CAPE TOWN — This reportage gives brilliant insight into what drove the debilitating changes at SARS and dovetails perfectly with the overall State Capture narrative. A few key Zuma acolytes were inserted and within months made drastic changes to the world class SARS operating model – not for efficiency’s sake as they will probably bluster to the Nugent Commission, but to concentrate decision making power in their hands with regard to those surrounding former President Zuma, ministers, judges and some high net worth individuals (read Guptas). That the smiling, ruthless former guerilla intelligence chief (Zuma) spread the ethic of fearful compliance far and wide is crystal clear. So far 44 SARS officials with ‘valuable information,’ have refused to give evidence before the commission, prompting Judge Nugent to comment that, “this place reeks of fear.” The fingerprints of former SARS boss Moyane’s and his henchman Jonas Makwakwa are everywhere. In camera hearings might help, but even more than anonymous ANC votes following a No Confidence debate, the identification of ‘traitors,’ won’t be hard. Read the subtle last line reporting the central question Nugent’s commission must answer – and find your own adjectives to reply, using your existing knowledge and its imminent expansion. Story courtesy of the Daily Maverick. – Chris Bateman

By Pauli van Wyk

SARS boss Tom Moyane’s flagship project of restructuring SARS’s operating model turned out to be a disaster helped by consulting firm Bain and Co.

Crucial units and functions were written out of the revenue service’s structure, reporting lines were fractured, SARS lost its ability to measure compliance and tax collection consequently tanked. To plug the holes, Moyane’s SARS withheld VAT refunds (seemingly to everyone except the Guptas), overstated compliance in its public documents and lied to Parliament.

Despite the lies and manipulation, Moyane’s SARS fell short of collecting its due over the last two years. The disaster had a direct influence in the recent VAT hike to 15%. All of this while the taxpayer paid Bain and Co. over R200 million, SARS confirmed in written answers to Scorpio. This is the evidence submitted on Tuesday to the Commission of Inquiry into SARS by two SARS officials, Dr Randall Carolissen and Dr Thabelo Malovhele.

Tom Moyane wanted to fix a non-existing problem.

The verb used repeatedly by SARS officials who consulted with the commission is “broke”, evidence leader Adv. Carol Steinberg said in the hearing.

The new operating model broke SARS, these officials argued. The revenue service was less effective than before Moyane was appointed and in many ways became a cripple whereas it was once a leading light to first world countries.

More disturbing yet is that there is a very real possibility that the public may never know the full extent of the criminality Moyane brought to and allowed inside SARS.

Retired judge Robert Nugent, chairing the commission, expressed his concern on Tuesday about witnesses’ “point-blank” refusal to testify before the commission.

“This place reeks of fear,” he said.

SARS officials with “valuable information” could not be moved to appear before the commission. It may result in the commission being forced to hold an increasing number of in camera hearings, or it will simply lose out on the benefit of specific evidence needed to fulfil its duties.

The teasing questions the Commission of Inquiry will sit with after Tuesday’s testimony are who drastically changed Bain and Co.’s suggested operating model and who instructed the consultancy firm to deviate from the existing blueprint that was SARS’ highly effective operating system. Bain and Co. drafted four operating models that in effect tweaked the existing model slightly.

This was shoved off the table when Moyane’s executive committee adopted the final model that would ultimately prove severely detrimental to SARS.

The fingerprints of Moyane’s henchman Jonas Makwakwa are all over this debacle. Makwakwa headed the steering committee tasked with restructuring SARS and liaised with Bain and Co. on the new operating model. Tuesday’s first witness Dr Randall Carolissen described his unease and utter surprise with how Bain and Co.’s final operating model adopted by SARS collected an inordinate amount of power under the head of Business and Individual Tax (BAIT) – a position occupied by Makwakwa.

With the new operating model, Makwakwa had the last say in all tax matters apart from customs and excise tax. This included the VIP unit servicing the president, ministers, judges and some high net worth individuals as well as what once was the backbone of SARS collecting capacity, the Large Business Centre. 

Makwakwa further ignored warnings from compliance officer Thabelo Malovhele about the crucial compliance function which has somehow “disappeared” from the SARS organogram. Malovhele, Tuesday’s second witness, said after several enquiries he was told a small part of his unit’s function would be absorbed by Makwakwa’s unit. The better part of his compliance unit’s function was not allocated to any unit and no person was assigned to the job. It was ultimately left by the wayside.

Simply put: Makwakwa helped design a SARS model that deviated so much from best and tried practice that it raised eyebrows. This model concentrated an inordinate amount of power under his position that included high profile and high net worth taxpayers – a move that allowed him to wield ultimate control over these taxpayers’ affairs.

Makwakwa further decimated SARS’ ability to monitor whether taxpayers were actually complying with their duties – a function that was the first indication of whether a taxpayer should be referred for audit or criminal investigation. During this time, he was paid an exorbitant amount of mysterious cash he refused to explain once he was caught out – Makwakwa stuffed hundreds of thousands of rand in untraceable cash into ATMs. His fortunes remarkably improved when Moyane was appointed. He refused to explain how he managed to live far beyond his means, spending up to three times per month more than he legitimately received per month from SARS.

Thanks to previous testimony – under oath – before the Nugent Commission, we do however know that Makwakwa was forever meddling in the business of units outside his jurisdiction, seemingly on behalf of high profile taxpayers. He also scrapped the position of an official from the SARS operating model for initiating disciplinary proceedings against his girlfriend, Kelly-Ann Elskie.

The Commission of inquiry has a few dots to connect. According to its terms of reference, the commission must provide president Cyril Ramaphosa with a preliminary report by September and a final report by November.

An important question the commission must answer in order to get to the root of many a tragedy in the once world-class SARS would be: Was Makwakwa reckless or deliberate in his decisions, and by what measure did Moyane as well as Bain and Co. assist him in his quest? DM

CAPE TOWN — If you’ve been too busy putting hard-won bread on your table to keep up with what’s happening at the State Capture Commission, relax – here it is in healthy bite-sized chunks. There’s probably a book on the political psychology of South Africa’s populace to explain how we managed to elect and re-elect a president whom a judge publicly labelled over 13 years ago as being in a “generally corrupt” relationship with his so-called financial adviser and ultimate fall-guy Schabir Shaik. For a measly R500,000 per year Shaik allegedly bribed Zuma to use his cabinet influence to lobby in favour of arms suppliers Thomson CSF. Shaik went to jail for it and now, 13 years later, Zuma has exhausted his side-steps, dummies and power plays and is facing the same music. But back to the Zondo Commission; the brazenness, depth and width of the corruption during the Zuma years makes the arms deal look like a kid’s tea party. The words of Mandela on the steps of Cape Town’s City Hall on the day he was released echo loudly in our new context; “Never again…”. Except that nobody of similar stature and leadership ability is saying them. – Chris Bateman

By Nkululeko Ncana and Mike Cohen

(Bloomberg) – For the past eight years, South Africa was heading down the road to being run as a criminal enterprise.

That’s the picture emerging from a judicial commission of inquiry into the alleged theft of public funds during former President Jacob Zuma’s tenure – a practice locally known as state capture. The first witnesses have implicated members of the Gupta family, who are Zuma’s friends and were in business with one of his sons, in plundering billions of rands from South Africa’s coffers with the tacit assent of the president and law-enforcement agencies.

While much of the information was already public, the testimony has highlighted how widespread the looting was and how deeply compromised state institutions became. Former Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, who now looks after state companies, previously estimated that more than R100 billion ($6.7 billion) may have been stolen.

“What has emerged so far gives an indication of the brazenness with which Jacob Zuma betrayed his constitutional duties for petty personal interests,” said Mpumelelo Mkhabela, a political analyst at the Pretoria-based University of South Africa’s Department of Political Sciences. “We also got the indication that more is still to come. It provides confirmation of what many people expected.”

The ruling African National Congress forced Zuma, 76, to step down as president in February and replaced him with new party leader Cyril Ramaphosa, 65. Zuma and the three Gupta brothers, who have left the country, have denied wrongdoing. Their lawyers have yet to cross-examine witnesses, and it’s unclear whether they will testify.

Here’s some of what the inquiry, led by Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, has revealed so far:

• Government tender procedures were deliberately and regularly flouted, resulting in much of the state’s R800 billion annual procurement budget being squandered, according to Willie Mathebula, the Treasury’s acting chief procurement officer.
• Former Deputy Finance Minister Mcebisi Jonas said the Guptas offered him the top ministry post and a 600 million-rand bribe on condition that he fire four senior Treasury officials who were obstructing the family’s business interests. They threatened to kill him if he spoke of the offer, he said.
• Ajay Gupta, the eldest of the three brothers, boasted that the family had made R6 billion from its dealings with the state, controlled the National Prosecuting Authority, intelligence services and the police’s Hawks investigative unit, and that Zuma would do anything they told him to, Jonas said.
• The Hawks police unit told Jonas they intended to block a probe into the alleged bribe attempt and presented him with a pre-written statement about the incident, which he refused to sign.
• Former lawmaker Vytjie Mentor recounted how Ajay Gupta suggested she could become public enterprises minister on condition she agree to scrap South African Airways flights to India, which would enable the family to decide on an airline to run the route. She refused the offer.
• Themba Maseko, the former head of the government communication service, testified that Zuma asked him to help the Guptas, and they told him to direct the government’s R600 million advertising budget to the family’s newspaper and television channel. Maseko said he was fired on Zuma’s orders after he refused to comply.
• Phumla Williams, the acting head of the government communication service, revealed how procurement and appointment processes were flaunted on instruction from Zuma’s communications minister, Faith Muthambi, and other officials, and that the Guptas unfairly benefited as a result.

