What is Minister Mantashe doing to secure SA’s electricity supply?

With South Africa having returned to stage 2 load shedding this morning, and some 11 000 MW of Eskom generation capacity out of operation, the question has to be asked: What is the Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy, Gwede Mantashe, doing to secure South Africa’s electricity supply? The answer, sadly, is precious little.

In December 2019, when load shedding peaked at stage 6, the President and Minister Mantashe committed to an Emergency Power Procurement programme to add 2 000 to 3 000 MW to the grid as a matter of urgency, in order to ensure stability of supply. But the good intentions of President Cyril Ramaphosa were undermined by his Minister, who has sat on his hands and not procured a single megawatt of additional generation. Nor has he secured the promised incremental supply from existing renewable energy independent power producers with spare capacity, or increased the exemption threshold required for licensing of generation facilities from 1MW to 10MW as had been widely expected, and he has done absolutely nothing about opening the next bid window for renewable energy Independent Power Producers (IPP).

Instead, the Minister has dithered and squandered a period of lowered demand, during which he could have done so much more to bolster South Africa’s power supply.

South Africa needs to break free of the Eskom monopoly. One of the things necessary to do this is to create a transmission grid that is independent of Eskom’s generation facility. This is exactly what the DA’s Independent Electricity Management Operator (IEMO) Bill would do. This bill, introduced by DA Chief Whip, Natasha Mazzone MP in 2019, would permit Eskom’s generation plants and those of independent power producers to compete on a level playing field, and allow metropolitan municipalities with the financial capacity and technical capabilities to purchase electricity directly from IPPs.

It is clear that Mantashe is out of his depth and playing to the unions/coal lobby. It is time that President Ramaphosa either held him to the commitments made in December last year, or fire him from his cabinet. Mantashe cannot be allowed to continue as the handbrake on the South African economy. To save lives and livelihoods, we need a secure supply of electricity, at the lowest possible cost, in the shortest possible timeframe.

The DA will not permit South Africa’s electricity needs to be further compromised by this incompetent and bumbling minister. We need decisive action now.

Click here to read more about the DA’s plan to drive the cost of electricity down, introduce competition into the energy sector, and diversify the country’s energy sources to introduce more renewables, as well as our record of action on the electricity crisis over the last 8 years.

Opinion | From Pareto to Piketty, Confucius to the Qur’an: How do we deal with inequality?

None of the major religions, which account for a more than significant portion of humanity, embodies a belief that we must replace a system of production for profit and a society ostensibly based on greed and self-interest with one that is commonly owned and planned for the needs of all.

It matters not whether you think greed is good or bad, whether inequality is necessary or not or whether the power afforded the rich creates an imbalance that marginalises people. That said, greed in itself is hardly an attractive quality and nor is power for the sake of it, let alone the unsettling image of the gluttonous set against the starving.

Christianity and practically all religions rail against the driven love of lucre while encouraging good deeds and charity. Indeed, in some religions, charity is enshrined as a requisite tithe on wealth. Rent-seeking and usury are almost universally frowned upon. A fair and humane appeal is encouraged – a helping hand, and in the words of Pope Francis, “a generous solidarity… an ethical approach which favours human beings”.

This is not to be confused with an ordering and levelling of the world. Indeed, the Qur’an says, “historically, mankind has always been at a loss” while urging the faithful to “believe and do good works, and exhort one another to truth and exhort one another to endurance”. This speaks, as it does in almost all religions, to an underlying acceptance of the nature of things and the injunction to ameliorate, by individual endeavour, the baser manifestation of loss.

An exposition of elements of what is perceived as a natural order is likewise evident in Hinduism – for all the complexities and apparent inequities of the caste system – whose teachings do not only reflect a division of labour but also, it is argued, point to fulfilment through the performance of duties. Buddhism too did not oppose the four-fold caste system of Hinduism. It does, however, oppose the derogation of those ranked lesser, and affirmed that anyone, from any caste, including the lowest of the four castes, could reach enlightenment.

Protestantism sees God as not having a direct role in the human world. It is guided by rational behaviour and champions values such as conscientious assiduity. Confucianism, on the other hand, sees reality and all its facets as imbued with and guided by an inherently ethical divine presence. Confucian thought sees some courses of action as preferable to others, because they are good in and of themselves, as distinct from the augmentation of value.

