PETER BRUCE: Magashule’s counter-revolution? It’s too soon to panic

Normally I write this column for the FM to use online on Mondays. I frequently rely on the Sunday papers to get me thinking but this last week’s were so depressing I missed a day. Apologies. If you only read Twitter online and only read the Sunday papers you’d want to emigrate.

The Sunday Times lead had public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane trying to accuse President Cyril Ramaphosa of laundering R400m through contributions to his campaign to be elected leader of the ANC.

City Press had ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule beating Ramaphosa hands down in the parliamentary caucus with most of the new portfolio committee heads (Zuma people) promising to give Ramaphosa a hard time unless he delivers on the many wild promises (land, the Reserve Bank) of the party conference that elected him.

I looked around for something perhaps a little calmer to cheer me up. There was this from Theuns Eloff, which seemed to me to be balanced and rational. It was initially written about 10 days ago, but Alec Hogg made it famous on Biznews. The comments it attracted were truly revolting. One even mentioned me.

“Eloff has joined Peter Bruce as false prophets of the ANC rebirth bullshit …” says someone called Tim Bester on Hogg’s website. There are lots of Tim Besters about and I think I once vaguely knew one in the advertising industry.

I hope it’s not him (the English in Bester’s phrase is poor enough to suggest perhaps some other vocation) because whoever it really is, is a dull boy. No-one I know, and certainly not me, believes in an ANC rebirth, you dull boy. Show me one line where I have even vaguely suggested that, let alone said it, you dull boy. Did you seriously think the ANC was going to lose the election, you dull boy? Which ANC leader would you rather have had as president, Tim Bester, you dull boy?

As an interlude, I was grateful to read a tweet from Gareth van Onselen bringing us all down to earth about social media. He works at the Institute of Race Relations and has access to all the data it collected over the election period. It shows that of all voting South Africans only 8.1% are on Twitter. “Put another way,” he helpfully points out, 91.9% of all voters are not on Twitter”. So if my bunny Tim here picked up Hogg’s report off a Twitter feed, you’re swimming in a small pool my boy. Get a life.

Forgive me my irritation. I searched on and found the excellent political editor of the Mail & Guardian, Natasha Marrian, had written some really thoughtful stuff about Ramaphosa. I know Marrian well and I know how careful she is. The Mail & Guardian survives because it makes you pay to read what it produces. What an odd concept. Here’s the link to her piece but you’ll have to register to read it. I recommend it and I have some bits copied that I can share with you.

She writes, of Ramaphosa’s predicament: “It was never going to be easy terrain to navigate — it’s muddy and toxic, with ANC veterans going as far as describing this pushback from the corruption and state capture grouping as a “counter-revolution”.

“Veterans Wally Serote, Snuki Zikalala, Aziz Pahad, Thami Ntenteni and Fazel Randera penned a discussion document — the first in a series — in which they illustrate how the capture of the SA Revenue Service (Sars) by former commissioner Tom Moyane is an example of ‘counter-revolution’, where there are forces ‘conspiring to defeat the democratic revolution which emerged victorious in 1994’.

“The constant threat of his ‘removal by the ANC’s national general council’ has been muttered since Ramaphosa’s election at Nasrec. This is the one body in the party that could feasibly remove him between elective conferences.”

Actually, it can’t and it won’t. The NGC cannot change any decision of the December 2017 conference other than to replace an office bearer who may have since died, but Zuma’s wrinkly little whisperers have the ears of some reporters to whom they constantly whisper these lies.

Not to Marrian though. She’s too smart to run with the lies and innuendo. “The general council threat coincides neatly with law enforcement agencies closing in on Zuma’s allies, and those implicated in state capture and corruption.”

Of course it does. Magashule may be making a lot of noise but there’s big arresty stuff still to come. Says Marrian, while Ramaphosa has to compromise, so has Magashule. “While tainted individuals have made it as chairpersons of key committees, including Faith Muthambi, Mosebenzi Zwane, Supra Mahumapelo and Tina Joemat-Pettersson, the ANC caucus political committee — which drives the overall political direction of the caucus — is packed with Ramaphosa’s strongest lieutenants. It is chaired by deputy president David Mabuza, who essentially broke away from the Zuma grouping when his province threw its weight behind a “unity” slate at Nasrec and bolstered Ramaphosa’s campaign against Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.”

And even then, while the Tim Besters of the world are climbing the walls because they prime themselves to believe the worst at every moment, let’s just talk about the portfolio committee chairs for a moment.

Now, I really have no idea who these people are or what their politics are. But even in the Sunday Times and City Press, which I would have expected to have exhaustive knowledge of each and every single portfolio committee chair, it turns out we are all up in arms about the same people — Joemat-Pettersson (who we cannot reliably attribute to the Zuma camp because he fired her as a minister), Muthambi, Bongani Bongo, Mahumapelo, Zwane. Have I left one of Zuma’s little flowers out? Sifiso Buthelezi?

The thing is, there are five or six names that come up time and again as “proof” that Magashule has the better of Ramaphosa in parliament. But hang on. There are 35 (thirty-five) portfolio committees. Here’s a tweet with all their names.

Honestly now, how many people there can you say you know anything about? I blame the media! I see Mathole Motshekga all over the land committee. That wouldn’t have pleased Magashule.

The point is that this isn’t over by a long shot. Ramaphosa’s future pivots on the recovery of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), as someone noted the other day. It has evidently been scraped clean of talent by Zuma and has to be rebuilt. And it is no good charging a Brian Molefe here and a Muthambi there. When the NPA makes its much-promised strike against state capture it has to cut the head off the snake and take them all down.

That will take some doing and we are clearly not there yet. In the meantime, Tim Bester, calm down a little. You’ll give yourself a heart attack.