The commission expects to take two years to complete its work. Future testimony will focus on looting from power utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. and other state companies, as well as how law-enforcement agencies were compromised. Public hearings are due to resume on Sept. 6, when a senior treasury official is scheduled to testify.

While the commission doesn’t have the power to prosecute anyone, it can recommend that law-enforcement agencies take action against those implicated in wrongdoing. Bart Henderson, the chief executive officer of the Africa Institute of Corporate Fraud Management, isn’t optimistic all those responsible for the plunder will face justice.

“The National Prosecuting Authority, in particular in the pursuit of illicit funds, has not exactly covered itself in glory,” Henderson said. “When it comes to getting stolen money back, I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

JOHANNESBURG — For probably the last decade, South Africa’s credibility and status as a powerhouse on the African continent has been gradually eroding away. It’s easy to see why. Economically, South Africa has been weakening while countries such as Rwanda and Ethiopia have been implementing reforms and taking off. Meanwhile, the extent of corruption with regard to Zuma and the Guptas has been so immense in South Africa that our reputation as a relatively ‘clean’ business environment has been heavily tarnished. It’s no surprise, that even countries with bad records and histories – ie. Zimbabwe and Angola – are now seemingly doing more than South Africa when it comes to tackling problems like corruption. – Gareth van Zyl

Corruption is endemic in Zimbabwe…in the public & private sectors…in virtually all political parties,in the churches…it's everywhere!
Let's ruthlessly clamp down on corruption or else we're all doomed!

— Obert Gutu (@GutuObert) September 28, 2018

Zimbabwe police arrest CEO of State Power Company over tender

By Godfrey Marawanyika

(Bloomberg) – Zimbabwean police arrested the head of the state power distributor over a tender involving an Indian company, Assistant Commissioner Paul Nyathi said.

The authorities detained Joshua Chifamba, chief executive officer of the Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission & Distribution Co., on Wednesday night and he’ll appear in court on Thursday, Nyathi said by phone from the capital, Harare.

He will face charges that “relate to a $35 million tender involving an Indian company called PME,” Nyathi said. Noida, India-based PME Power Solutions India Ltd. is a manufacturer of power transformers.

---

Crowds to see Angola’s latest prisoner show graft war is serious

By Candido Mendes and Henrique Almeida

(Bloomberg) – Dozens of Angolans crowd the gates of the capital’s main prison hospital, jockeying for a glimpse of an unexpected new inmate: the son of the man who ruled the southern African nation for almost four decades.

Jose Eduardo dos Santos’ son, Jose Filomeno, is only the most high-profile prisoner at the facility in Luanda as Angola’s new president wages an anti-graft war that’s thrown the former ruling elite into disarray. TV crews, relatives in expensive cars and ordinary citizens have all flocked here, witnesses to a turning point for the oil-producing country that’s long been ranked one of the world’s most corrupt.

After the arrest of Jose Filomeno Dos Santos & his associate, Jean Claude Bastos, the 3 billion dollar question is which Dos Santos family member or associate will go to jail next in #Angola ? #Corruption

— Chyemenn (@ChyemennSantos) September 26, 2018

“I never thought I was ever going to see this,” Maria Fernanda, a 50-year-old local pharmacist, said of the high-profile detentions that also include a former police chief and an ex-transportation minister. “It’s unbelievable.”

The crackdown is the latest step by President Joao Lourenco, who was elected last year and speaks of a “duty and obligation” to crush corruption to save Angola’s ailing economy. Arrests have extended to the Dos Santos family and its allies, who’re accused of amassing fortunes through their grip on the nation’s oil, diamonds and other resources.

Fancy cars

“The arrest of Jose Filomeno dos Santos marks an important symbolic step in President Joao Lourenco’s anti-corruption drive,” Fitch Solutions Macro Research said in a note this week. While it shows the government “is driving some moderate improvement in transparency and in reducing corruption,” action against “a few high profile individuals will not be sufficient to resolve what many describe as endemic levels of corruption within key Angolan institutions,” it said.

Sao Paulo, a medium-security prison hospital with 20-foot-tall walls that’s now being used for high-profile inmates as well as patients, is a far cry from the glitzy skyscrapers on Luanda’s oceanfront the elites are accustomed to. On a recent Friday, drivers of cars including a brand new Lexus and a Porsche Carrera turned off the dirt road into a visitors parking area – a sign of the prisoners’ wealthy connections.

Not spotted visiting so far: Isabel dos Santos, the ex-president’s eldest daughter and Africa’s richest woman. She’s the target of a probe looking into a $38.2 million transfer that was made at state-owned oil company Sonangol before she was fired as chairwoman last year. She has called the allegations politically motivated.

Leading the battle

Lourenco, 64, has said the ruling People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola needs to lead the anti-graft battle. That’s “even if the first to fall are militants or even senior officials of the party that have committed crimes,” he told delegates on Sept. 8 as he replaced Dos Santos as its head.

He’s also pushing for funds he said were illegally moved abroad to be returned to Africa’s second-biggest oil producer, warning that Angolans who don’t comply by year’s end will face prosecution. Central bank Governor Jose Massano estimates at least $30 billion is held abroad, including legal deposits.

In the 12 months since João Lourenço became president of Angola several key officials, including members of the Dos Santos family, have been charged or investigated in connection with corruption and money-laundering allegations, writes Alex Vines. https://t.co/JQB6QyxKoh

— Mail & Guardian (@mailandguardian) October 3, 2018

There’s some dissent. Last week, Bento Kangamba – a former army general and the owner of football team Kabuscorp Sport Clube do Palanca – criticized what he called Lourenco’s heavy-handed approach.

“We won’t allow things that have nothing to do with the good of society and aim to destroy the party and its militants to happen,” Kangamba, who organised the ex-president’s rallies, told Voice of America.

Banking accusations

Jose Filomeno, 40, is accused of trying to siphon $1.5 billion from the central bank by claiming the money would help secure $35 billion of financing for Angola, the Finance Ministry said in April. The move allegedly occurred days before Lourenco was elected president, as Angola grappled with zero economic growth, soaring inflation and a dollar shortage.

The first $500 million was transferred in August 2017 from Angola’s central bank to an HSBC Holdings Plc account in the UK. That initial instalment was blocked by UK authorities suspecting foul play, and part of the $500 million has since been returned to Angola.

Jose Filomeno vowed to cooperate with the investigations. He now spends much of his time in the prison’s VIP section, where he and others watch TV and eat food brought by their relatives, according to a guard who asked not to be named because he isn’t authorised to speak to the media.

The guard said the ex-president’s son typically declines visitors and responds to prison officials with single words. Former Transportation Minister Augusto Tomas is more gregarious, spending time with his relatives, friends and religious officials, he said.

On the day Dos Santos’ son was arrested, Lourenco presented what he dubbed a “New Angola” to potential investors in New York.

“Angola has entered a new political cycle,” he said, touting economic reforms and the war on corruption. “In only one year, this is the Angola that I present to you, with a new business climate that is investor-friendly.”

CAPE TOWN — Rhodes University Professor Emeritus, Pierre Faure, picks up on a vastly under-ventilated suggestion addressing the crippling State and corporate corruption; offer conditional amnesty to speed up the daunting mop-up operation. It’s a critically important, pragmatic idea, given how South Africa will otherwise remain bowed by the economically-crippling albatross of global mistrust. Perhaps it’s time we got off our punitive moral high horses and grabbed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission ring. You have to ask; would those breath-taking TRC revelations and boil-lancing testimonies have emerged had some of the apartheid miscreants not taken up the amnesty offer? I was involved in experiencing an almost forgotten township murder story I wrote turning out to be something far more sinister than I’d ever imagined – the Gugulethu Seven killings by police in March 1986 was a Vlakplaas security police operation. We’d probably have remained deeply suspicious but none the wiser had the TRC crew not exposed the whole truth. The hearing drew out the entire Western Cape police command, with some key security policemen pleading for amnesty and spilling the beans. Yes, it was in response to some superb TRC investigative work using new empowering legislation, but it worked. Faure’s amnesty conditions, listed below, are a vital caveat. – Chris Bateman

By Pierre Faure*

In Fin24 of 7 November 2017, Liesl Peyper asked: “Could a wholesale amnesty for individuals and companies involved in corruption help South Africa combat this scourge that has become entrenched in almost all sectors of society?

It is a substantial question and should be granted more journalistic oxygen to influence government to adopt such a measure.

Why? Because the depth and width of corruption was/is so chronic that it will take a few decades bring perpetrators to book, and at enormous cost to South Africans in financial, social, emotional (mainly continuing despair) and economic terms.

The latter costs are manifested in many ways, including in the form of the most important factor of production in economic growth, human capital (and specifically entrepreneurs, of all hues) leaving the country in ever-increasing numbers.

Highly educated and skilled entrepreneurs, and other committed workers, are welcomed with open arms by countries with declining populations.

These are mainly English-speaking countries, where South Africans settle down easily and quickly become productive citizens.

It is axiomatic that a high level of growth (as achieved under President Mbeki and Finance Minister Manuel) is critical to solving the many problems we face.

South Africa urgently needs to expose the perpetrators, and move on to the critically-important economic matters.

A corruption amnesty perhaps has a parallel in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which recognised the need to heal and put the past behind us so we could progress with the very challenging task of building a democratic South Africa.

A wholesale amnesty must come with conditions:

1. Ill-gotten gains must be paid back.
2. Salaries earned whilst engaging in corrupt activities must be paid back.
3. Those who do not admit to corruption, but are suspected of engaging in such activity, will be investigated and face the full weight of the law.
4. Ditto those who admit to corruption, but are suspected of not paying back all the ill-gotten money.

