Goodbye, then, Ace Magashule. We will not miss you. We won’t even talk about you much (I hope), except for this week and for brief periods when your corruption trial comes around.
It will be good to have you vacate our public life, for you have done nothing but encourage the destruction of what could have been a capable state. Your expulsion from the ANC hopefully marks the end of a terrible period in South African politics.
It’s not just the end of your power over the Free State’s politics — wielded ruthlessly since 1998 when you became the ANC provincial chair — that should be celebrated. The Free State has been hollowed out and collapsed by corruption and mismanagement, its municipalities brought to their knees.
Your guilt also emanates from aiding and abetting Jacob Zuma as he became the ANC leader in 2007 and president of the country in 2009. That association ushered in the worst period of our post-apartheid politics.
By 2011, the unelected family that came to be associated with you and Zuma was appointing cabinet ministers. Members of that family were calling the then deputy police minister (now ANC secretary-general), Fikile Mbalula, and informing him he was the new sports minister. You, Zuma and your allies in the party did nothing about this. Instead, your son moved in with the Guptas in Saxonwold.
The same Mbalula knew something when he told ANC members not to vote for you in December 2017, tweeting that you would destroy what remained of the party. But he was 10 years late in his warning. The destruction of the ANC and South Africa started in 2007 when you (and him) hoodwinked ANC members into voting Zuma into power.
Our country’s descent into hell from then on was swift. Zuma handed our country to the Guptas, who proceeded to steal us blind, corrupt our body politic and use the president as their willing toy.
It is there for all to see in the state capture commission’s final report. Chief justice Raymond Zondo says you and your henchman, Mosebenzi Zwane, pursued the corrupt agenda of the Guptas and should be investigated for possible criminal conduct over the millions stolen from the Vrede dairy farm project.
The challenge of South Africa is to weed out more of your type from our public square
“Zwane as MEC was pursuing the agenda of the Guptas and did not do his job to perform oversight over [former Free State agricultural department head Peter] Thabethe,” says Zondo. “It also happened because the premier of the province, Ace Magashule, would have also been pursuing the agenda of the Guptas.
“In this regard, reference can be made to Mxolisi Dukwana’s evidence, which Magashule did not challenge before the commission, about his and Dukwana’s visits to the Gupta residence where on one occasion Magashule had brought Tony Gupta his [Magashule’s] identity document and Magashule told Dukwana that he was going to be in business with the Guptas through his son.”
Corruption was the name of the game. You, Zuma, and the likes of Zwane were the captains of the teams.
The problem with our public discourse is that we do not call out bad actors like you. You get away with murder. Yet, thankfully, the ANC has managed to kick you out even if it used a technicality (that you tried to suspend the president of your own organisation illegally and unilaterally after the organisation suspended you) instead of expelling you for your myriad offences as enumerated in the Zondo report.
The challenge of South Africa is to weed out more of your type from our public square. You have helped to bring our country to its knees and made us the laughing stock of the world. Our law enforcement institutions are under pressure. Our state-owned enterprises are collapsing. Our municipalities are crawling. All because you and your allies hollowed them out, as Zondo says you did with Estina.
So, goodbye, Ace Magashule. You are notorious for telling your supporters in 2018 that “it’s just a matter of five years” before you could get rid of your comrade Cyril Ramaphosa, and with his departure the “ANC that we know” would return.
Well, with your departure the South Africa that we have dreamt about is closer to being returned to its citizens. Stay away from it.
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