jara first posed the question.
Today, the SACP is more car guard than revolutionary vanguard, mainly as a result of its involvement with Zuma — and the quest for a shortcut to political power.
Comrade Solly would be well advised to read Jara’s discussion document again — the Zumarites in the SACP couldn’t burn the online copies — before suggesting that the ANC get cosy with the former president it just expelled.
Perhaps Solly should read the report of the Zondo commission into state capture too, before venturing any further along the path he is proposing that the ANC should follow again.
Perhaps.
Mokonyane: Last-minute initiatives like Nasi Ispan were behind ANC’s electoral decline:
Scepticism about the timing of last-minute initiatives such as the Nasi ispani jobs initiative, improved service delivery and a halt to load-shedding ahead of 29 May general elections contributed to the ANC losing votes, said the party’s first deputy secretary general, Nomvula Mokonyane.
She told journalists on the sidelines of the ANC’s national executive meeting (NEC) in Ekurhuleni on Friday that part of the discussions were around “voter suspicion” sparked by the introduction of the initiatives so close to the election date.
The ANC is gathering in Ekurhuleni to do a post-mortem of its worst electoral performance since 1994. The party’s support plunged below 50%, ending its long-standing parliamentary majority.
“Delayed interventions have also been seen to be very suspicious by our voters. Nasi Ispani, the transformer programme — voters [were)] actually saying ‘why now, why on the 11th hour?’,” she said.
Voters believed the ANC had introduced the programmes just to woo them, with the intention of shutting them down immediately after elections were done, Mokonyane added.
She said the government had to respond to speculation that the suspension of rolling electricity blackouts this year, after months of intense load-shedding previously, was meant to avoid hurting the ANC’s electoral chances.
In Gauteng, had Premier Panyaza Lesufi faced accusations of electioneering from opposition parties who said his Nasi Ispani initiative was also meant to woo voters towards the ANC.
Lesufi had also promised Gauteng residents that he would cancel the debt of defaulting Eskom customers in the run-up to the elections.
Mokonyane said one of the lessons learnt was that “where there is a need to intervene, do it when it’s four years and nine months before the next elections. We need solutions that incorporate everybody and ensure that those interventions are sustained.”
This forced the ANC to bring on board nine other parties to form a government of national unity (GNU), including the Democratic Alliance (DA), the Inkatha Freedom Party, Rise Mzansi, Good, Patriotic Alliance, Al Jama-ah, Freedom Front Plus, Pan Africanist Congress and the United Democratic Movement.
The NEC’s three-day gathering will be followed by a three-day lekgotla to be attended by the ANC’s alliance partners the South African Communist Party and labour federation Cosatu, as well as party veterans including former presidents Thabo Mbeki and Kgalema Motlanthe.
The rise of breakaway parties from the ANC such as former president Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party seems to have affected its support base, according to an 18-page election assessment by the former director general in the presidency, Joel Netshitenzhe.
“The emergence of the MK party as the largest party in KwaZulu-Natal, and its tallies in Mpumalanga and Gauteng broadly mirror locations with an ethnic identity similar to that of its leader. In the remaining six provinces, the MK party mustered one representative each in four of them,” Netshitenzhe said in the document.
He added that the voters who abstained were discouraged by the ANC’s poor delivery of services.
“Millions who abstained from voting have lost confidence in the ANC as the pre-eminent organisational platform through which to attain this objective,” he said.
Ntshitenzhe said the lack of confidence in the ANC reduced the voter turnout to 58.64% in 2024, compared with 89% in 1999, 77% in 2004 and 2009, 74% in 2014 and 66% in 2019.
The document was presented to the NEC members before Thursday’s session, at which the party aimed to formulate a plan to claw back its electoral losses.
On Friday, Mokonyane took the opportunity to assert the ANC’s authority over the unity government to “silence dissenting voices that the DA is in charge”.
“Who leads the GNU? The ANC leads. We have invited everybody, and we refuse to be put together with the DA,” Mokonyane said.
“We were always conscious that we have a bigger constituency represented in parliament, and that is what we will be working on.”
Acting ANC spokesperson Zuko Godlimpi said the discussions would “continue to consider the election outcomes and take a deep dive into pieces of data from VD [voter district] level towards the local municipalities”.
“Then we will come up with a concrete plan for structures after assessing the state of the organisation,” he added.
Former NPA director in Mpumalanga fired for bringing institution into disrepute:
Matric Luphondo, the former acting director of public prosecutions in Mpumalanga, has been fired following a labour arbitration process as his criminal trial for corruption continues, the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) said on Friday.
Luphondo was found guilty by the arbitrator of bribery, contravening clause 4.3.4 (a) of the NPA code of ethics and bringing the organisation into disrepute.
He was dismissed on Wednesday, NPA spokesperson Mthunzi Mhaga said.
“The NPA adheres to strict anti-corruption policies and practices and has a zero-tolerance approach to corruption within its ranks,” Mhaga said, adding that Luphondo’s sanction underscored the authority’s commitment to rooting out corruption including “within its own senior ranks”.
“Adv Luphondo, in particular as a senior manager in the NPA, should have acted at all times with the highest ethical standards and executed his duties without fear, favour or prejudice.”
Luphondo was placed on cautionary suspension on 4 April 2021, days after he was arrested along with Hawks lieutenant-colonel Ayanda Plaatje and Kebone Masange, the head of the Mpumalanga department of human settlements.
He is on trial in the Pretoria high court for trying to bribe senior Pretoria state prosecutor Andrew Mphanga with cash and a bottle of fine whisky in exchange for dropping charges of fraud and contravention of immigration laws against Masange.
Mphanga immediately reported the bribery attempt to his superiors and to the police.
Luphondo allegedly met him in a McDonald’s restaurant in Arcadia in March 2021 and told him Masange was “willing to do anything to get out of the case”.
At a second meeting, Mphanga testified, Luphondo handed him a box containing R5 000 in cash and a bottle of 18-year-old Glenfiddich, and suggested further gratification would follow.
Luphondo tried unsuccessfully to have the labour court declare the disciplinary process unlawful.
He pleaded not guilty to all charges in the arbitration hearing, He submitted that the evidence was fabricated and further that the NPA could not bring disciplinary charges against him based on criminal allegations in the absence of a court conviction.
This objection was dismissed because the burden of proof in disciplinary and criminal proceedings are different.
The arbitrator found that it was highly unlikely that Mphanga would not only fabricate evidence but report it to the deputy director of public prosecutions in Pretoria and the police, concluding: “The version of the employer is far more probable than the version of the employee.”
Luphondo had been tasked with monitoring evidence that emerged from the Zondo commission with a view to formulating charges against those implicated in state capture.
He was also one of the candidates for the position of national director of public prosecutions, which went to Shamila Batohi in 2019.
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