The cancer of corruption must be excised now.

A final word: corruption has largely been exposed by journalists; South Africa’s fine investigative journalists deserve high accolades.

Without them we would be in far more serious socio-economic trouble.

South Africans anxiously await the day when iniquitous corruption is a problem past, and journalists turn their attention to matters economic.

The entrepreneurial South Africans we all know do not wish to leave our beautiful country, but are increasingly doing so now because they are in fearful for their and their children’s economic futures.

• Prof AP Faure, Professor Emeritus, Rhodes University.

CAPE TOWN — Regardless of which buttons in your world view this story might push, it does address a forgotten universal truth in our divided discourse. Which is that regardless of where corruption takes place, it affects the overall social fabric and leaves us a lot worse-dressed than if we tackle it immediately, without fear or favour. Right now, we stand naked before the world, the debate over whether the private or public sector is/was worse, a distraction from the endemic rot that has set in. Investigations/advocacy group researcher for Open Secrets, Philile Ntombela, juxtaposes the findings of the People’s Tribunal on Economic Crime with the better publicised Nugent and Zondo Commissions testimony and interim judicial recommendations. He’s intent on restoring some balance by lifting the veil on corporate shenanigans which date back to the apartheid era, arguing that, for example, the private sector facilitated the billion-rand Arms Deal, working sleight-of-hand in-glove with political players – as it did to enable several apartheid atrocities. SA’s culture of impunity knows no boundaries and needs urgent tackling. Well worth pondering on. Story courtesy of the Daily Maverick. – Chris Bateman

By Philile Ntombela*

If you listen carefully to the findings of the first People’s Tribunal on Economic Crime, held at Constitution Hill last month, you will hear a common refrain: The private sector has aided and abetted economic crimes and corruption for at least the past four decades.

Yet the idea that the public sector is at the root of all corruption is a dominant public perception, with some breathing a sigh of relief when there are hints that public services could be privatised, all in the name of corporate efficiency.

Although it must be noted that this is not a uniquely South African mindset, it is equally important to recognise the danger this ideology poses to the development of our young democracy. We must tackle public and private sector corruption with equal vigour.

We see how deeply rooted this belief in private sector honesty and efficiency is when scandals such as Steinhoff or the social grant crisis emerge.

Many South Africans appear to be deeply disturbed, for good reason — corruption hurts vulnerable people the worst. The social grants crisis, for example, would serve as a clear case study of the disastrous results that can arise when government functions are handed to a private entity that does not produce the utopian result expected.

We saw in the aforementioned scandal how a private entity, working closely with corrupt politicians and bureaucrats, is capable of engaging in the very same corrupt activities that so many have come to expect from the public sector.

Why are government failures so distinctly imprinted in the public’s memories, while outrage over private sector corruption enjoys a much shorter lifespan?

Read also: Using TRC amnesty lessons to accelerate corruption-busting

Perhaps this began at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, where representatives from corporate South Africa claimed to have been victims of the apartheid regime, despite evidence pointing to corporations, banks, and individuals having allegedly aided the apartheid government.

As the People’s Tribunal affirmed, it was large international banks which helped the apartheid government’s arms machine break UN sanctions. Similarly, Open Secrets research has underscored the role of large corporations such as Naspers as the mouthpieces of the NP regime.

Today we are left with a public perception of the infallibility of the private sector, and we have become a society that struggles to locate current instances of corruption within the context of decades of impunity for economic crime.

A sanitised private sector

South Africans’ understanding of apartheid crimes tends to immediately focus solely on human rights violations such as unlawful detentions, the militarisation of townships and political killings. True as this may be, there is also a critical need to extend this definition to include a framing of apartheid violence in terms of CEOs of corporations donating to the National Party, or international banks amassing huge profits from their relationship with the apartheid state.

Perhaps this would help us to critically consider why so many of these private sector companies were not held accountable for their roles in past atrocities.

Read also: Ramaphosa’s Achilles’ Heel – no fit-for-purpose anti-corruption agencies left

This ability to hide in plain sight, knowing that public rage will be directed at political leaders rather than their private sector accomplices, has a become a stumbling block in our discourse.

The widespread idea that private sector corruption is an individual, case-by-case occurrence, while that of the public sector is systemic, prevents us from interrogating the intimate relationships of power between political leaders and large corporations, who often work together to undermine the democratic institution and the constitutionally based rule of law.

Iterations of impunity

In much the same way as the private sector has been sanitised when it comes to corruption, our decontextualised understanding of public sector corruption seems to have locked South Africans in an infinite loop of a reductive nostalgia for “the good old days”.

Let us consider, for example, former president Thabo Mbeki, for whom so many longed during the tumultuous days of the Zuma presidency. Mbeki’s constant commentary and critique of the ANC under Zuma and his occasional interjections on the party’s policy positions under Cyril Ramaphosa’s leadership belies that he too had a tenure riddled with scandal.

Read also: ‘Bigger than Arms Deal’: NPA, AFU seek recovering R50bn in state capture probe

Indeed, it was under President Mbeki that the state failed to provide crucial and much-needed medicines at the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis; it was he who gave the green light to the scandalous 1999 Arms Deal, and Gear – a much-protested economic strategy that was widely viewed as a shift towards neoliberalism in South Africa when the country could not afford austerity.

Worse still, South Africans are often subjected to political commentary and righteous pontification from the last president of the apartheid regime, FW de Klerk. Perhaps in order to escape this infinite cycle, we must begin by identifying the interconnected nature of impunity and the precedent it sets.

The past in the present

Twenty years after the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final findings, it’s good work remains incomplete. The lack of legal recourse against those that benefited from the crime against humanity that was apartheid has opened up the doors for more corruption to take place, and for a culture of impunity to arise.

Presenting the final findings of the first People’s Tribunal on Economic crime, former Constitutional Court Justice Zak Yacoob said that, had just action been taken against the private actors that propped up the apartheid economy, the 1999 Arms Deal would have been less likely to occur.

Read also: Zondo State Capture probe – when infestation control depends on time lines.

The same goes for contemporary State Capture — had we seen prosecutions for the Arms Deal, perhaps this would have deterred the corrupt relationship between the state, Trillian, McKinsey, the Gupta network and the like.

So what would happen if the findings of the first People’s Tribunal were to be put into action? Imagine, as the tribunal recommends, if the South African criminal justice system pursued those that propped up the system of apartheid, investigated those implicated in the Arms Deal and took meaningful action against those who participated in State Capture.

This would be a crucial contribution towards building a fairer democratic society. By beginning to root out corruption in both the private and public sector, we would send a clear message of no tolerance for economic crimes. We must tackle impunity at its roots — and the People’s Tribunal has given us an agenda for such action. DM

• Philile Ntombela is a researcher at Open Secrets, focusing on investigations and advocacy.

EDINBURGH — Corruption is an insidious crime with, on the surface, faceless victims. But, as Paul Hoffman of Accountability Now explains, nipping corruption in the bud is essential for fixing South Africa’s broken economy which, in turn, will help reverse the high unemployment rate that has many victims. Many South Africans have lost confidence in investing in the country, with many emigrating and many hedging their bets with business growth and portfolio diversification elsewhere. Although President Cyril Ramaphosa has publicly committed to corruption-busting, his promises haven’t yet had the effect of reversing sentiment towards the country. Here is why, says Hoffman: Investors see Ramaphosa as paying lip-service to the anti-graft project, with evidence everywhere that he is insincere about rooting out the villains. Tough action is needed, with a no-nonsense approach required to bring the captured and corrupt to justice. Nothing else will do as, after all, Ramaphosa stood idly next to former president Jacob Zuma as his deputy. In the meantime, investors may nod in agreement with Ramaphosa but they will quietly invest in assets elsewhere, is Hoffman’s over-riding message. – Jackie Cameron

By Paul Hoffman*

The President’s inspiring words during his “charm offensive” at the Investment Conference in Sandton on 26 October 2018 are almost all true. Everyone who wishes SA well should turn attention to those assertions that are not convincing, in order to revive the economy and to make the President’s important initiative to raise funds the resounding success so fervently desired by citizens of goodwill who are concerned about the economic trajectory of our country in its technical recession with low projected growth rate. Whistling up the necessary new investment is a devilishly difficult task.

The credibility of the campaign suffers from the inescapable fact that Cyril Ramaphosa served as deputy to Jacob Zuma during the latter period of the hey-day of state capture. Too many members of the current cabinet are compromised survivors of the Zuma cabinet. Too many of the cabinet members are suspected of criminality ranging from corruption to perjury and defeating the ends of justice. None of these miscreants have been brought to justice, despite the passage of years, many years, in some cases. There are also just too many members of cabinet for investors to take belt tightening talk by the president seriously.

The choices of the president for the ministries of police and justice are just plain wrong. Bheki Cele has been found to be dishonest and incompetent by a formal Board of Inquiry which recommended that he be investigated for corrupt activities around the leasing of police headquarters. No such investigation has ensued.

Michael Masutha signed off on the invalid, illegal and corrupt package paid to Mxolisi Nxasana to vacate the office of National Director of Public Prosecutions as part of the “protect Zuma” campaign. These two ministers are responsible for the SAPS and the NPA. It cannot possibly inspire confidence in the minds of cautious investors who fear that the rule of law is under threat and that corruption might eat into their possible future investments in SA.

It is not enough to boast about the prowess of the Zondo and Nugent Commissions. They are mere fact finding bodies which will and have (in the case of Nugent) make recommendations which may or may not be accepted and acted on by government. They have no executive powers and no powers of prosecution at all.

