Sisulu steps in the proverbial ‘kakka’

FOR TWENTY years Imelda Marcos, the First Lady of the Philippines and her husband Ferdinand Marcos stole billions from the Filipino people, before they were convicted after mass protests that would later become known as the ‘People Power Revolution’. Imelda Marcos’s luxury shoe collection is said to have run into the range of thousands of branded items.

Similarly, South Africa’s ruling party has presided over state capture and massive looting under successive administrations. The party is implicated in the Zondo Report, the opening volume of which has dealt a massive blow to the credibility of the ANC, whilst MP Lindiwe Sisulu, faces opprobrium and censure from the country’s justice system for comments deflecting attention away from the findings.

In a move calculated to take the wind out of the sails of Zondo Commission by weaponising poverty to defend her position and authority, Sisulu went on the offensive this week, accusing the judiciary of being ‘mentally colonised’ and attacking the acting chief justice, and the ‘rule of law’, which she claims is merely a tool of neoliberalism.

The timing is significant and the result incredibly rich, considering the Sisulu’s are the main beneficiaries of a number of deals with the previous regime. Deals which resulted in the first black empowermenti firm, the creation of NAIL, and all leading to a round of state capture outlined here.

That there exists a link between state capture under Zuma, and the previous period of state capture under the National party, is clear and it would be remiss of me to omit to mention that this connection was neither the strict mandate nor the subject of the Zondo Commission, which focused primarily on the intrigues of the Guptas, SAA, Transnet, Nkandla and so on.

Given the extent of the looting, it was only a matter of time before the entire corrupt enterprise involving the siphoning off of state funds, under the guise of ANC deployment of cadres to the corporate sector, positioning of political representatives within the commanding heights of the economy, and attempts to rig legal proceedings, began to unravel, in one big awkward mess. A bewildering array of graft allegations has resulted in unprecedented attacks against democratic institutions becoming the order of the day, and include the torching of the national assembly by persons known and unknown.

Instead of empowering ordinary South Africans and seeking to move our country forward under democratic rule, it turns out that the inner circle of the ANC merely wished to step into the boots of the National Party, gaining a seat at the table of crookedness as it were. One can no longer remain silent in the face of thinly veiled attempts to disguise the result as a ‘people’s revolution’ or to sugar-coat the consequences as ‘radicalism’ or ‘opposition to capital’.

Like the removal of the Marcos Gang in the Philipines, it is going to take a lot more than a simple ‘democratic revolution’ to deal with the consequences. SA desperately needs its own Corazon Aquino, the  prominent figure of the 1986 Philippines Revolt, which ended the two-decade rule of President Ferdinand Marcos.

As I write this piece, government-sponsored propagandists continue to scapegoat our constitutional democracy alongside the justice system instead of answering the question, why it is that the ruling party has failed the people of this country?

History buffs may find another comparison, that of Angola’s Isabel dos Santos equally enlightening.

Mogoeng is misinformed, disingenuous and unhelpful

IN A LENGTHY statement to the press early this month, South Africa’s Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng warned those ‘making allegations against judges and the judiciary to stop hiding behind fictional identities or names’

He claimed further that he never received any formal complaints against his colleagues.

“Only a sworn enemy of our constitutional democracy would make allegations so grave against the judiciary without the evidence to back them up.”

He said he never received any formal complaints against his colleagues.

“Make your true identity and contact details known to us and the South African public. Tell us which judge has been captured, corrupted and by whom.”

The chief justice said for the sake of a South Africa that deserves a corruption-free judiciary, those making allegations should be willing to give evidence even in a court of law.

He said he never received any formal complaints against his colleagues.

That the Chief Justice was being disingenuous and more than unhelpful can be demonstrated by the fact that Independent Media have published criticism of the judiciary as a prominent OP-ED piece under my own byline, not a nom de guerre , in which I proceed to refer to a sworn affidavit and supporting documents regarding the capture of a well-known member of the legal profession performing judicial duties.

Medialternatives can reveal that the individual, who presided over a 2010 discrimination case involving his own client and business partners is none other than Halton Cheadle, and that my affidavit details the lengths to which I have gone in informing inter alia, SAPS, NPA, JSC and the Cape Law Society.

My Op-Ed also makes note of the manner in which South Africa’s justice system has turned into a mere business system, and one should add, a system that is not evidence based per se, but rather an opinion-based system inherited from the past period of colonialism and apartheid.

Until the evidence in my affidavit  is heard before an impartial court of law, in a fair hearing in which I possess an attorney, there is  absolutely no likelihood that the Chief Justice’s advice will be adhered to, and any averments in this regard should be rejected by free-thinking citizens.

Other statements attributed to the Chief Justice claim that he has requested SAPS to investigate allegations against the judiciary, but fail to record that the NPA appears to have a policy of doing nothing about the problem, when it comes to corporate and party-political capture of judicial officers.