These similarities and differences notwithstanding, none of the major religions, which account for a more than significant portion of humanity, embody a belief that we must replace a system of production for profit and a society ostensibly based on greed and self-interest with one that is commonly owned and planned for the needs of all. The failure of historical efforts to achieve such engineered equality is a separate but related matter. The spawning of successive sets of elites is, however, an interesting one.

It took Vilfredo Pareto, the Italian economist and sociologist who coined the 80/20 rule, to develop the idea of the “circulation of elites” as being pivotal to progress, which he believed would give rise to new elites who would in turn challenge established political classes. In essence, Pareto was a liberal who sought to balance a free and open society with a safety net for the most vulnerable, resulting in his ideas being taken up by liberal welfare proponents and anti-fascist theorists like Piero Gobetti who wrote:

“The concept of an elite that imposes itself by exploiting a channel of interests and general psychological conditions against the old leaders who have exhausted their function is genuinely liberal.”

Pareto was exercised by problems of power and wealth. He understood that the gulf between rich and poor has always been part of the human condition, and he sought to measure it, gathering data on wealth and income across countries and history over a hundred years before Thomas Piketty sought to analyse it.

But for Pareto, unlike Piketty, “good” could not be measured. Instead, he posited the notion of Pareto-Optimality – that maximum economic satisfaction is achieved when no one can be made better off without making someone else worse off, a concept that has been used by welfare economists and proponents of negotiation/game theory. Distribution of wealth that is Pareto-optimal remains the gold standard of aspiration for many and involves a trade-off of interests and traditions against a better outcome for all parties.

These are the pertinent questions of the day that exercise the minds of liberals in our chronically unequal society and across the globe. They involve an understanding of the natural order of things, the philosophico-religious injunctions to temper loss and the push of Pareto towards an optimality which is worth considering – all within an acceptance of the power of paradox. The more knowledge we acquire, the more uncertainty we encounter. 

Ramaphosa buckles under relentless DA pressure – but is too cowardly to fire the ANC’s Bonnie and Clyde

After months of sustained pressure by the Democratic Alliance (DA), President Cyril Ramaphosa has finally caved in and implicitly acknowledged that the Director-General of the Public Service Commission (PSC), Dr Dovhani Mamphiswana, is a criminal ANC cadre.

However, instead of acting decisively by outright firing Mamphiswana for illegally hiring his mistress as the head of professional ethics in our most important public sector ethics watchdog, Ramaphosa continues milking desperate taxpayers by placing Mamphiswana on “precautionary suspension with full pay.”

If Ramaphosa cared more about the country than his rapidly disintegrating political party, he would not have forced struggling South Africans to continue paying this disgraced ANC cadre’s multimillion-rand salary.

A real leader who puts country over party would have immediately fired Mamphiswana, and launched criminal and civil proceedings to claim back the millions that Mamphiswana and his mistress, Boitumelo Mogwe, defrauded from taxpayers.

Even for a President as weak as Ramaphosa – who has publicly admitted that he prizes ANC unity above the interests of the country – there is absolutely no reason why Mamphiswana should continue receiving his nearly R2 million annual salary.

A completed investigation by advocate Smanga Sethene from the Office of the State Attorney already confirmed on 8 July that Mamphiswana and Mogwe were guilty of “nepotism par excellence” and “premeditated deceit, dishonesty, fraud and corruption calculated to deceive…the citizens of the Republic of South Africa”.

Incredibly, Ramaphosa is at pains to state that “the President’s suspension of the Director-General does not in any way constitute a judgement on the part of the President”.

Why does the President steadfastly refuse to pass judgement and act decisively against the ANC’s Bonnie and Clyde pair who have committed “premeditated corruption”?

If Sethene’s report is not enough for him, then what will it take for Cyril Ramaphosa to ever decisively do the right thing?

Ramaphosa’s latest half-hearted attempt to make it appear like he is acting against Mamphiswana comes six months after Sethene originally recommended that he be suspended.

By sitting on his hands for half a year, Ramaphosa caused an additional R1 million in taxpayer money to be wasted on Mamphiswana’s salary.

That figure will now continue to increase as Ramaphosa’s government inevitably drags out the disciplinary process against Bonnie and Clyde for as long as possible.