It is also inescapable that the ravages of state capture have left the capacity of the criminal justice administration to deal pro-actively and properly with the corrupt among us in tatters. A new head of the NPA has been needed since last year. No appointment has been made and a court imposed deadline for doing so looms. The Hawks are lacking in staff and resources as well as the capacity to counter sophisticated forms of corruption. The police are led by illegally deployed cadres of the national democratic revolution, too many of whom are inept, corrupt and all at sea, and all of whom owe their primary loyalty to cadre deployment committees of the ANC.

In these circumstances the utterances that corruption will be tackled by the new leadership ring hollow.

It does not have to be so.

It is within the power of the state to bypass the mess in the NPA and SAPS insofar as corruption busting is concerned. It will take years to winkle out the members of the Zuma faction in powerful positions in these institutions. These are years we do not have available as a country. We need rapid action to address corruption, to recover stolen assets and funds of the state and to make examples of the “big fish” involved in state capture. Letting the Zondo Commission proceed in fits and starts for years on end is not going to impress the hesitant investors who have lost confidence in the climate for investment in SA. A few big criminal trials now against the likes of Zuma, Cele and Masutha, not to mention Gigaba and Dlamini, will serve to address the loss of investor confidence far more effectively than any charm offensive is capable of doing.

The bottom line is that speaking in the future tense about what will be done about addressing corruption is an inadequate “sales pitch” to the type of risk-averse investors who are concerned about the levels of corruption to which the several commissions of inquiry point. This is especially so as the commissions are without the power to do anything to end impunity and to harness the criminal justice administration against the corrupt.

The defects and dysfunction in the criminal justice system need to be side-stepped in order to get to grips with grand corruption and kleptocracy. The existing institutions have been and are littered with fellow-travellers of the corrupt. Some have gone, it is true, and some are currently on suspension but the overall damage will take years to fix. The Concerned Members Group of the NPA, those who sought to preserve the Scorpions, warned that this would happen in 2008, and the warning was well-founded.

The appropriate strategy that requires urgent implementation is the establishment of a new body that is free of crooked cadres. A body mandated to prevent, combat, investigate and prosecute grand corruption in the High Courts of the land (or even in special courts established to circumvent the delays that the over-worked High Courts are unable to avoid). The staff of the new body can be drawn from the ranks of the Hawks, the NPA and other bodies like the SIU, subject to stringent vetting. Their specialised attention to grand corruption will necessarily involve the training of staff as was done with the Scorpions of old. Indeed, the Scorpions are proof that the country has the skill, talent and grassroots will to deal with the corrupt properly. The only chink in the armour of the Scorpions was that as a mere creature of statute the Scorpions could be closed down, as they were, by a simple majority in parliament. The new body can avoid this fate by being established as a chapter nine institution. These institutions, like the auditor general and public protector, can only be dissolved with the support of two thirds of parliament.

The commitment of the government to tackle the corrupt head on will be proven by the establishment of a super-corruption-busting body. The failure to do so speaks to lip-service, insincere charm offensives and lack of political will to do what manifestly needs to be done to address grand corruption, state capture and kleptocracy head on and immediately, not at some unspecified future date.

The political will to do so has to be generated by the president, and those he leads, if he wishes to avoid going down in history as the super-salesman who sold nothing to wise investors at a time when his country needed bumper sales.

The Chief Justice warned, as long ago as 2014, that the “malady” of corruption was then in danger of “graduating into something terminal.” The medicine for the malady which his court prescribed can be summed up in his own words as:

“We are in one accord that SA needs an agency dedicated to the containment and eventual eradication of the scourge of corruption. We also agree that that entity must enjoy adequate structural and operational independence to deliver effectively and efficiently on its core mandate.”

The opposition parties in parliament should embrace the notion as part of their manifestos for the forthcoming elections and challenge voters to only vote for the parties that are sufficiently serious about conquering corruption to do what the Constitutional Court required of government in 2014. That government has not, of its own volition, done so already speaks volumes about its lack of commitment to the rule of law and its seriousness about now fighting the corrupt properly through obedience to court orders that bind it.

There is a direct relationship between investment and exposure to corruption. In the words of former finance minister Nene:

‘Almost all South African and foreign investors have lost confidence in SA. This situation must be turned around urgently’

He spoke these words in March, when announcing that a government anti-corruption strategy would be rolled out within 100 days. This strategy has yet to be announced. This failure to follow through speaks to the lack of political will in the Ramaphosa cabinet to tackle corruption in the here and now. Investors will not be so impolite as to call out the president on this topic; they will simply invest elsewhere in countries in which the risk of the corrupt making off with investments is more acceptable.

Accountability Now has long championed what it calls an Integrity Commission to take on the important functions of state around combating corruption. The name chosen is not important, the capacity to prevent, combat, investigate and prosecute corruption properly is. As the new entity will be taking over some of the work of the Hawks it would be appropriate to give it the nick-name “The Eagles”. After all, eagles fly higher, see further and go after bigger prey than hawks.

Until government gets real about countering corruption the sales pitch in Sandton will sound like nervous whistling in the graveyard of the SA economy.

• Paul Hoffman SC is a director of Accountability Now and author of “Confronting the Corrupt” in which the idea of an Integrity Commission is championed. 

CAPE TOWN — Understanding the distinction between a Commission of Inquiry and a court of law is vital if we are to interpret their pronouncements and recommendations correctly. The Zondo and Nugent commissions are laying bare a decade of State Capture and exposing how SARS was almost terminally degraded by Zuptoids with anything but selfless service in mind. The clue lies in the expression ‘laying bare,’ because unlike a court, commissions are appointed by the President to advise him on a course of action rather than make a finding of guilt and dishing out punishment. They’re inquisitorial, not adversarial. Many are familiar with and perhaps share the cynical view that commissions are political instruments used to buy time for politicians tainted by the very same brush that those being probed are. Yet the ventilation – if the judge or chairperson has sufficient gravitas and credibility – informs public opinion – and public opinion influences votes and who gets into or stays in power. That’s their real valence. That their findings don’t bind those who appointed them becomes beside the point, with one vital precondition – that we as voters exercise our sentiments at the polls and/or lobby accordingly. – Chris Bateman

By Cathleen Powell* 

South Africans might be forgiven for expecting two key commissions of inquiry currently underway to change the country. Some of these expectations, however, are unrealistic, as a look at the commissions’ functions and powers show.

Some expectations might be met, but only if the commissions achieve public buy-in and generate enough pressure for change.

Whether they can do that depends not only on their powers but also on how they are run.

The probe into tax administration and governance at the South African Revenue Service – headed by Judge R Nugent – and has already led to the axing of Tom Moyane as head of the tax collection agency. The other inquiry – headed by Deputy Chief Justice Zondo – is looking into allegations that the South African state has been captured by private business interests allied to former President Jacob Zuma. It’s expected to run for two years.

Read also: Bye-bye Tom: Ramaphosa fires suspended SARS commissioner Moyane

Unrealistic expectations about what commissions can achieve comes from the fact that they’re often confused with courts of law. This isn’t surprising given that they seem to function like courts. For example, they’re often chaired by judges, affected parties are often represented by lawyers and witnesses take oaths to tell the truth.

But they aren’t courts. And it’s important to understand the difference between the two when it comes to their functions, powers, and procedures.

The differences

A court judgment is binding and has direct legal effect on the parties involved. The court will determine that the accused goes to prison, for example, or that the defendant pays damages. The only way affected parties can escape the court order is by getting it overturned on appeal or review by a higher court.

Commissions of inquiry, on the other hand, make non-binding recommendations to the person who set them up. (In the case of these two commissions, that’s President Cyril Ramaphosa.) Technically, all commissions do is offer the person who set them up advice. And they’re required to stick to the issues on which advice was requested. These are set out in the terms of reference which establish what questions the commission must answer, who will head it up and what its powers are.

Read also: Zondo State Capture probe – when infestation control depends on time lines.

Commissions of inquiry are completely different from courts when it comes to procedures too.

South Africans courts are adversarial. The judge sits as an outside observer while the two teams before her attempt to establish their version of events. Commissions of inquiry, on the other hand, are inquisitorial. This makes the commission the driver of the investigation itself. It seeks out the facts rather than waiting for two opposing parties to choose and present their evidence. In an inquisitorial process, the witnesses and their lawyers are merely assisting the commission’s investigation.

An important consequence of the inquisitorial process is that a commission is not bound by the same rules of evidence as in a court. Thus evidence will never be “inadmissible”, as the commission enjoys discretion to consider all evidence that it finds relevant to its inquiry.

Why the confusion

With these important distinctions in mind, why have some commissions become “judicialised” and lawyer-driven? Why was the first day of the Zondo Commission taken up with technicalities? Why have postponements been built into the process so that “implicated parties” can study the allegations made against them?

It’s not just to stave off the threat of a court challenge to any findings. Such a threat is, in fact, not much of a threat at all. Commissions of inquiry will not be subject to the (higher) standards of so-called “administrative” review unless their findings have a direct effect on the persons who might want to challenge them. But the direct effect would arise only when the president acts on the findings.

Read also: Cost of fighting state capture: A trail of legal, financial ruin

The president wouldn’t be subject to administrative review in many of these cases either. Instead, the president and the commission will be subject to review for “rationality”. A rationality review asks only whether there is a rational connection between the conduct challenged before the court and a legitimate governmental objective.

But commissions have another, equally crucial function – to educate the public and ensuring its buy-in for important processes of change and renewal.

South Africans are already incensed at the loss of public funds to corruption, the devastation of public institutions at the hands of those who sought to profit by it, the damage this has caused to the country’s economy and the suffering it has inflicted on the poorest in society.

