Gordhan goes Gonzo for Zondo

Let’s get one thing clear before we lurch our way through the first day of Private Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan’s testimony to the Zondo Commission of Inquiry into State Capture: President Cyril Ramaphosa’s admission that his ANC presidency campaign accepted R500,000 from the firm formerly known as Bosasa is a really big deal. It weakens the scaffolding on which his presidency is premised, and it makes him look like a plutocrat who is funded by other plutocrats in order to extend the tender-based plutocracy that is the ANC.

Which is entirely accurate, of course.

The Business Day/Netflix 10-episode limited series, entitled Ramaphosa The Reformer, hits a factual wall: Ramaphosa’s son, Andile, acted as a front so that he could claim bogus “consultancy” work from Bosasa, a security services firm with deep ANC roots. (Consultancy being the single worst word ever introduced to the South African economic lexicon, while the term “services” is used loosely.) Black monopoly capital joined white monopoly capital in backing Ramaphosa, although I’d wager that Bosasa similarly donated to the rival Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma faction. But that’s a story for another day.

Bosasa, now Dr Evil-ishly renamed African Global Operations, has a long history of bribing its way into state contracts. Its CEO, Gavin Watson, an old Port Elizabeth rugby boykie, is described in the press as being “politically connected” — which is not actually a thing. “Politically connected” means that he pays off politicians in exchange for favourable treatment come tender time. Indeed, Bosasa wrote a big cheque for Zuma’s 73rd birthday celebrations; they bribed Department of Correctional Services officials with houses and cars to win prison tenders. They are both the ANC’s heart and its asshole — a hybrid organ that drives the organisation and serves as its noisome end-point.

No clean politician with a brain would go anywhere near a “donation” from Bosasa. But perhaps Andile Ramaphosa does not have the clear-eyed smarts so often attributed to his father. Indeed, perhaps his father’s minders aren’t as smart or as honest as they promise German investors they are. Let’s put it this way: on a scale of 1 to 10 — 10 being the dumbest — how dumb do you have to be to inveigle yourself with Gavin Watson? (Spoiler: 10) And it’s not just that Bosasa are corrupt — which they most certainly are. They also happen to be shitty, soulless, capitalist-terrorists. They exemplify the fact that in Tenderistan, most state services are essentially privatised. Given that regulation and policing are nearly non-existent, this means that tender beneficiaries like Watson make money according to their own rules.

To put things in perspective: A state is ultimately judged on one important criterion — how it treats the people the law places in its care. South African prisons are a horror show, and African Global Operations helps keep them that way. Correctional Services are not obligated to maintain a franchise of Radisson Blus, but they are constitutionally mandated to run their operations in a humane manner. They don’t. Gavin Watson profits from their dereliction. A portion of those profits are handed over to politicians, Cyril Ramaphosa very much included.

And who is Ramaphosa’s primary lieutenant in the fight against corruption? The Han Solo to his Luke Skywalker? The Tonto to his Lone Ranger? The Hall to his Oates?

Pravin Gordhan, of course, who has always had much to say about corruption. But not nearly enough, as it turns out.

* * *

Outside Commission headquarters danced the BLEFF crowd, a small combo of Economic Freedom Fighters and Black First Land First paid performers who mimicked the lost art of protest. (Their reuniting, after a break-up that dates back to around the legendary State of the Nation address of 2015, brings to mind a Mexican telenovela that has run out of ideas, inspiration, and cocaine). They were in service of Indian masters far away, denouncing Gordhan as grandmaster of an Indian cabal.

Let’s just say that African nationalism has somewhat lost its way.

Inside Commission headquarters: the man variously accused of being the cleanest in South Africa, the leader of a capitalist death-cult, the future Saviour of all that is Good and Pure, and Prime Minister of the Republic of Nothing.

Gordhan, of course, is none of the above. In many ways, the former chemist remains a chemist — a conjuror of painkillers and placebos alike. Gordhan is not a huggable character, not a guy that a young cadre downs flagons of Blue Label with prior to a night at The Grand.

Narrow passion. Quiet anger. All business. And so too was the opening suite of his testimony.

