I don't want to harp on about this, but there needs to be a clear story and a lot of people I have been in contact with since last night have been asking me a lot of questions about my first post. If you haven't had a chance to read it yet, feel free to here:
https://steemit.com/politics/@rambro/inside-south-africa-post-1994
The main questions people have been asking me varies, but the overarching issue they bring up is "Just how did this happen?". And the answer to that is rather complicated and stretches back to the controversial Arms Deal in the mid to late 1990's. The basic problem here was that government wanted to procure military grade hardware to the tune of $4 billion. No, not Zimbabwean Dollars, U.S Dollars.
First off, Jacob Zuma, the man of the moment, is pivotal in this story. It is alleged that he received kickbacks and bribes from foreign arms companies to ensure that this deal went off without a hitch. During this time, Jacob Zuma was Executive Deputy President of the ANC as well as Deputy President of the Republic. Does anyone else see a pattern immerging here?
Yes, the quintessential fuck off to the Nation and to the rest of the world. Jacob Zuma does things his way. But how does a man gain so much power and so much damn chutzpah? To answer that question we need to look at not only the controversy surrounding the Arms Deal but a more recent demon that has visited the South African zeitgeist in recent years:
Enter the Gupta Family. South Africa's mafia of Indian origin. Not to be confused with the Indian population of South African origin. I might be hanged for drawing such correlations. The idea here is that the Guptas funneled and laundered vasts amounts of South African Rands out of the public purse (with the help of Jacob Zuma) and into foreign companies that they either owned or had a stake in. That's a bit of a mess, right? It gets worse when you realize that they also had interests and stakes in State Owned Enterprises like Eskom which is the sole Electricity supplier in South Africa.
It has been widely speculated by journalists that a Gupta owned Coal Producer, Tegeta was at least partially responsible for the energy crisis South Africa faced in 2008-2009. Okay, so back to Thabo Mbeki. Remember that just before this is energy crisis transpires he is still in office as president of the country. So we can assume that he knows what is going on with the Guptas and Tageta. What president wouldn't know the intimate details of the country they run? During the end-days of his presidency, Thabo Mbeki also made some highly contriversial statements surrounding HIV/AIDS. He believed that a healthy diet was all that was needed and antiretrovirals were dangerous. This was the final nail in the coffin for his presidential career as the ANC forced him to step down. Zuma, given his position no doubt had a say in the matter.
On their own, these two issues don't seem to correlate well, but if you take into consideration that Zuma is now poised to handle the reigns of the ANC, we see a perfect opportunity for the Guptas. And thus, what has become known as #StateCapture is born.
What follows in the coming years is for the most part kept under wraps. That is until a Gupta charted plane out of India landed at Waterkloof Airforce Base in Pretoria in May of 2013. Now, why was a public jet making use of military facilities? To attend a wedding of course. A wedding that was closely linked to the Guptas. This caused a national outcry as it later emerged that President Zuma had given permission for the plane to land at what was a logistic National Keypoint and not allowed to be made of by the public. This is how the Guptas as a family first captured the public imagination and they have not left to this day.
If you would like more information on them, as there is simply too much to mention for one post, you can visit:
http://amabhungane.co.za/article/2017-07-22-gupta-leakscom-everything-you-ever-need-to-know-about-guptaleaks-in-one-place
For the rest of the post, I want to focus solely on the Nkandla Saga and what it means for our Constitutional Democracy in South Africa.
Jacob Zuma was born on the homestead of Nkandla. When he assumed his presidency of the country, it came with certain perks. As is traditional in South Africa, upgrades to presidential homes are not uncommon and are normally subject to scrutiny by other government departments such as Treasury and the Minister of Finance. "In mid-November 2009, when the public works department was already in a flurry over the increasingly complicated security upgrades at President Jacob Zuma’s Nkandla homestead, the director of one of its main contractors was rubbing shoulders with ANC top brass in Guangzhou, China.
Pamela Mfeka, the sole director of Moneymine Enterprises, which was already on site at Nkandla in 2009 doing private work for Zuma, was accompanied by her husband, Michael Mfeka, on the five-day trip.
Pamela, who also owns Igugu Training and Investments and Igugu Functions Venue, was a member of the delegation, organised by the ANC’s Progressive Business Forum.
The trip was led by the ANC’s former treasurer general, Mathews Phosa." (amabhungane, 2013) Do you see how Zuma organised people in places to make sure he gets what he wants?
This leads us to a point of South African Law which loosely states that the president is liable to pay for non-security upgrades to his home in his own capacity. In this way, he is not allowed to use public funds for non-security upgrades. When confronted with this issue, Zuma lied and tried to insinuate that upgrades to his pool and chicken-run were indeed for security. By this time the total bill for the project sat at around 246 million Rand. This is equivalent to around about 18.9 million US Dollars plus some change. This sent the South African Public, as well as opposition parties into a tailspin. This resulted in a long, drawn out legal challenge that saw the Constitutional court, the highest court in the land finding Zuma guilty of violating his Oath of Office by lying to Parliament and the public. They further ordered that Treasury would need to come up with a figure that Zuma needed to payback. A meagre 7.3 million Rand or 561 Thousand Dollars was decided upon. Of course, this is outrageous and Opposition Parties called for his head. The 7.3 million was paid and the motions of no confidence began to be debated in earnest. To this day, Zuma has not accounted for breaking his Oath of Office.
And where were the Guptas in all of this? Well, Amabhugane thinks they were helping Zuma fit the bill for another one of his homes. "As President Jacob Zuma’s fate hangs in the balance, new evidence shows it was not only his son Duduzane, but also his fourth wife and their young son – and by extension he – who benefited from Gupta largesse. The #GuptaLeaks show that millions were paid towards an exclusive property purchase – trashing years of denial. The evidence also suggests that some of the money that found its way to the purchase was the proceeds of bribery, laundered from the UAE." (amabhungane, 2017)