But all South Africans have to be on board with the solution to the problem. This sort of buy-in is possible only if the facts are widely known, the relevant law is clear, and the commission investigating the problem is accessible to the public and is seen as legitimate.

A commission can achieve this by having open hearings, broadcast publicly, public access (such as a website and an enquiry desk) and a strong, independent commissioner.

This is where the judicial procedure comes in. Although it can render the body less accessible, it does have the strong advantage of satisfying people’s innate sense of natural justice.

And the decisions of the commissions will only have legitimacy in the eyes of the public if they are seen to treat people fairly. That is one of the reasons why implicated people need enough time to respond to the allegations against them.

The value of the commissions

The Nugent Commission is due to report soon while the Zondo Commission may take two years.

The long delay between the advent of a crisis and a commission’s report is often used as an argument that they’re being used to put matters “on hold”.

Read also: State capture probe: Why the stakes are higher than you think

However, commissions of inquiry don’t remove an issue from the public eye if they’re run openly and transparently. Instead, they draw the public in to the issue, educating and inviting engagement. The most important work of the Zondo and Nugent Commissions might be done before their formal function – the submission of their reports – is completed.

• Cathleen Powell, Associate Professor in Public Law, University of Cape Town. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

EDINBURGH — South Africa has managed to get rid of corrupt president Jacob Zuma, but years of graft and poor decision-making have left most of the middle-class worse off. The Zupta-led ANC isn’t only to blame, however. Global challenges have contributed to the decimation of wealth in South Africa, explains respected investment advisor Magnus Heystek. The former journalist puts the collapse of returns on the JSE and the dismal residential property market under the microscope. He explains, too, why the investment industry – giants like Sanlam and Old Mutual – have remained silent on corruption: quite simply they benefit from cushy tax breaks. Heystek warns, too, that most South Africans are likely to become worse off. – Jackie Cameron

By Magnus Heystek

For more than 100 years to the end of 2010 an investment on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange produced the highest annual average returns in the world, according to a major study by Swiss bank Credit Suisse. Since then the returns on the JSE have collapsed to amongst the lowest in the world.

This has been a consequence of two major events, one global and one local, which happened almost at the same time. The first was the collapse of the global commodity boom – which was the major driver of the economic boom period from 2003 to 2010 – which roughly coincided with the 9 years or misrule, corruption and state capture under the ANC and its ex-president Jacob Zuma.

Each and every South African investor is now paying the price in the form of below-inflation returns on residential property (over ten years now) and more than 5 years for investments linked to the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE). Most retirement funds have also not beaten the inflation rate over 1, 3 and 5 years.

In short: most middle-class wealth is under threat and this is to be seen in almost all spheres of society where it can be measured. Housing sales, overseas trips, membership of medical aids and new motor car sales: these have all been in decline for many years now.

The residential property market is in a severe slump and even the former recession-proof Cape Town market has grinded to a halt in recent months. Where it cannot be measured the decline in wealth is anecdotal and increasingly visible.

Golf courses empty, private schools battling to retain their students and a general increase in crime associated with unemployment, now at record levels around 28% of the labour force.

The big question is whether this trend can be turned around (cyclical) or has the problem become more deep-rooted and of a more structural nature, which has much more serious consequences to investors and their advisors alike.

What is of concern is that SA’s investment industry has been particularly silent on the wealth-destroying effects of the governing party’s socialistic economic and financial policies. It is rare to any critical comment on government from the massive investment industry, for obvious reasons.

The industry receives very generous tax concessions from Treasury and to criticize government and its economic policies would jeopardize this cozy but mutually beneficial arrangement: the industry gets to manage trillions of rands of pension money (as a result of generous tax-incentives) and the government in exchange gets a very efficient tax-collection agency for free! Any whiff of criticism would be a career-ending move, as we have seen many times in the past.

The fact remains that since 2011, or thereabouts, there have been several turning points, some global and some local, that have had a major impact on the personal wealth of each and every South African. People with no assets or investments feel it in the form of rising unemployment and rising cost of living. Middleclass and upper-middle class South Africans feel it in the form of stagnant asset values and rising taxes.

Read also: Magnus Heystek: South Africa, a country of no growth, is losing the global race

The only beneficiaries have been individuals and businesses with offshore assets and incomes respectively, or those who acted on the advice, as was the case with Brenthurst Wealth clients, to dramatically increase offshore assets over these seven years.

This has been a major turning point for investors on the JSE, many who have been reluctant to take money offshore on the basis that offshore somehow is more risky than local investments. However, the majority of investors and fund managers have missed this crucial divergence which has now produced a decade of sub-optimal returns and over the past 3 to 5 years, below-inflation returns.

When combined with below inflation returns on the residential property market, does this mean that the average SA investor has lost substantial ground against inflation and also against the global purchasing power of the US dollar?

PREMIUM: Magnus Heystek – Uncertainty over land tenure driving some farmers into a “scorched earth” approach

In short, without direct offshore assets in investment portfolios, most South Africans have become depressingly worse off with a plunging rand and investment assets producing no real return over 5 years (equities) and over 10 years as far as residential property is concerned.

This is having a significant impact on overall wealth creation in general and more specifically on countless savers approaching retirement with inadequate capital. As it is, most SA pension, provident and retirement funds have not beaten the inflation rate over 1, 3 and 5 years now.

This is a consequence of the fact that these funds are bound by Regulation 28 of the Pensions Act, which limits their offshore exposure to only 30%. Expect to read and hear more about this unless the situation changes dramatically, which seems unlikely. In fact this trend could get worse under certain circumstances.

• Magnus Heystek is Investment Strategist & Director Brenthurst Wealth Management. 

JOHANNESBURG — There’s no doubt that Tom Moyane should never have been hired as SARS Commissioner in the first place. His destructiveness is one key reason why the South African fiscus is in the dire state that it is today. His firing would have been unthinkable just 12 months ago, but with the political tide turning, he has found himself ever isolated. No doubt, he will fight back. But he finds himself probably being the most unpopular individual in South Africa and his chances of success are virtually nil. Words cannot describe how important his exit will be viewed in history books one day… – Gareth van Zyl

By Dirk Kotze*

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has changed the country’s political landscape significantly since he came to power in February 2018. This has strengthened his position to carry out his “renewal agenda”.

Immediately after his inauguration, he replaced ten cabinet ministers. He also moved those closely allied to his predecessor, Jacob Zuma, to other portfolios.

Since then, he has moved to fix the leadership of the criminal justice system institutions (such as the National Prosecuting Authority and crime intelligence) which were weakened under Zuma. Shaun Abrahams has lost the key position of National Director of Public Prosecutions; this contributes towards bringing Zuma’s hold on the country’s criminal justice system to an end. Zuma faces multiple charges of corruption, fraud and money laundering.

Must-read 2016 story! Max du Preez: Why Zuma must risk everything to keep his pawn Moyane at SARS

In addition, several Zuma acolytes have lost their positions at the helm of parastatals, which, according to Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan, were “repurposed” to benefit a few under Zuma.

But of all the steps Ramaphosa has taken, his latest – sacking Tom Moyane as the head of the South African Revenue Service (SARS) – is the most significant. The president removed Moyane from the job following recommendations made by a commission of inquiry into tax administration and governance.

Moyane’s axing ends one of the last vestiges of Zuma’s continued influence in the country’s governance. It’s also important because Moyane played a critical role in the three focus areas of Ramaphosa’s post-Zuma agenda. These priorities are economic innovation and vitalisation, dismantling the state capture infrastructure and culture, and ridding the governing African National Congress (ANC) of Zuma’s influence.

All three are related. Moyane touched them all.

Why the tax agency matters

Zuma succeeded in controlling the criminal justice and intelligence system. But he could not achieve the same in the public finance sector. Moyane’s appointment to head the all important Revenue Service was, therefore, a breakthrough for him.

There are two ways in which revenue services can be used to nefarious ends. The first is that, as part of its job of collecting revenues, the service gathers sensitive personal information on individuals. The manipulative potential of this information is invaluable for politicians.

The second is that controlling the tax collection process opens the door to officials exploiting it as a patronage instrument. For example, it’s possible to protect politicians and others who do not comply with tax laws.

Before Moyane took over the revenue service it played a key role in combating organised crime. This was particularly so in the tobacco and cigarette industry, which is linked to wider and international criminal networks. Moyane dissolved the special units that did this investigative work.

How did Moyane come to play this crucial role?

Moyane has been a career public official. He served in the State Information Technology Agency – the government’s main IT agency that manages big networks, such as those for paying social grants that benefit 17 million people. He also worked in the Government Printing Works and the Department of Trade and Industry. He headed the Department of Correctional Services before becoming the National Commissioner of the Revenue Service in September 2014.

More significant, however, is his political background. He was in exile in Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau. He studied BSc Economics at the Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo. During his exile years, dating back to 1976, he and Zuma became very close friends.

Maputo (and Swaziland) played a very important role in forming friendships and political alliances for Zuma. He appointed several of these friends to key positions during his presidency.

It’s likely that Moyane was handpicked directly by Zuma and that he wasn’t put into the job by the ANC as he has never been a member of the party’s National Executive Committee – its highest decision-making body in between national conferences.

Moyane’s exit

It’s uncertain if Moyane was acting mainly to protect or promote Zuma’s interests at the South African Revenue Services, or whether he was simply a willing agent for other interests, mainly in the private sector, that coincided with Zuma’s interests.

Also unclear is the revenue service’s exact role in state capture under him, by exploiting its position as the best placed state institution to monitor indviduals’ and companies’ financial flows.

