If you want to get an idea of what awaits South Africa in the two years to the 2024 elections, do a quick scan through the ANC’s nominees for seats on its 80-member national executive committee (NEC). The ANC’s 3,800 branches “in good standing” have overwhelmingly nominated convicted thugs and corruption-tainted and scandal-ridden individuals to lead them — and us.
The first name on the list, with an astonishing 1,447 nominations from branches, is former KwaZulu-Natal premier Sihle Zikalala. He is notorious for loving his constituency so much that at the height of the floods in KZN this year he jumped the queue of those desperately waiting for water and had a tanker diverted to his home in La Mercy so he and his family could stock up. That’s selfless leadership in the ANC. Instead of batho pele (people first) it is “me first”.
Second on the list, with 1,366 nominations, is former finance minister Malusi Gigaba, a man who has been repeatedly shown to have been a lackey of the corrupt Gupta family. The Zondo commission report says: “Gigaba had a close relationship with the Gupta family … which commenced in the early 2000s when he was the president of the ANC Youth League.”
Zondo said Gigaba’s refusal to admit that he knew the Guptas adds “convincingly to a finding that his testimony should not be believed”.
Gigaba appointed the Guptas’ toy soldiers to key state assets: Brian Molefe and Anoj Singh at Transnet and then Eskom, Dudu Myeni at SAA, Siyabonga Gama at Transnet, Iqbal Sharma at Transnet. They are all on trial for corruption or have been convicted of some or other crime.
Anywhere else in the world Gigaba would be hanging his head in shame. In the ANC, he is a top gun.
Third on the list is former deputy higher education & training minister Mduduzi Manana with 1,268 nominations. In 2017 he was found guilty of three counts of assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm after he attacked three women at a nightclub.
You could pin the ANC nominees list to a wall and throw a dart at it. Almost every throw would reward you with a scoundrel
That’s just the top three. You would be forgiven for feeling exhausted by this exercise by now. But let’s continue. After Manana there is a string of cabinet ministers, most of whom are so incompetent they should not be in their jobs. Then, at No 10, is the ANC treasurer hopeful Andile Lungisa. He received nominations from 1,013 branches. So emboldened is he by this show of faith in his leadership abilities that on Thursday he called on President Cyril Ramaphosa to resign.
“It’s better for the president to protect his family and save his integrity by resigning,” he told TimesLIVE. Great advice from a man who, in 2018, was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison for assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. He was found guilty of smashing a glass jug on the head of DA councillor Rano Kayser during a scuffle in the Nelson Mandela Bay council in 2016. Last week he was suspended again by the party’s national disciplinary committee of appeals.
Integrity is a biggie in the ANC. In April this year, former social development minister Bathabile Dlamini was sentenced to four years in prison or a R200,000 fine for perjury after she lied under oath during the Ngoepe inquiry into the Sassa grant scandal in 2017. Now, 856 branches want her to be in their NEC.
What kind of people have such short memories and love a scoundrel so much? The kind of people who want Faith Muthambi, at 33rd on the list, to lead them. Muthambi notoriously e-mailed confidential government policy documents to one of the Gupta brothers.
Of her testimony at the commission, Zondo concluded: “I find the evidence of Ms Muthambi unconvincing, to say the least ... It is clear that she had abused her powers in a number of instances. In these circumstances, the finding to make is that Ms Muthambi had unlawfully [shared] that confidential information with the Guptas and their associates. It was quite clear that she was doing so in order to talk to their friend, [then] president Zuma, to ensure that she had certain powers as minister of communications.”
You could pin the ANC nominees list to a wall and throw a dart at it. Almost every throw would reward you with a scoundrel. The list even has Bongani Bongo, the former intelligence minister in the Zuma administration who is an accused in a R74m corruption trial, at No 173. What were those 135 branches thinking when they nominated him?
Ah, we know. He is them. They are him. The ANC’s nomination list is the ANC telling us exactly what it is: a corrupt entity that only supported Ramaphosa’s renewal story because it needed to save itself from electoral loss. It never meant any of it.
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