Unlike Ramaphosa, the DA acted immediately upon conclusion of Sethene’s report. We laid criminal charges against both Bonnie and Clyde over a month ago.

We have also confronted Ramaphosa and public service and administration minister, Senzo Mchunu, at every turn about this government’s revolting failure to act despite overwhelming evidence against the two criminal cadres.

The DA will pose a series of parliamentary questions to Ramaphosa about his dereliction of duty by continuing to waste taxpayer funds on a criminal cadre.

We also reiterate our demand that Ramaphosa must follow in the DA’s footsteps by personally laying criminal charges against the ANC’s Bonnie and Clyde.

If Ramaphosa fails altogether to fire Mamphiswana, we will brief our lawyers with an eye to holding the President legally accountable for breaking his Constitutional duty to promote and sustain a high standard of professional ethics in the public service.

Click here to contribute to the DA’s legal action challenging irrational and dangerous elements of the hard lockdown in court

DA welcomes legal challenge to ANC-sponsored NYDA board recommendations

The Democratic Alliance (DA) welcomes the decision taken by the South African Youth Chamber of Commerce to challenge the politically compromised National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) board recommendations.

The DA is in full agreement that the board recommendations are not representative of South Africa’s youth demographics as per Section 4 of the NYDA Act. We raised this point during the interview and appointment process for the board.

We maintain that the board recommendations were an ANC-sponsored cadre deployment scam, in order to legally loot the NYDA’s almost R500 million budget.

This was all but confirmed in a letter seen by the DA, which the ANC National Youth Task Team (NYTT) convener, Tandi Mahambehlala, sent to the ANC deputy secretary general, Jessie Duarte, three months ago listing the Progressive Youth Alliance’s (PYA) preferred candidates for the NYDA board, to which we have yet to see a response.

Clearly the majority of the final recommendations were decided months before the interview process for the board even began, the Parliamentary process was merely a box ticking exercise by the ANC in the Portfolio Committee in Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities.

The DA does not believe that the composition of the board is based on merit. It is for this reason that we will again object to the NYDA board recommendations when the matter is debated and voted on in the National Assembly. The DA will also sponsor a more 800-signature petition in Parliament from young people all across the country.

We are encouraged to see that young South Africans across the country are rejecting the ANC’s attempts to capture youth development through its compromised and corrupt cadre deployments strategy.

Click here to contribute to the DA’s legal action challenging irrational and dangerous elements of the hard lockdown in court

DA calls on IPID to investigate police’s brutal assault of peaceful PRASA security guards

Kindly find attached pictures here, here, here, here and here. Please note that these images are graphic in nature.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) will write to the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) to investigate the brutal assault on peaceful Passenger Railway Association of South Africa (PRASA) security guards by members of the South African Police Service (SAPS) on Tuesday which have left 5 hospitalised and 20 seriously injured.

The security guards were gathered at Umjantshi House (PRASA tech headquarters) in Braamfontein for a report back engagement with PRASA management regarding a dispute over the alleged corrupt insourcing process which the entity embarked upon in July.

Members of the SAPS fired rubber bullets at the concerned security guards as they were trying to comply with the directive that only 50 of them should enter PRASA premises. As the group were sorting themselves to allow their leaders to enter, they were met with bullets. This was a legitimate gathering, in that PRASA top management was represented by Mr. Bongisizwe Mpondo at the meeting.

The concerned group were seeking answers over allegations that security guards that have been working for PRASA on a contractual basis for over 15 years have been overlooked for insourcing for the benefit of former Luthuli House employees.

Many of the incumbent PRASA security guards met the qualifying criteria for insourcing which stated that they needed to be in possession of a Grade 12 Certificate, driver’s licence, PSIRA licence and firearm competency. However they were advised that they don’t qualify for insourcing, in contrast to the newly “insourced” Luthuli House employees who the group allege don’t meet the criteria.

These allegations are particularly concerning in light of a recent oversight inspection at PRASA stations in Pretoria, Johannesburg and Cape Town, which revealed that infrastructure has been stripped to the knuckles. Literally, anything that resembles a metal or steel has been stolen. This due to the ongoing court battles between PRASA and ANC benefactors in what is known as “PRASA security tenders wars”. Because of these so-called wars, people who have been working for PRASA for over 15 years have been overlooked for insourcing, PRASA infrastructure has become increasingly vulnerable due to a lack of security and the ANC continues to seek every means necessary to loot the public coffers.