Read also: Meet Tom Moyane: Striker for Team Zuma in the game of state capture

The Nugent commission of inquiry will hopefully provide more clarity on this, in its final report expected at the end of November.

Evidence before the commission and several media exposes have provided important insights into Moyane’s destructive tenure as SARS head.

This makes his departure a key prerequisite for restoring SARS to being the effective revenue collector and the centre of excellence in government it was before Zuma appointed Moyane to its helm. The importance of this to Ramaphosa’s economic recovery plan cannot be overemphasised.

• Dirk Kotze, Professor in Political Science, University of South Africa. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

JOHANNESBURG — The Zuptoid walls are slowing collapsing as another of the key points-men announced his resignation from cabinet on Tuesday. The axe was hanging over Home Affairs’ minister Malusi Gigaba’s head following the court finding that he’d lied under oath, and with President Cyril Ramaphosa clamping down on graft, he was left with little room to wiggle. Unlike former SARS commissioner Tom Moyane who was recently fired, and while is looking to contest that decision, Gigaba has taken the easier route. The Ramaphosa arm in government is slowly gaining control. – Stuart Lowman

By Mike Cohen

(Bloomberg) – South African Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba succumbed to pressure to quit after a court found he’d lied under oath and a compromising video of him was circulated on social media.

Gigaba’s exit Tuesday bolsters President Cyril Ramaphosa’s assertion that he’s committed to clamping down on graft and reversing the mismanagement that characterised his predecessor Jacob Zuma’s almost nine-year rule. Gigaba served as Zuma’s public enterprises minister and finance minister, and a group of leading academics alleged that he helped facilitate the looting of state funds by businessmen allied to the former president.

The resignation marks a swift fall from grace for one of the rising stars of South African politics, taking him from a top cabinet post less than a year ago to being branded a liar and apologising for a leaked sex tape. It removes from government another of Zuma’s favourites and allows Ramaphosa to name his own minister to a key position as the ruling African National Congress seeks to bolster its reputation before elections next year.

“This is extremely good news,” said Sethulego Matebesi, a political analyst at the University of the Free State in the central town of Bloemfontein. “You do not antagonize people who win you the elections. At the end of the day he resigned out of his own accord. The president comes out with his hands clean.”

Perjury ruling

In February, the High Court found that Gigaba committed perjury when he denied authorising a company owned by the billionaire Oppenheimer family to operate a private immigration terminal at Johannesburg’s main airport. Two higher courts upheld the ruling, and last month anti-graft ombudsman Busisiwe Mkhwebane instructed Ramaphosa to take disciplinary action against Gigaba.

Gigaba, a 47-year-old former head of the ANC’s youth wing, denies any wrongdoing. He did, however, apologise for the video that he says was hacked from his phone and was only meant for his and his wife’s viewing.

Ramaphosa won control of the ANC in December and took office two months later after the party forced Zuma to quit. Ramaphosa initially retained Gigaba and several other Zuma appointees in the cabinet in a bid to help heal divisions within the ANC caused by the leadership race.

“The president has accepted the minister’s resignation,” Ramaphosa’s office said in a statement. Gigaba took the decision “to relieve the president from undue pressure,” it said.

CAPE TOWN — Of 36 countries measured for youth unemployment by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and StatsSA, South Africa stands at way more than double the average. We’re in the bottom 14 underperforming and badly managed nations. Management consultant guru and author, Ted Black concludes that South Africa’s problems have become too big for the ANC’s undisciplined and ineffective management to handle. The evidence is everywhere, not least in a nanny state, an impossibly bloated management cadre at all levels of government (and cabinet), and a government heavy on ideology and short on economic pragmatism. Forget 10 years of State-sanctioned corruption. Black puts his hope in Cyril Ramaphosa, but warns that unless he is able to make the poor productive and less dependent and builds a new generation of effective managers, a failed state is a real possibility. How quickly can Ramaphosa carve out more political space for himself to manoeuvre as Zuma’s imbedded forces, backed it seems recently by the EFF rally in advance of next year’s elections? Black says the ANC, with no preparation in exile or while fighting a guerrilla war, was and remains ill-equipped, to run a country. – Chris Bateman

By Ted Black*

In 2011, Tito Mboweni as Chairman of Nampak was sent a copy of a book called “The New Divide”. It was co-authored by Richard Pike, then CEO of Adcorp, economist Loane Sharp and me. The publisher wanted to call it “The New Apartheid” – a more fitting title – but due to an imagined need for political correctness, we funked it.

The book focused on South Africa’s huge unemployment problem and what to do about it. A source inside the firm said Mboweni’s reaction was to say the ANC isn’t interested in the poor. Whether he did express that view or not, events since 1994 certainly confirm the truth of it.

To this day, there has been not only a lack of political will to tackle the issue, but neither the Unions, nor the private sector promote the interests of the huge number of unemployed youth.

This was the picture in 2008 according to the OECD and Stats SA:

Ten years later, the situation is worse. Youth unemployment is still South Africa’s biggest “Problem/Opportunity”. However, to tackle it, all political parties, especially the ANC, need to face reality.

One of the first things the Alcoholics Anonymous movement does for people who suffer from the illness, is to have you confront your problem head on. Until you do, you can’t deal with it.

The problem the ANC has is that its leaders, like most ideological politicians who promote a seductive, simple message to get them into power, were highly successful “troublemakers” with a noble cause. When the task of government was given them, they thought themselves ready, willing, and able to accomplish it. They may have been willing but certainly weren’t ready or able, and still aren’t. The way they go about things now, South Africa is too big for them to manage.

They inherited an economy badly damaged by the Apartheid years but one that, by world standards, was supported by well-run firms and institutions. Yet, after twenty-four years, as with other populist politicians, they still haven’t learned that governments don’t make resources productive – only effective managers do.

Read also: Hard work needed to counter SA’s criminal graft and poor management – IMF

SA Inc. today is like a company that hits white water and starts to bleed money and cash. That’s when the backbiting, finger-pointing, blame games, and internal politics take over. The result is ever declining performance until the firm disappears, or new management takes charge to attempt a turnaround.

With malevolent, corrupt politicians and other groups looking to stoke the fires of pernicious, destructive identity politics, we can only head one way. Until the ANC recognises the root cause – its chronic weakness in the discipline and art of effective management, it will continue to flounder by trying to correct “problems” of the past, and not to maximise future “opportunity” – the real task.

A recent report on the economic performance of nations by the McKinsey Global Institute, the research arm of the consulting practice – not the one that sends carpetbaggers from the North to flog high-priced “strategy” snake oil down South – points to a way forward.

Read also: ANC bleeding votes as service delivery failure bites – shock survey.

Out of 71 nations, South Africa is one of fourteen underperformers in a dodgy group of nations who come bottom of the list. It consists of Russia, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and a bunch of other badly managed African and South American countries.

The top eighteen outperformers, led by China, are all Asian and represent perhaps the hardest working people on the planet. However, the key to becoming an outperformer is not just hard work, though it probably helps more than somewhat. It’s to harness brains.

To become an outperformer, you need a government with policies that promote growth based on productivity and the savings it can generate; improve civil service efficiency; enforce the rule of law; and encourage private sector companies to grow and thrive. That’s simple enough to understand isn’t it?

Not so simple to do, but a notion that works – unlike the many failed Marxist experiments in Russia, China, Cuba, Venezuela, Cambodia and wherever else in Africa and South America. For the most part, they have all been huge, unmitigated economic disasters accompanied by a massive cost in human lives.

In terms of the policies applied by outperformers, the ANC government has failed spectacularly on all counts. It’s why we are such an under performer and the bulk of our population remains unproductive. There are some root causes for its ineffectiveness.

Power in management comes from doing what’s legal – not to be confused with ethical – and from the formal position you hold. Formal power however is not enough. There is also power arising from the image people have of you – if they respect you or not. Then there’s networking with those who can influence your success. More positively, you may also have power from having options that high productivity gives you. In turn, these are a result of having the next three, most important powers of all.

The first of them is preparation power. Due to circumstance, it’s something the ANC never had. Managing is not easy, and you can’t learn to do it in a prison cell or by fighting a guerrilla war in the bush or on the streets. Then when you are in power, you can’t learn management in a classroom or at a business school. You may learn something about it, but not the how.

To compound the problem arising from lack of preparation, the party has shown a complete lack of moral power – doing what’s meet and right. Instead, its “cadres” at all levels (using the Communist definition of “loyal, trained workers”, not the prime one which is a “Key group of officers”), have behaved like a bunch of kids being allowed to swarm into a sweet shop to grab and trouser all they can. It leads us to the last and most important power of all.

Performance power that derives from the prime value an effective manager holds which is to focus on personal contribution. As the late Peter Drucker put it: “He or she asks, what can I contribute that will significantly improve the performance and results of the institution I serve?”

The person who acts with that value in mind, is top management, no matter what level in an organisation. The value of personal contribution usually applies to no more than 10% of managers in most corporations and probably a lot less in our government. In his huge cabinet, it means Ramaphosa may have around him, plus/minus five good ministers at most.

Read also: Managing a divided cabinet – President Cyril Ramaphosa’s central dilemma

So what should we focus on? Proverbs 29:18 is apt: “Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.” The ANC lost its vision of a “Rainbow Nation” – if it ever really had it – and instead has become a huge bureaucracy with a mission to “take”, not “make”. Bureaucracies have “missions” but no “vision”.

And yet, wouldn’t all South Africans good and true, irrespective of race, want the country to become an “outperformer” … to become say, the most respected nation in Africa and one of the most respected in the World – the Vision.

And the Mission to move us towards the Vision … to be in the worlds’ top twenty outperforming economies by 2040?” Impossible? Maybe, but worth striving for.

