How to Steal a Country by Robin Renwick

Author:Robin Renwick [Robin Renwick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781785903748
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
Published: 2018-05-12T16:00:00+00:00

‘NO PUBLIC DISSONANCE’

Following meetings of the National Working Committee packed with unconditional Zuma supporters on 4/5 April, the Secretary General, Gwede Mantashe, leading the climbdown, announced the collapse of resistance in the ANC to Zuma’s actions. Those involved were said to have acknowledged that there should not have been ‘public dissonance’: any arguments should have been behind closed doors. ANC members would not vote in Parliament or participate in demonstrations with the opposition parties against their leader.

Mantashe added that there was no question of voting with one’s conscience in the ANC.

Despite tens of thousands of people demonstrating against the Zuma presidency in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Pretoria, Zuma’s success in quashing this internal revolt appeared to have improved the prospects for his ex-wife, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, to be elected President of the ANC ahead of Cyril Ramaphosa.

On 23 April 2017, Ramaphosa responded by taking the gloves off in a fervently applauded speech to the ANC faithful in the Eastern Cape. There were, he said, many who felt that the ANC was in a deep crisis and that the party no longer represented their hope for a better life. The allegations that there were private individuals who exerted undue influence over state appointments and procurement decisions should be a matter of grave concern. The ANC should support an investigation into these allegations. Otherwise ‘our electoral support will continue to slide’. The ANC was losing the support of important constituencies. On 1 May 2017, Zuma was obliged to abandon an attempt to speak at Cosatu’s May Day rally, due to persistent booing from a large section of the crowd.

Thabo Mbeki, Kgalema Motlanthe and F. W. de Klerk called for ANC MPs to have a free vote on the motion of no confidence in President Zuma. The board of Eskom exploited the dismissal of Pravin Gordhan to take the extraordinary decision to reinstate Brian Molefe as CEO of the utility, notwithstanding the conclusions of the Public Protector’s State of Capture report.

This produced some interesting reactions, as the ANC Secretary General, Gwede Mantashe, called on the Minister of Public Enterprises to rescind this appointment.

The former Minister of Natural Resources, Ramatlhodi, replaced by the Gupta associate Zwane, confirmed that Molefe and the Eskom chairman Ben Ngubane had pressured him to help the Guptas take over Glencore’s Optimum coal mine in 2016. According to Ramatlhodi, they had urged him to suspend all Glencore’s mining licences in South Africa pending payment of the ‘insanely large’ fine.

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