The DA has submitted written parliamentary questions to the Department of Transport and PRASA to respond to how they plan on dealing with this impasse which is not only threatening livelihoods but also critical rail infrastructure.

We further call on the Minister of Transport, Fikile Mbalula to intervene and address the corruption allegations at PRASA seemingly presided over by his favourite Administrator Mr. Bongisizwe Mpondo.

Click here to contribute to the DA’s legal action challenging irrational and dangerous elements of the hard lockdown in court

Government acknowledges Islamic insurgency in Mozambique could threaten areas with gas exploration sites

The South African Government’s continued failure to lead a coordinated regional effort to confront the rising security threat posed by the Islamic insurgency in Mozambique now poses a potential direct threat to South African investments, worth billions of dollars, in the country’s oil and gas sector.

I will be writing to the Ministers of Defence and Military Veterans, International Relations and State Security requesting that they provide clarity on the steps that they will be taking to ensure that South African investments are protected from Islamist insurgent activities.

In a parliamentary question, I had asked the Minister of Defence and Military Veterans, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, to provide clarity on whether the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) Defence Intelligence had found any plausible threats that may affect Total South Africa’s $23 billion offshore gas project site situated 60 kilometres south of Mocimboa da Praia.

The Minister provided a cryptic response, stating that: “Defence Intelligence assessment indicates that in the short and medium term the Islamic insurgent activities are expected to continue and extend particularly to areas with gas exploration site.”

This tacit acknowledgement by the Minister on the severity of the threat posed by the insurgency on South African investments in the region calls for an intelligence driven initial response not only from the side of the SANDF’s Defence Intelligence Division, but also from the State Security Agency (SSA).

The South African government has an obligation to ensure that concrete steps are taken to minimise the risk to the economy of the region as well as to South Africa’s economic and investment interests in Northern Mozambique and to further prevent or subvert the proliferation of terrorist groups in the region, including on South African soil.

The DA therefore calls on the aforementioned Ministers to take the South African population into their confidence and lay out a comprehensive plan to contain the rising Islamic insurgency in Mozambique before it engulfs the whole region and negatively impacts its economic prospects.

Click here to contribute to the DA’s legal action challenging irrational and dangerous elements of the hard lockdown in court

DA has evidence showing why Communications Minister, Stomping Stella, must be fired

The Democratic Alliance (DA) has in its possession a copy of the letter written by lawyers on behalf of the South African Post Office (SAPO) Chairperson, Ms Tshikane Makhubele, to Communications and Digital Technologies Minister, Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams, questioning the legality of her decisions to remove the SAPO Chairperson and her attempts to overturn decisions taken by the SAPO Board.

The letter, referring to myriad legislation, says Minister Ndabeni-Abrahams is constrained by the doctrine of legality when making any decision that impacts on SAPO or the rights of the Board and its Chairperson

While the Minister appears to enjoy dictating executive appointments and making operational decisions, this kind of interference is not only illegal, but completely unacceptable. The Minister cannot be allowed to involve herself in the day-to-day running of a state-owned entity.

This is further evidence Minister Ndabeni-Abrahams needs to be fired. Given the importance of this critical portfolio in this extraordinary time of the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as the vital decisions to be made in the coming months, there is no place for imperious commands and illegal actions from an arrogant Minister blissfully unaware of her own limitations or that of her office. The DA will be relentless in our quest to have her removed as Minister.

Fresh from her controversial attempt to ignore the recommendations of the Portfolio Committee on Communications and instead dictate to Parliament who should and shouldn’t be appointed as ICASA Councillors, the Minister is once again over-reaching her powers by instructing the SAPO Board on how to do their work.

She has numerous times convincingly demonstrated her shocking ignorance of the law as well as the limits of authority vested in her office; her contempt for due process; and her complete disregard for the responsibilities of those tasked with running these entities.

Her totalitarian behaviour towards the entities in her Department and the people charged with delivering on their mandates has placed her squarely at odds with the SAPO Board around the organisation’s capacity to meet the need for Covid-19 special grant distribution. Indications are that local SAPO branches are overwhelmed by unexpected numbers of grant recipients and burdening security services tasked with protecting staff and premises. Social distancing and sanitary measures, including the wearing of masks, is also non-existent.

