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The recent Cabinet reshuffle by President Jacob Zuma has demonstrated that state capture is a reality, not fiction – even to the pessimists.
Zuma replaced competent ministers such as Derek Hanekom and Pravin Gordhan, while keeping the incompetent Faith Muthambi and Bathabile Dlamini, demonstrating once again that he does not like the so-called “clever blacks”. He prefers the worst. This is not surprising, because he qualifies as the worst ANC president in its 105 years.
No hope in NEC
At the national executive committee meeting in December 2016, Hanekom placed a motion of no confidence in Zuma and proposed that he should resign as ANC president.
But the majority of the national executive committee members are lapdogs of Zuma, elected under extensive fraudulent conditions at the ANC’s Mangaung elective conference in December 2012. This was demonstrated when the Free State provincial conference elections were successfully challenged by Mpho Ramakatsa and fellow Free State ANC members in their application to the Constitutional Court. The court ruled that the Free State branch general elections were not credible, and had not been democratically conducted.
Since that time, Through the Eye of the Needle – the ANC policy document for cadre deployment – has not been followed by any of the ANC structures from Luthuli House down to the branches. It remains a document of wishful thinking with no hope of its implementation.
The ball in the court of ANC MPs
ANC members of Parliament are called upon to make the most critical decision in their career: should they continue supporting Zuma at the expense of the South African population and the ANC? Should they continue being passive in the face of the Guptas’ state capture?
The time comes in the life of every politician when there remain two choices: to protect a corrupt president at all cost to their integrity and the country, or to choose the best interests of their country. That time has now come for ANC MPs. They are called upon to defend the country and the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa. We must keep an eye on how they conduct themselves.
Choosing Zuma guarantees South Africa becoming a banana republic like Zimbabwe, and the ANC facing likely electoral defeat in the general elections in 2019.
In that event, many ANC MPs will become unemployed in a similar manner to what happened with ANC councillors across the country after the municipal elections in August last year in Johannesburg, Tshwane and Port Elizabeth. This means that ANC MPs cannot afford to be neutral or passive and expect somebody else to fight their battles for them.
Motion of no confidence
Ideally Zuma should have been removed by the national executive committee of ANC, but since the committee is captured by the Guptas it is left to members of Parliament to remove Zuma. Should ANC MPs vote together with opposition to remove their president; who they could not discipline internally? Or should they abstain, or vote against the motion as they normally do?
ANC MPs now have to take the decision that will either destroy the country and themselves by either voting with opposition parties or by abstaining. Otherwise many are guaranteed to be unemployed after the 2019 general elections.
EFF court case
EFF leader Julius Malema has taken the Speaker of Parliament, Baleka Mbete, to the Constitutional Court to compel her and Parliament to institute a disciplinary hearing against Zuma or to impeach him for violating the Constitution.
The Constitutional Court is again requested to intervene to force members of Parliament to follow and respect the Constitution. It raises the question, how long will the integrity of the judiciary remain secure if the Constitutional Court continues to rule against Zuma?
This is an issue which forces attention to the relations between the three arms of government in a constitutional, parliamentary democracy – the legislature, the executive and the judiciary.
In Zimbabwe, the executive (the Zanu government of Robert Mugabe) quite clearly dominates over the legislature and judiciary.
Power at party headquarters
The problem now in South Africa is the terrible imbalance between the executive (Zuma as President and head of government) and the legislature (the National Assembly, as the supposed representative of the democratic will of the people, expressed in the previous general election).
In long-standing parliaments elected on the basis of members representing local voters in constituencies, such as the House of Commons in the UK and the House of Representatives in the US, MPs are accountable to voters in the constituencies that elect them. This gives these MPs or representatives great freedom from the executive, because they are accountable downwards the local people, and can represent the views of their electors even against their own party leaders.
In South Africa, however – where an MP’s salary means the difference between wealth and poverty for whole families – the 100% proportional representation electoral law does not ensure individual accountability of politicians.
Accountability, and the welfare of the MP’s family in the case of most ANC politicians, goes upward to the president and Luthuli House, not downwards to the people. Politicians of the ruling party serve power, not the people.
The root of the present crisis engulfing South Africa and the ANC lies in the electoral law, which disempowers the masses and concentrates all power in the hands of party headquarters.
Without democratic reform of the electoral law, this can never be rectified.
The message of the present crisis is A luta continua! The struggle goes on.
• Omry Makgoale is a rank and file member of the ANC
