FACTS as they say, can be troublesome. When lies form the basis for allegations, one simple fact can make a world of difference. Take the latest interview with businessman Hazim Mustafa. In a SkyNews exclusive, he relates how he declared $600 000 USD when he arrived in South Africa, and then proceeded to pay $480 000 for some bulls ‘for which he has a receipt’.
That’s right, the money was declared at customs and the purchase occurred whilst the President was away. Phala Phala itself appears to be owned by a trust. Instead of banking the money, it seems staff decided to make use of the opportunity to stage a theft.
The result isn’t all that difficult to understand. Phala Phala staff proceed to hide the money in a place where it can easily be found by criminals who then broke into the ranch on camera, going directly to the funds. The money disappears, the President returns and reports the crime to a Police General, Major-General Wally Rhoode, who has been co-opted to the National Executive. The rest of the story is less sanguine and is incredibly problematic.
Head of Presidential Security of course, is none other than Rhoode, who is currently under suspension pending an investigation, and this following his own clumsy investigation and sloppy handling of the affair. There does seem to be an attempt to hush-up the result, perhaps to avoid security being implicated in the theft, or merely to protect national security? There may yet be outstanding issues to do with influence-peddling and tax evasion?
Enter Arthur Fraser, a rogue intelligence agent (see here and here), who it appears is still receiving intelligence briefings despite being implicated in large-scale larceny, abuse of intelligence resources, which include allegations of missing money running into millions from the Intelligence budget and the compromising of national security.
Fraser relates that merely because of ‘his position as former Director-General of Intelligence’ under Jacob Zuma, his ‘advice is regularly sought in relation to security and intelligence matters’ and that ‘unsolicited information is regularly brought to his attention by various people and entities‘ . Though he does not provide any further details, Fraser proceeds to impugn the Intelligence and Security Cluster surrounding the President.
It is no coincidence that Fraser is named in Volume 6 of the Zondo Report, into allegations of state capture, implicating him in major intelligence breaches. He thus concocts a rather bizarre plot in order to save his own skin, and also that of his former boss Jacob Zuma.
At first he alleges the President failed to report the theft and is laundering an undisclosed amount of money, the ‘quantum of which is speculated to be in the region of $4 million to $8 million’. None of which involves tax evasion and influence-peddling. The sheer bulk alone is problematic due to the weight of foreign exchange which is alleged to have been ‘hidden in furniture’, and which Fraser avers now constitutes a ‘prima facie case of money laundering’.
All the allegations are spun from the events at Phala Phala. Then he adds additional narrative via a supplement that appears to be cut-and-pasted right out of the Zondo Report. Instead of Gupta’s and the events surrounding Waterkloof Airforce Base, (where Fraser failed to report any of the resulting offences named by Justice Zondo), he now seeks to deflect the nation’s attention towards ‘Waterkloof Dollars’ arriving from distant lands such as Sudan in the form of bribes.
Problem with this narrative, aside from the fact that Fraser is no longer Director-General of Intelligence where he failed to protect the Republic from state capture — if the money has been declared at customs, it can’t be said to have been laundered. If the transaction is legitimate, and customs corroborate Mustafa’s version of events. It is basically chalk and cheese, and so lights out for Fraser. You’re busted.
At very least he has egg on his face — If Fraser was indeed in receipt of intelligence briefings on the matter (unsolicited or not), he would surely know the President has an alibi? But what if he was (or not), and then still wished to use the information for political gain? His Affidavit cannot simply be introduced on the basis of hearsay and speculation. And it cannot be put to an open court as if he were still DG operating under the Secrecy Act? It may be a miscalculation on his part, but more likely, he has calculated that the damage caused by his allegations would be sufficient for him to reach his own objectives, which appear to be anything but lawful.
Fraser at last count, was alleging via the daily press that he had “refused a R50 million offer from a Cape Town underworld boss to make the Phala Phala case against President Cyril Ramaphosa “go away”.’
Are we to believe there are now 20 assassins hiding under the Sofa?
Fraser’s Affidavit’s are therefore an exercise in hyperbole, purposeful exaggeration. Expect these allegations to get wilder and wilder. All are calculated to scandalise and shift the blame away from a culprit responsible for a massive failure of intelligence during the period of state capture.
Questions remain — why has Fraser not been arrested given the seriousness of the crimes to which he is accused in Volume 6 of the Zondo Report?
Did the President declare his capital gains and losses resulting from the crime, and was he entitled to Presidential Security detail at Phala Phala?
Did Rhoode go beyond the call of duty, and to what extant is Fraser involved?
Falsely accusing another person of a crime, is also a crime. Providing false testimony in an Affidavit is, yep, a crime.
This isn’t #Farmgate, it’s another #Spygate as in the Information Scandal.