In imposing her will on the SAPO and its Board, she has placed not only the SAPO at risk, but also the lives of those who work there and the customers they serve.

Minister Ndabeni-Abrahams cannot be allowed to continue wielding powers she doesn’t possess; for the country’s sake and the welfare of our people, Stomping Stella must go now.

Click here to contribute to the DA’s legal action challenging irrational and dangerous elements of the hard lockdown in court

Time to end hard lockdown

Please find attached soundbite from John Steenhuisen MP.

The DA calls on President Ramaphosa to end the hard lockdown now, including the irrational bans on tobacco and alcohol. The tourism industry, schools, and borders need to be fully opened, the curfew lifted, and the state of disaster ended. It is high time for Ramaphosa to grow a spine, stand up to his party and start putting South Africa first.

South Africa’s daily Covid-19 infection rate is declining, taking pressure off our public health system. At the same time, our recovery rate has increased significantly. While this is no reason to drop our guard, it is reason enough to fully open our economy. This must happen immediately.

There is general agreement that a second wave is unlikely but not impossible. Either way, we cannot hide from this virus forever while our lives and livelihoods fall apart. We need to learn to live with it, since it will still be with us for many months, perhaps even years, to come.

While we should all continue to wear our masks and adhere to safety protocols, we need to pick up the pieces and start to rebuild our shattered economy, which has lost over a trillion rand and three million jobs to this long, irrational, secretive, brutally hard lockdown.

The DA has long called for the economy to be opened, with hard lockdown replaced by a well-resourced, coordinated testing strategy to suppress the epidemic. Instead, the ANC saw fit to slam the brakes on our economy, even as it kept its looting of the state in top gear.

Economists have estimated that an effective testing strategy would have cost around R20 billion per year, allowing us to adequately suppress the virus. Instead, our economy has lost over a trillion rand, thousands of lives have been destroyed, and millions of livelihoods, while the virus has spread uncontrolled in vulnerable communities.

The government’s rank failure to allocate the necessary resources and skills towards building testing capacity has cost South Africans dearly. This is the price of an incapable state, hollowed out and corrupted by years of cadre deployment, where political patronage guides state appointments, rather than any consideration of ability to serve the public.

South Africa never could afford more than a 3- to 5-week hard lockdown to prepare our hospitals, build testing capacity, drive awareness, and put in place the safety protocols needed to slow the spread. A capable, caring government could have bridged vulnerable households and business across that short divide, saving lives and livelihoods. Instead the ANC government opened up a wide chasm and allowed people and businesses to fall to their deaths.

South Africa’s economy was already in crisis before the virus arrived. Now national insolvency is all but guaranteed, while our economy lies in ruins and millions of people will suffer unnecessarily for years to come. Enough is enough. Let’s get back to work and start rebuilding.

Click here to contribute to the DA’s legal action challenging irrational and dangerous elements of the hard lockdown in court

DA to send copy of our Cheaper Electricity Bill to Eskom CEO following plans to accelerate unbundling

The Democratic Alliance (DA) has taken note of comments by André De Ruyter, the Eskom CEO, that he is hoping to revise and accelerate the initial timetable for unbundling and splitting the beleaguered power utility.

We trust that unlike his predecessors, De Ruyter will keep this energy and momentum and follow through in creating a more stable and independent Eskom. It is for this reason that the DA will send him a physical copy of our Private Members’ Bill (PMB), the Independent Electricity Management Operator (IEMO) Bill also known as the Cheaper Electricity Bill.

A copy of the PMB can be accessed here.

The DA has for years advocated for Eskom to be broken up into two entities, and these calls have fallen on deaf ears as the looting and regression at the entity continued unabated. Had the ANC government looked past petty politics and reached out across the political divide, Eskom’s unbundling could have been at an advance, if not completed, stage.

In December last year, the DA again urged the our colleagues across the political divide to support our IEMO Bill when I presented it before Parliament. The ANC again succumbed to petty politics and failed to reach across the aisle.

We have reached a stage with Eskom where we have to put our political differences aside, as it is in all of our mutual interests to ensure that Eskom gets back to working for all South Africans.