To achieve it, there is a two-fold task that was as clear as dog’s bollocks in 1990 when Mandela was released and is even clearer today.

The first task is to make the poor productive, not wealthy.

The second task that will help make the first a reality, is to build a new generation of effective managers – not a huge bureaucracy that with dead hands throttles the creativity and effectiveness of the people who do the real work of finding customers and keeping them.

Read also: Time for Ramaphosa to get real: SA Inc’s balance sheet paints disturbing picture

Today, the ANC is like a typical, bloated corporate office full of people who, because they measure, think they manage but don’t. They should be supporting and easing the way for operating people on the frontline to create and keep customers – not getting in the way with bureaucratic red tape. You don’t “control” people to make them productive – you “release” them with clear tasks and the right support systems … the four things highlighted in the global report.

To do it we’ll have to shift from “problem” to “opportunity” – to focus on the doughnut, not the hole in it. And to move from vicious “Defend/Attacks” to asking better questions, listening to each other, and then cooperating and collaborating while we act on what needs to be done together.

If the late, great, wise and lovable Frederick Van Zyl Slabbert was right, then Cyril Ramaphosa is the man to move us onto that high road together as one, “Rainbow Nation”.

• Ted Black runs workshops, and coaches and mentors using the ROAM model to pinpoint opportunities for measurable, bottom-line, team-driven projects. He is also a freelance writer with several books published. Contact him at jeblack@icon.co.za.

JOHANNESBURG — It’s been a long walk to prison for corrupt ANC politician John Block. He’s fought the sentence against him in a similar Stalingrad strategy employed by the likes of Jacob Zuma. But the Constitutional Court has had the final say, ordering him to put on his new orange overalls. In this article, veteran journalist Ed Herbst pens the timeline of John Block’s demise as well issuing a warning of how the ANC may just make sure Mr Block doesn’t spend too long a time in prison… – Gareth van Zyl

By Ed Herbst*

‘I’ve always seen the driving forces behind the corruption currently ravaging the country as a combination of three bad factors: a corrupt civil servant, a corrupt politician and a corrupt business person.’ – My Second Initiation – Vusi Pikoli with Mandy Weiner (Picador Africa, 2013)

Embattled Northern Cape ANC leader John Block remains innocent until proven otherwise, the ANC said on Monday.

“The ANC will not allow itself to be pushed to take action on any matter, based on allegations,” said African National Congress Northern Cape spokeswoman Gail Parker. – N Cape ANC stands by John Block IOL 16/9/2013

So overwhelming is the ANC’s Tsunami of Sleaze that one cannot keep track of the daily deluge of headlines relating to a criminal organisation masquerading as a political party.

In an article posted on this website a fortnight ago, I predicted that the first deployed cadre to go to jail for snouting during the Ramaphosa era would be a former ANC Deputy Minister of Agriculture, Rubben Mohlaloga. He was part of a criminal syndicate that ripped off the Land Bank for R6m – previously depleted by R2bn in the first ANC raid – ask Helena Dolny, she’ll tell you.

Well, I’m delighted to be proved wrong because, 15 years after he had favourably impressed the Luthuli House talent scouts by using taxpayer’s money to fund a trip for himself and his family to the Cape Town Jazz Festival, the cell door has finally closed behind former ANC Northern Cape leader and premier, John Block, now resplendent in his newly-acquired orange raiment.

John Block was, to quote the inimitable Detective Inspector Derek Grim, ‘‘A fat cat, spinning his web with his tentacles in every pie’ and, as Andrew Louw, DA Northern Cape Premier candidate points out, we only grasped the half of it.

It is for this very reason that he is revered by the ANC and why, since his incarceration, there has not been one word of condemnation from Loot-freely-and-fully House about the man who won election for a third successive term as the party’s provincial chairman ‘by a landslide’ in 2012 despite being on trial on multiple charges at the time.

Rest assured that the ANC will make every effort to ensure that he serves only a fraction of his allotted sentence – ask Alan Boesak and Tony (Maserati crasher) Yengeni and the terminally-ill Schabir Shaik, they’ll tell you.

When the time comes for the compilation of the Domesday Book of Snouting, I am sure that the Loot-freely House mandarins will allocate Block a chapter all to himself for two of his stellar snouting achievements.

High-five conga line

Consider his role in a R6.7m diamond heist which must have had them careening down the Luthuli House corridors in a rollicking, high-five conga line. That joyous celebration would have been repeated with a boisterous toyi-toyi when the news broke that he had snouted a salt mine using a forged mining certificate.

The ANC proved that it had learnt from the latter endeavour when former Mineral Resources Minister, Mosebenzi (Gupta) Zwane, flew hither, thither and yon to assist a Saxonwold family in their own mine-snouting efforts – although the tactic did not work so well for Ben Ngubane.

One can but hope  – because the ANC admires and respects its snouters – that the adoring ANC in the Northern Cape carried Block shoulder-high to the local slammer, giving him the sort of rapturous send-off which Alan Boesak and Tony (Hic) Yengeni received from the likes of Ebrahim (Journalist Briber) Rasool and Baleka (Gold Fields beneficiary) Mbete et al when they started their truncated jail sentences.

I have drawn up a brief timeline of John Block’s snouting career which I am sure will be appreciated by all the cadres whose pockets he has so copiously lined during his selfless service of more than two decades on behalf of the ANC’s patronage network.

7 September 2004 Whistleblower going to the top News 24

4 April 2010 Top ANC man at centre of salt mining scandal IOL

6 August 2010 Block’s permit taken with a pinch of salt Mail & Guardian

12 November 2010 Block’s strange taste in lawyer Mail & Guardian

18 December 2010 – MEC awards top job to former prosecutor Sunday Times

6 July 2011 – Cape mines official to answer for forged permit The Citizen

1 February 2012 The more things change noseweek

26 July 2012 I was bribed, says N Cape hospital chief M&G

15 February 2013 John Block in R7m diamond poser Mail & Guardian

28 March 2013 Is John’s head finally on the block? Daily Maverick

16 September 2013 N Cape ANC stands by John Block IOL

14 October 2015 John Block guilty of corruption, fraud, money laundering Mail & Guardian

16 October 2015 The ANC and the John Block case: What a difference four days make Daily Maverick

6 December 2016 John Block gets 15-year jail term for money laundering, corruption Mail & Guardian

7 December 2016 ANC fully behind corrupt Block’s appeal IOL

20 November 2018 Constitutional Court orders John Block to go to jail Business Day

In the meantime, the ‘Amigos’ case – in which Block also featured – has been postponed until March next year. The former Kimberley Hospital chief executive, Hamid Shabbir, fled to the United Arab Emirates in 2009 after telling the Hawks that he had accepted a bribe from Block in the Intaka water purifier scam.

Bright future

Going by what seems to be de facto ANC policy I see a bright future for Block when he is released from prison in the very near future.

My guess is that the ANC will make him an MP representing the Northern Cape and nominate him as one of their members on parliament’s joint ethics committee and I base this prediction on previous Luthuli House precedents:

• In 2011, R100m was moved from the Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers Union provident funds and promptly disappeared. Enoch Godonwana is alleged to have misled a subsequent inquiry. He was subsequently and consequently appointed the chairperson of the ANC’s subcommittee on economic transformation and nominated as a senior member of its National Executive Committee. The ANC clearly felt that such a talent should be recognised and rewarded.
• In June this year, a decision was taken at the ANC’s 2019 election manifesto workshop to appoint Tony Yengeni as chair of its crime and corruption group. This was in recognition of his efforts – as outlined in Andrew Feinstein’s book After the Party – to suppress parliament’s investigation into Arms Deal Corruption which funded the ANC’s subsequent election campaigns. His ability to snout a major discount on a luxury Merc (thereafter known as a ‘Yengeni’) and to serve only four months of a four-year sentence  (with weekends off) counted heavily in his favour and his penchant for imbibing a tincture or five too many, leaving him as sober as an ANC-protected judge, was not considered a handicap.

The latest inmate of a well-known penitentiary in Kimberly is surely destined for an important role in the future promotion of the ANC’s Glorious National Democratic Revolution which has proved so telling in countries like Zimbabwe and Venezuela and North Korea.

In closing: In an interesting op-ed article in Die Burger on 26 November headlined Erasmus vs Zondo Commission – What is South Africa’s biggest scam?, Dr Pieter Mulder draws a comparison between the Info Scandal which cost then National Party Prime Minister John Vorster and his father, Dr Connie Mulder, their political careers and the ANC’s relentless depredations on the fiscus. He points out that Eschel Rhoodie was charged with stealing R62,000 and subsequently cleared of all charges on appeal. In contrast, he says, John Block fraudulently enriched himself by R112m.

Viva, John Block Viva!

• Ed Herbst is a veteran journalist who these days writes in his own capacity.

JOHANNESBURG — We’ve experienced 7 days of load shedding now. It’s a pretty pathetic and dismal situation. And many South Africans are gatvol of Eskom and the sheer incompetence that surrounds it. In many ways, Eskom is totally in a death spiral as its plants have been poorly maintained and its reliance on dirty coal have become almost fatal. If the government knows what is good for itself and the South African economy, it would put Eskom ‘down’ now and break it up, selling its parts to private players. Those private players can then install more solar and wind installations and probably create a multi-billion dollar industry that generates massive tax revenue while providing 24/7 power generation. We can only but dream… – Gareth van Zyl

By Paul Burkhardt and Antony Sguazzin

(Bloomberg) — Bloated by debt, bled by corruption and battered by structurally declining sales, South African power utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. is facing what’s known in the industry as a “death spiral.”