 

‘State Capture’, treason by any other name

THE latest Guptagate revelations amounting to a plot to capture the Republic of South Africa should be considered treason by any other name. As William Shakespeare famously once said:”A rose by any other name would smell as sweet” , in this instance, if state capture smells and looks as bad as treason, then surely criminal charges need to levelled against its chief protagonists, charges that are more serious than simply that of looting state coffers?

In the South African Law Journal, C. Snyman wrote: “… high treason is the unlawful intentional commission of any act with the ‘additional intent’ to overthrow or coerce the state.”

According to the Helen Suzman Foundation

The crime of high treason is defined as:
“any conduct unlawfully committed by a person owing allegiance to a state with the intention of:
• overthrowing the government of the Republic;
• coercing the government by violence into any action or inaction;
• violating, threatening or endangering the existence, independence or security of the Republic;
• changing the constitutional structure of the Republic.”

The ingredients are all here, betrayal, coercion, violation of independence and public trust, in short capture.

The circle of plotters, range from the President himself, the Gupta crime family, and several directors of parastatals and government agencies.

Names appearing in news stories associated with state capture allegations include a range of individuals whose motive appears to have been to redirect state funds into private hands, in the process depriving ordinary South Africans of poverty relief.

The NPA is investigating seven cases related to what has come to be known as “state capture”, involving R50 billion.

In one case it is alleged that R10m of the funds paid to Estina for a dairy farm was paid into Atal Gupta’s personal bank account.

It appears board members  and employees of ESKOM Sean Maritz, Anoj Singh, Zethimbe Koza are also involved in a parallel kickbacks scandal.

Bell Pottinger a public relations entity has also been named.

A story published by ENCA last year openly discusses treason: “revelations by former ANC MP Vytjie Mentor, Deputy Minister of Finance Mcebisi Jonas, and former head of GCIS, Themba Maseko, that the Gupta family had offered them ministries or had made requests to direct state finances in their direction, amount to exactly that.”

Turning South Africa away from its constitutional mandate as a democracy into a personal fiefdom, nothing more than a means of benefiting a few private individuals, has all the hallmarks of treason and should be dealt with accordingly, unfortunately this is unlikely to come about under an ANC government, itself the target of disputed treason allegations under the previous regime.

 

 

 

Terry Bell rats on Teljoy, Broederbond & State Capture

HOW the memory plays tricks. Not so long ago, Terry Bell, the self-styled labour correspondent who started out at the Independent Group, where he failed to cover any labour disputes involving his bosses, was praising the political dispensation.

Now that he has found a home at Naspers subsidiary Media24, where he once again fails to cover any cases involving his bosses, Bell has taken to writing obscure tracts on state capture and ‘Die Broederbond’.

Perhaps a sign that Bell still has some spine left and could be coming round to Medialternatives’ own exposé of the cartel that is key to understanding state capture of the media and vice versa? (See post here and here)

We certainly hope so.

In a piece published on Bell’s website and ironically also carried by News24, Bell writes about an inquiry during the Verwoerd period, to investigate secretive societies such as the “Afrikaner Broederbond (AB), the Freemasons and the Sons of England”.

In particular he writes about the “exposes (sic) by the brilliant investigative reporter, Charles Bloomberg that revealed that the secretive AB cabal was making the real decisions about the future of the country; that parliament was merely being used as a rubber stamp.”

The inquiry makes an interesting analogy: “Unlike the present allegations of attempts to capture existing state machinery, the first state capture, by the AB, came about through the steady infiltration of leading sections of the Afrikaner nationalist establishment. Over nearly 30 years, leading Afrikaner politicians, academics, religious leaders and educationalists, were recruited to the AB with the object of eventually seizing control of the state and all aspects of society.”

If this doesn’t get your goat, then Bell’s relating of the Teljoy saga (really a  prequel to the later Naspers-Multichoice debacle under the regime of PW Botha) definitely gets our blessing, as a piece of apartheid controversy crucial to understanding media today.

“A number of powerful AB members had financial stakes in an embryonic television hire company, Teljoy. This company became South Africa’s leading television and VCR rental organisation with significant interests in cellular telephony. Political modernity had again found its justification in the marketplace.”

“The charade, which then followed, was a classic of its kind. John Vorster appointed an official commission of inquiry into whether and when South Africa should introduce television. The commission was chaired by Broeder 787, Piet Meyer, who was simultaneously head of the national broadcaster, the SABC and of the AB. Eight of the other 11 members of the commission were also AB members while a ninth was a National Party senator. But the 12 commission members merely constituted the public face of the process. As soon as the inquiry was announced, the Broederbond notified its cells and canvassed the opinions that would really matter.”