The DA’s IEMO Bill seeks to break Eskom into two separate entities – a generation entity and transmission/distribution entity. Our plan would see a generation entity which is privatized in an effort to break Eskom’s monopoly on the production of energy, and allowing Independent Power Producers (IPPs) to compete on an equal footing in the generation sector.

Well-functioning metros will be able to source energy directly from IPPs and electricity supply will ultimately become more stable, cleaner and cheaper.

On Tuesday, the North Gauteng Division of the High Court referred the City of Cape Town’s application for a Section 34 ministerial determination to allow the City to procure electricity from Independent Power Producers (IPPs), back to the Intergovernmental Dispute Resolution Framework.  This judgment was unfortunate given the fact that during the 5 years since the City’s initial application, the Minister of Energy has consistently failed to respond and decide on the application.

This is another indication of how petty politics is costing the country from reaching an energy-secure future.

The DA calls on André De Ruyter to look past petty politics and engage our the Cheaper Electricity Bill to ensure greater competition in the electricity market, stabilize the electricity grid an make electricity cheaper for all South African consumers.

Click here to contribute to the DA’s legal action challenging irrational and dangerous elements of the hard lockdown in court

Opinion | This is how South Africa became a criminal state

The power struggles in the ANC are so fierce precisely because they mean control of the machinery of cadre deployment to loot on behalf of those connected to the winning faction.

The impact of the social media hashtag #VoetsekANC, and the comments that accompanied it, show that people finally understand we live under a criminal state.

The abuse of Covid-19 relief funds by ANC-linked cadres, raking in huge profit for adding no value (except their political connections), has been the last straw for many South Africans. 

The tenderpreneur feeding frenzy was symbolised by Ace Magashule’s son buying a BMW worth R2-million, a week after it was revealed that his “company” (of which he is sole director) had scored big on a project to provide soap and masks to the Free State provincial government.

Although this is small scale corruption in comparison to, say, the Arms Deal or the Medupi power plant, or the billions raked off from state-owned enterprises, the callousness of looting donor funds provided to protect people from a potentially deadly illness reflects the extent of the ANC’s moral depravity.

The key question no one seems to be addressing is this: How did we manage, in 26 short years of democracy, to fall from the pedestal of international respectability; to become a byword for corruption and criminality?

Why didn’t our magnificent Constitution (often described as one of the best in the world), with all its checks and balances, prevent this? And what about our vigorous opposition, vigilant media, independent judiciary, active civil society, and a raft of Chapter 9 institutions? Why did they all fail to stop the onward march of the state from international poster child for democracy, to corruption and blatant criminality?

The answer is: because the ANC legalised corruption. It did so openly, under our noses, often with the fulsome support of almost all the institutions that should have prevented it, including the international community.

What’s more, these institutions not only failed to protect us – they actually facilitated this downward trajectory.

To get to the root of the problem, we must face the fact that Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE), as conceptualised and implemented by the ANC, made corruption legal and morally acceptable.  Anyone who saw through it, and called it for what it is, was automatically dismissed as “racist”.

In over 100 laws mandating B-BBEE and racial “representivity” throughout the public and private sector, the ANC created a useful camouflage to cover its deployment committee’s work in setting up this looting machine. Cadres were deployed to all institutions of state, controlling multi-billion budgets, dispensing funds and managing procurement systems, with the primary aim of enriching the ANC cadres in business and securing significant “kickbacks” for the party and its network.

Inevitably, before long, competing networks arose. The factions in the ANC are not driven primarily by political or ideological differences, but by intense contestation for control over these funding sources. After 26 years, the South African state has become a web of competing criminal syndicates posing as a government.

And they made fools of the electorate by successfully selling the lie that their form of B-BBEE was synonymous with black empowerment. It was the very opposite. It left SA destitute, with unemployment levels at 30% (and that was before the Covid-19 pandemic).

Some people still believe the ANC’s race laws were motivated by a real commitment to redress. I do not believe that, and never have.

And to be fair, the ANC has been pretty honest about its intentions from the start. 

Right at the start of our democracy, the ANC told us that their National Democratic Revolution (NDR) required “State Capture”. It took 23 years before journalists and most analysts actually took this seriously.