And the Johannesburg-based company now poses the biggest credit risk to Africa’s most industrialized nation, according to S&P Global Ratings.

More than a decade of unreliable supply and surging prices are driving consumers and businesses off the grid as the price of renewable energy drops, leaving Eskom with lower sales and high fixed costs due to the expense of building new power plants.

The company that supplies 95 percent of South Africa’s electricity is losing middle-class clients, while arrears from near-bankrupt municipalities climb as many customers in impoverished townships don’t pay their bills or steal power through illegal connections. Rampant corruption and a bloated workforce have pushed total debt to 419 billion rand ($30.8 billion), and sales volumes — already at a decade-low — are falling, according to interim results reported last week.

Solar Panels

“Eskom’s inability to supply electricity and the ever-increasing prices have provided an incentive for users to replace inefficient equipment” and shift to solar panels, Elena Ilkova, a credit analyst at Rand Merchant Bank, said by email. This “will leave Eskom to supply increasingly higher-priced electricity to consumers who can barely afford to pay and many more consumers who either can’t or will not pay,” she said.

We can stop load shedding in 90 days if 1) Eskom signs all the approved deals by Independent Power Producers and 2) Businesses take load off the grid by partially relying on solar. The new investment would also boost the economy and create jobs. Don't waste a crisis.

— Michael Jordaan (@MichaelJordaan) December 6, 2018

With elections about six months away, there’s likely to be little help from the state. On Dec. 1, Finance Minister Tito Mboweni said the government can’t afford any more bailouts and urged Eskom to go back to the bond market. Earlier this year, Public Enterprise Minister Pravin Gordhan intervened when a management plan not to increase pay sparked protests, boosting recurrent costs. Eskom will propose that the government absorb 100 billion rand in debt, Sanchay Singla, a money manager at Legal & General who attending a meeting with the company, said.

Going to the bond market is an expensive prospect. The premium investors demand to hold Eskom’s 2026 rand bonds rather than benchmark sovereign securities has more than doubled over the past five years to 124 basis points, even though the debt is government-guaranteed.

Demand Threat

Similar to how a burgeoning customer base for telephones in Africa skipped the wait for landlines and started with mobile units, solar panels and other technology leave consumers completely disconnected from Eskom.

“Eskom prices have increased four-fold in nominal terms over the past decade,” said Anton Eberhard, a professor at the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business. “And solar prices have fallen 80 percent since 2011 and 50 percent for wind.”

The company has publicly acknowledged this threat to demand.

Last year, Eskom bosses told the nation the power utility had so much excessive surplus that it would increase the export of its electricity with up to 8% in the next five years. What has since happened? There's certainly more to this load shedding than meets the eye

— Steve Motale (@SteveMotale) December 6, 2018

“As new technology allows self-generation to become increasingly price competitive for the consumer, a utility’s sales decline,” Eskom said in its 2018 annual report under the heading, ‘the utility death spiral.’

The cost of servicing Eskom’s annual debt has risen to 45 billion rand, equivalent to almost a third of South Africa’s welfare budget, while municipality arrears climbed to 17 billion rand from 13.6 billion rand in six months. The country has experienced seven consecutive days of rolling blackouts with Eskom struggling to pay for adequate plant maintenance. Khulu Phasiwe, a company spokesman, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Eskom has been its own worst enemy. In recent years it has, at times, urged consumers to switch to more efficient light bulbs and has subsidized the installation of solar water heaters. Rolling blackouts also reduce revenue. It boosted the number of people it employed by 46 percent over the last decade to about 47,600 without significantly increasing output. In March, Jabu Mabuza, the company’s chairman, said staff numbers will need to be reduced and it recently started talks to cut senior management.

Near Monopoly

Eskom’s announcement of a so-called turnaround plan has been repeatedly delayed and is now scheduled for early 2019.

“Eskom in its current format is unlikely to exist a decade from now,” Ilkova said. “The business needs to be reconfigured.”

That could mean breaking up its near monopoly over power generation and transmission.

“The only workable solution is to break up Eskom and to sell-off certain assets, such as the new mega power plants,” said Darias Jonker, an Africa analyst at risk-advisory firm Eurasia Group. “This latter option is particularly politically sensitive and is thus unlikely to happen. In short, Eskom is pushing the government toward a fiscal crisis either way.”

CAPE TOWN — Did we really need a court to tell us that Zuma abused our money to pay his luxurious legal fees or that he unabashedly sought to worsen our and the entire SA Development Community’s position? The answer’s obvious, but in a country where subsequently-proven miscreants continuously abuse our scrupulously fair legal system, it’s probably necessary. No falling on swords here. The only time we see top politicians jumping, (they’re seldom pushed), is when their blood is written on the walls and not doing so is tantamount to political suicide or idiocy. The arrogance and sense of impunity is breathtaking, but then a politician, like Pavlov’s dog, is easily conditioned (to corruption). With the narrow redemption after the ANC stared into the Zuptoid abyss, one crucial thing changed. South Africa went from impunity to consequence. Zuma has three months to pay back over R16m in legal fees and the Presidency and State Attorney’s office must move heaven and earth to ensure this (including instituting civil litigation). Once again, we’re forced to consider whether Ramaphosa did enough after being elected President. But again; politics is not about doing all the right things. This story courtesy of the Daily Maverick. – Chris Bateman

By Greg Nicolson

A full Bench of the North Gauteng High Court sitting in Pretoria on Thursday said the Presidency and state attorney must attempt to recover legal costs incurred by former president Jacob Zuma in his personal capacity.

Reading the unanimous judgment, Deputy Judge President Audrey Ledwaba overturned a 2006 agreement Zuma signed with former president Thabo Mbeki that said the government would pay Zuma’s legal costs in his corruption, fraud and money laundering cases, currently before the Pietermaritzburg High Court.

“It is declared the state is not liable for the legal costs incurred by Mr Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma in his personal capacity in criminal prosecutions instituted against him, in any civil litigation related or incidental thereto, or any other associated legal costs,” said Ledwaba.

“The decisions taken by the Presidency and the state attorney that the state would cover the legal costs that Mr Zuma incurred in his personal capacity in interlocutory and ancillary applications related to his criminal prosecution are reviewed and set aside,” he continued.

The state attorney must now compile a “full and complete accounting” of legal costs incurred by Zuma in his personal capacity and “take all necessary steps, including the institution of civil proceedings, to cover the amounts paid for by the state for Mr Zuma’s legal costs”, said the judgment.

In September, the Presidency said Zuma’s personal legal fees had cost the state R16.78m. The former president took a R7.8m loan from the now-collapsed VBS Mutual Bank to repay some of the money spent on upgrades to his private Nkandla home.

The court ordered the state to provide the full accounting detail, steps taken and steps to be taken to recover the amounts within three months.

Zuma argued that government or public interest is automatically implicated when an official is criminally charged. The court rejected the argument, saying the charges against him had nothing to do with performing his roles in public office.

The court also criticised Zuma for appointing and enriching his private attorneys rather than defending cases through the state attorney’s office.

The judgment said it’s in the public interest to pursue cases related to corruption or fraud but the costs shouldn’t be borne by the taxpayer:

“If the state is burdened with the high legal costs of those public office bearers who are charged with such crimes, the taxpayer bears that burden and poor communities continue to be denied access to essential services, as the state’s resources are being diverted in funding the defences of public office bearers charged with such crimes, in this instance financing Mr Zuma to have litigated on a most luxurious scale.”

Zuma is entitled to a defence and can pay for his own legal representation or use Legal Aid, it said.

The DA and EFF brought the court applications to reclaim the money spent on the former president.

“The Democratic Alliance has always maintained it was wrong of President Mbeki to decide that the public should pay for Zuma’s defence, and we argued that President Ramaphosa should have cancelled this illegal deal immediately,” said DA leader Mmusi Maimane in a statement.

“The system of corruption where those who loot the state are then able to defend themselves using public money has been stopped today. This case sets an important precedent, and we will take this fight further to those people complicit in State Capture,” he continued.

The Pretoria High Court finds the state is not liable for legal costs incurred by former president Jacob Zuma in his personal capacity…
Brandan's Business Day cartoon, Friday 14 December 2018 https://t.co/CYaF55l1y0 pic.twitter.com/Ddm8VHbVov

— Brandan E. Reynolds (@brandanrey) December 14, 2018

Repeated appeals have worked for Zuma before and he is likely to appeal Thursday’s judgment. Maimane said his legal costs should not be paid on appeal: “Now he has to pay it himself,” he told eNCA.

The DA accused Ramaphosa of protecting corruption by continuing to pay Zuma’s fees while the issue goes to court. The president has told Parliament only a court could set aside the 2006 agreement.

It’s been another tough week for Zuma in the courts. On Tuesday, the Constitutional Court ruled that an agreement he signed with SADC partners “unabashedly sought to put us and the people of SADC in a position that is worse than before”. DM

EDINBURGH — Powerful, rich countries have urged President Cyril Ramaphosa to do something to get the prosecuting authorities moving on getting corrupt business players and their political accomplices behind bars – or South Africa can expect foreign investors to go elsewhere. This stark warning was delivered to Ramaphosa behind the backs of the team at the Department of International Relations and Cooperation. International Relations Minister Lindiwe Sisulu is engaging with ambassadors from the UK, US, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland to reassure them that the ANC government under Ramaphosa is committed to cleaning up corruption. In the meantime, the corrupt and the captured can start contemplating the very real possibility that they will do time for their dirty deeds. Ramaphosa has said that the country is now on a path of renewal and the new head of the National Prosecuting Authority moved into her office on Friday. – Jackie Cameron

By Ana Monteiro and Renee Bonorchis