The affidavit he submitted to the commission was leaked some weeks ago, but his actual testimony buried former president, Jacob Zuma, under 30 feet of radioactive-proof concrete. It’s difficult to know where to focus, but how about this: the infamous nuclear deal. Zuma established a national nuclear energy executive co-ordinating committee (NNEECC) around 2011. Regarding this scam, Gordhan’s affidavit states that, “following the establishment of the NNEECC, it was evident that former president Zuma wished to procure the 9.6 GW of nuclear power-generating capacity for South Africa from Russia. Such a transaction has been estimated to cost in excess of R1-trillion, if not more.”

South Africans are addicted to heroes, and for many, Gordhan represents the sort of Übermensch that Adrian Gore’s Discovery behavioural bank would advocate as the perfect figurehead. (Parenthetical question: what in the Jesus is a “behavioural bank”? This is some next-level Black Mirror terrifying Orwellian nightmare that could only emerge from the primordial South African ooze.) But in the preamble to Gordhan’s testimony were some of the most remarkable words ever spoken in South African public life, and not just because of their inherent integrity, but also because of their inherent blindness.

[Our] Constitution commits us to uplift the poor, as do the objectives of the ANC – to eliminate inequalities, promote economic development for the benefit of all and to create a society in which social justice and economic emancipation occur within a far-reaching transformation of our society.

This transformation is multi-dimensional: political, institutional, social, economic and cultural. But transformation and transitions also can unleash the forces of greed, corruption and new means of exploitation.

So participation in government as an ANC cadre is not just a technical or technocratic role, but one aimed at achieving the vision and goals of our leaders, such as Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Lillian Ngoyi, Bram Fischer and others.

In contrast, State Capture and corruption are consequences of the unleashing of the worst human instincts – self-enrichment, neglect of the higher mission, placing one’s self-interest before the community’s interests.

Reflecting on the period 2009 to 2017 now, it would appear that I was witness to events, some of which are set out below, and it seems an unwitting member of an Executive in the earlier part of this period, which was misled, lied to, manipulated and abused[.]

Ja but that’s wonderful. Except that it places the blame on corruption alone, and that just won’t do. Gordhan cannot envision himself outside of the ANC and its mission — a mission of which he has acted variously as a soldier, a commander, and a virtual prime minister. It’s a mission that has failed. Gordhan doesn’t understand how that failure must be attributed not to just dishonesty, but also to lack of imagination — to a rut that allows men like Gavin Watson to keep paying off ANC wannabe-presidents like Cyril Ramaphosa, who wouldn’t know how to be straight if the life of the country depended on it.

Which it does.

State Capture “places the interests of your puppet ahead of your people”, said Gordhan. Another great line. His gonzo performance dropped zinger after zinger, and good for him. But while this will be difficult to top, it still doesn’t expose the secret, built-in corruption that plagues any democracy in the age of late capitalism. (Which is not capitalism so much as collusionism). The rot is in the air we breathe. Microbes of corruption circle everywhere, like tiny shit-flakes during a cholera outbreak, so small that we can no longer discern them even with the most sophisticated of forensic mechanisms. They constitute the entirety of the South African political atmosphere, and the only good news is that we’re not alone in this. The rot is pandemic. We’re bit players in a vast global drama.

And so it’s not that the Zondo Commission’s remit is too narrow, that it needs to go back to 1652 or to apartheid. Similarly, the PR campaign waged by the amaSandton, which pitches the pearly white private sector against the tenebrous public sector, is nothing but empty marketing bafflegab. But what Gordhan plus the Bosasa scandal reminds us is that the system needs to be overhauled, in its entirety, with none of the present conventions remaining in place. If this must be stopped — and it must — a revolution is necessary.

The scale of Zupta larceny is staggering, but it remains a symptom, not the disease. The disease is money in politics. This country, led by Ramaphosa, either strips away the disclosure protections for both parties and corporations when it comes to political funding, or the Zondo Commission is another waste of time. We need to go forward into a period of relentless transparency. Is Gordhan — who cannot seem to abandon the ANC — ready to relinquish the disclosure protocols that shield his allies from innocent R500,000 donations from the likes of Bosasa? I’ve never heard him say so.

As the academic Catherine Nichols recently noted:

“The ostensibly moral face-off between good and evil is a recent invention that evolved in concert with modern nationalism – and, ultimately, it gives voice to a political vision, not an ethical one.”

The political vision that Gordhan (and, by extension, Ramaphosa) iterates is as bankrupt: the ANC is so rotten that the corpse cannot be resuscitated. The ethical vision?

That sound you hear is Gavin Watson and African Global Operations locking down another tasty state prison tender. DM