As Joel Netshitenzhe, a leading ANC intellectual, wrote in the ANC mouthpiece Umrabulo in 1996: The aim of the NDR “is extending the power of the ‘National Liberation Movement’ over all levers of power: the army, the police, the bureaucracy, intelligence structures, the judiciary, parastatals, and agencies such as regulatory bodies, the public broadcaster, the central bank and so on”.

The unparalleled revulsion to the extent of looting in the rest of the country is based in the disbelief that the ANC would actually use a national crisis to milk the state – especially the billions borrowed to deal with Covid-19.

The ANC’s deployment policy was aimed at achieving party control of the state. And then, through the state, controlling every other sector of society by introducing stricter and stricter B-BBEE and EEA laws that enabled cadre deployment (and the associated corruption and criminalisation) to reach into every money flow – every stream of funding – in the country.

In the earlier years, the notorious Chancellor House provided a clearing house, allocating tenders and contracts through the state in return for generous donations to the ANC.

But even that filter finally fell away. Now it is straight, personalised corruption to politically linked individuals.

We were warned. As Kgalema Motlanthe said in 2007:

“This rot is across the board. It is not confined to any level or any area of the country. Almost every project is conceived because it offers opportunities for certain people to make money.”

The power struggles in the ANC are so fierce precisely because they mean control of the machinery of cadre deployment to loot on behalf of those connected to the winning faction.

Former Business Day editor, Tim Cohen, described it aptly in 2008 when he wrote: “At issue is the creation of the state in which politicians enter politics not with the intention of public service, but with the intention of getting rich. The result is that political battles are a kind of proxy for deciding not how social issues are to be addressed, but which faction will gain the ability to insert itself into the circulation of money streams.” (Cohen is editor of Business Maverick – Ed)

The only places where this has not occurred, is where the DA governs.

The unparalleled revulsion to the extent of looting in the rest of the country is based in the disbelief that the ANC would actually use a national crisis to milk the state – especially the billions borrowed to deal with Covid-19.

In order to try to prevent this feeding frenzy, the DA went to court seeking a declaratory that B-BBEE criteria could not be used to disburse disaster relief to small businesses that had suffered severe losses under the lockdown. The court dismissed our case. It found that not only was the minister empowered to use B-BBEE criteria, but that she was mandated to do so.

Our application for leave to appeal this judgment was also dismissed, this time with costs. The court found that while the minister was constitutionally and legally compelled to use B-BBEE criteria, she might choose not to give this criterion any weight in allocating the resources.

This single judgment demonstrates the extent to which all the checks and balances against the institutionalisation of corruption and the resulting criminalisation of the state, have failed.

The only way out of this mess is to understand that no democracy can make sustained economic progress without actively striving to become a meritocracy, where people are appointed to positions, or win tenders, on clear, value-adding criteria, not on their colour or their political contacts.

In this context, it is hardly surprising that two sons of ANC Secretary-General Ace Magashule, as well as various close allies, benefited so handsomely from contracts for PPE equipment at significantly inflated prices. As Ace himself said: “There is no law against it.”

He is right.

As Jacob Zuma famously said in his response to allegations of corruption: “I was only applying B-BBEE.”

Indeed, he was. On this basis, his lawyers will be able to put up a good defence, if the ex-president ever gets his day in court.

The system creates every possible incentive for this cynical abuse of black economic empowerment. It isn’t an accident. It was designed this way.

The new appointments to the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) show exactly how it is done: there is the façade, a pretence, of due process. People are invited to apply for board positions that carry key responsibilities. Scores of people put in applications in good faith, often highly competent, experienced and well-skilled for the role. But Luthuli House hands its list to the selection panel, dominated by ANC cadres, and with a little additional input from the ANC Women’s League and the Young Communist League, the predetermined board emerges, almost totally devoid of the skills required to do the job.

A new looting vehicle into the funding stream of R500-million annually that is the NYDA’s budget.

The only way out of this mess is to understand that no democracy can make sustained economic progress without actively striving to become a meritocracy, where people are appointed to positions, or win tenders, on clear, value-adding criteria, not on their colour or their political contacts.

And the only way we can get there is if the voters begin to understand why this is so important, and begin to vote for it.

Otherwise we must stop feigning shock when the looting continues.