SEE: Zondo vs Ngcobo – the strange tale of two Presidential corruption reports #Spygate
SEE: Former Spy Boss Arthur Fraser attempts court challenge of Zondo Report
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THE MAN implicated in Volume 6 of the Zondo Report, in a scheme to essentially defraud South Africa’s intelligence agency the SSA of millions of Rands via widescale abuse of state funds, including serious breaches of national security whilst DG of State Security (2016-2018) now appears behind a campaign of leaks specially designed to deflect attention away from the Zondo findings. Fraser’s offences include ‘abuse of the vetting system’ and involve the relocation of a nerve centre to his own home to create a parallel agent network external to the SSA inspectorate.
A news-story punted by IOL yesterday in which their own discredited investigations unit (read propaganda unit), the Falcons claim an exclusive entiteld: “Phala Phala Farmgate – Where Ramaphosa’s stolen dollars came from” proceeded to repeat the contents of a supplementary affidavit already referred to by the Citizen in a story by Fazel Patel published 26 October, and forms part of a election campaign by the group known as Operation Hlanza.
The allegations were thus far from being ‘an exclusive’ since they were already circulating over two months ago. The contents first appeared in Fraser’s supplement from June 2022, as his recollection of a response to the Director for Priority Crime Investigation (DPCI) in which he alleges:
“In response to a question from the DPCI investigators on where the money comes from, I advised that one of President Ramaphosa’s closest advisers, Bejani Chauke, was ostensibly instrumental in illegally bringing large sums of US dollars into South Africa for both he and the president after returning from trips he undertook on behalf of President Ramaphosa to various countries including, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Morocco and Equatorial Guinea.”
The supplement is also referred to in the Ngcobo Report: “The statements by Mr. Fraser which supplemented his complaint to the SAPS and the Public Protector are the main source of information. Together they suggests that the money which was stolen from the private residence of the President on the farm was not the proceeds of the sale of animals as alleged by the President. Rather Mr. Fraser suggests that this money was illegally brought into the country after the President’s advisor, Mr. Chauke, collected the money for both him and the President on certain trips he undertook to the Middle Eastern and African countries, on behalf of the President.“
The chief problem here is that Fraser was no longer DG of state security at the time that he claims to have come across this information.
If Fraser knew about the unlawful receipt of funds which are alleged to have been laundered by Ramaphosa’s administration whilst ‘out of the loop’ as it were, then he most certainly knew about similar activities, including state capture under Jacob Zuma when he was DG and in legally in control of state security.
And where he appears quick off the bat to report the resulting shenanigans under Ramaphosa to the DPCI, (as if he were still acting in the role of DG), it appears he failed to do so when it came to Zuma when he was in office and expected to apprehend wrong-doing. All of which raises the uncomfortable question as to the extant to which he may have benefited from what became a free-for-all during the Gupta-orchestrated looting of state funds, and then deployed this latest intelligence opportunity to leverage some form of settlement?
The problem with the current sequence of events, is really the baldfaced manner in which the findings of the 5500 page Zondo Commission into Allegations of State Capture are now being superceded by later events referred to by the slim 82 page Ngcobo Report.
It is troubling that Fraser appears to be the sole source of the latest round of revelations following his move to correctional services (despite the later appointment of Loyiso Jafta who should arguably have been the person to institute proceedings if not subsequent DGs) and that IOL is essentially resorting to single-source journalism in its own campaign, one which provides absolutely no further details other than that already in the public domain.
The result smacks of abuse of intelligence. Hearsay evidence by a former spyboss, turns around a dodgy case of innuendo ultimately based upon equally dodgy elements of secrecy. If agents in the field knew something, then they must be called to testify, even if they do so behind camera. If a former spyboss makes allegations, then surely the current spyboss must be called to explain why he or she has not?
If the allegations are true, and Fraser is a genuine whistleblower (not someone desperate to save his own skin), they may point to an even more alarming and ongoing problem with the manner in which the ruling party, particularly the executive, has allowed itself to broker influence and junkets from other states and various actors.
The state capture under Zuma thus may have simply leached into the current administration. It is clear the ruling party has a serious problem.
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THE New South Africa was founded as the culmination of a decades-long civil rights struggle. Dubbed the “Rainbow Nation” the country’s emergence from apartheid, was manifest evidence of the ability of both black and white to solve collective problems, to put aside history and to move forward into constitutional democracy. In recent years, the country has increasingly begun to look more like an apartheid bantustan, than the great society envisaged by founder Nelson Mandela.
After a boom period during the Mbeki era, remarkable for its reconciliation and promotion of black economic empowerment, the Polokwane-elected Jacob Zuma oversaw massive erosion of the economic base. For a decade Zuma effectively took the country down the road of kleptocracy, ethnicity and junk status.
One month after Cyril Ramaphosa became president, the former President and founder of Nkandla, was dethroned and charged last week, for a plethora of corruption violations, including fraud, money laundering and racketeering, moving commentators, to remark about a “Brazil Moment”
In 2017 Brazil’s President Michel Temer was similarly indicted on corruption-related charges for the second time, with prosecutors alleging he led a political corruption racket that generated R$587m in illicit funds over the past 11 years. Both South Africa and Brazil form part of the BRICS nations, three of which have received junk status in recent years.
While the formation of the African Union and its peer review mechanism was one of the hallmarks of the Mbeki Presidency, Ramaphosa has yet to chart a course in terms of the economy and to articulate a coherent foreign policy. The recent State of the Nation address merely hinted that corruption would be dealt with and that checks and balances would be reintroduced at the treasury, notwithstanding SOEs.
It will be difficult to undo the damage. Without so much as a mandate, Zuma catapulted South Africa, into a geographical alliance that has more to do with Oligarchs and Russian and Chinese money than historical ties. The BRICs and its many associated intrigues such as the Gupta scandal, dominated political discourse in recent years. While Ramaphosa is seen as more Pro-West and market-friendly, his ascendancy is not without its own scandals.
As non-executive director of Lonmin, a company implicated in the Marikana Massacre, Ramaphosa was forced to apologise to the victims for demanding that “concomitant action” be taken against the miners involved in wildcat strikes. It is within the context of a leftist break-away from the ruling ANC party that neo-fascist organisations and avowedly racist parties such as Black Land First and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) have arisen.
It was thus the EFF, a quasi-Marxist party committed to “cutting the throat of whiteness” which tabled a motion in Parliament on the land question, in particular the adoption of “expropriation without compensation”, which would require an amendment to the property clauses in the Constitution.
The centre-right Democratic Alliance under Mmusi Maimane has also found itself campaigning on the issue of land reform, but significantly, in support of title-deeds and equal opportunity for all South Africans regardless of race. The former liberal party, eschews the notion of the abolition of private property and thus the policies punted by the ANC and EFF involving state custodianship of the land. Australia, a member of the Commonwealth, has offered to fast-track visas for white farmers in danger of losing their land to confiscation.
According to one report,”The rate of land reform in South Africa peaked in 2007, but has since come to a grinding halt. It has resulted in a change of ownership of only 5.46% of South Africa’s commercial agricultural land. Much of this land was transferred to the state, or to communal ownership groups.”
The figure is nothing to be sneezed at, the state has already given over an area twice the size of Swaziland to black tenant farmers. Instead of calling for a continuation of this process, the neo-fascist far-left has set its sights on state-ownership of the entire land mass of the Southern African continent, effectively calling for an exclusive Bantustan, where race not equal opportunity, is the determining factor, and where the state, not private citizens, are the drivers of production.
The plan is doomed to failure from the outset. Wholesale land confiscation would invariably result in a collapse of the credit and banking system. Not only would the confiscated land result in adverse ownership, but the many disputes which would arise, would invariably result in asset depreciation with the risk of major loan defaults, that central bankers are unlikely to underwrite.
Time can only tell whether or not the negotiated compromises of the Mandela era, which included property rights for all, and land reform within this context, will continue to define the country and its future trajectory, or whether it is really time to call it quits on the Rainbow Nation? A continuation of land reform within the constitutional framework is the only chance of success.
SEE: No, the Rainbow isn’t Dead
Something needs to be said about the Lonmin Massacre. It is not simply because what we are witnessing recalls so many massacres under the apartheid regime, or that what we are seeing is occurring now under an ANC government. No, what needs to be said is the way foreign markets are dominating the political and social discourse of the Republic.
Having Cyril Ramaphosa, one of the chief authors and negotiators of the South African constitution, at the helm of the board which is overseeing mining operations at the platinum mind, boggles the imagination. How could this happen and why are we not seeing a lot more contrition on the part of those who undoubtedly ordered the use of force?
Equally upsetting is the way the stage is being set by various shareholder groups, for a hostile takover of the resource, pre-empting a possible shift in the body politic.
Can anyone believe Julium Malema, when he says he has the best interests of the miners at heart? Surely what Juju wants is exactly what Cyril has at the moment, access to 80% of the worlds’ supply of platinum. It is a tragic power-play in which workers are being slaughtered because of the markets, while the banks and foreign investors leverage control South Africa’s economy.
One cannot help but think this disaster was in the making began when Juju jetted off to London, only to broker deals which could give him the upper hand in the incipient battle over leadership of a political movement which is showing signs of being nothing more than an excuse to command investment and interest rates, the kind of rough capitalism which has always managed to colonise Africa to the detriment of the poor.
Somebody must have given the order to shoot, as too, the government offical or party oligarchs who are now spin-doctoring, denying culpability while presumably granting Malema access to the Lonmin compound. Providing platforms for political speeches has always been the method of choice of the global illuminati and bilderburgers who control the Earth’s mineral wealth and who will resort to any means necessary to secure their investment.
This time, there is nobody who can accuse the capitalists of being racists, what they are, are plain old capitalists, and with Cyril involved, we can only presume to know how much money has been wagered on the operation.