The most fundamental principle and lesson to be learnt from the ruling of the Constitutional Court on President Jacob Zuma and Nkandla is for South Africans to never again allow the ANC to elect a polluted person to lead them.
Our point of departure from now on must be to fight to ensure that we amend this short-coming which allows a handful of ANC bootlickers within the National Executive Committee of the ANC to decide the president for more than 50 million people.
I, for one, believe that the president of the country must be elected directly by the people, in the same fashion that the United States does. The problem in allowing a handful of people to decide our destiny is that we shall forever receive rotten eggs. And these rotten eggs will contaminate all and sundry in their quest to want to loot the National Treasury, as we have seen in Zuma’s administration.
I have said it before and I am going to say it again, the ANC will never take any form of punitive action against their puppet master because he butters their bread – or simply put, they are in cahoots in the looting spree as exemplified in the court ruling relating to the actions of the Department of Public Works. I believe that department is run by nothing but a stooge, simply put there to facilitate the looting.
This is precisely what the Guptas are attempting to do with their principle of ‘State capture’. They want to put puppets in those targeted departments so that ‘thy will be done’, as has happened in the mining industry after kicking out Ngwako Ramatlodi. The Guptas now own and control a number of strategic mines in the country. They almost won the National Treasury after the kicking out of Nhlanhla Nene.
They also wanted to siphon off National Treasury funds to feed their NewAge breakfast meetings and win more State tenders and acquire various State-owned business entities. This element of ‘State capture’ is nothing new in Africa – it has happened in Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia, as well as to some extent in Tanzania. ‘State capture’ allows the Guptas to shout ‘jump’, and the poor stooges would ‘cry how high, master?’.
The elements of ‘State capture’ and the voting into power of contaminated leaders has been the folly of all African countries. It tends to create a concept that looting the National Treasury is a route to quick riches, hence, you get all these crazy people queuing up with AK47s shooting governments out of power and shooting their way into power.
And you wonder why there are always civil wars in Africa – people simply want to get into power so they can loot the National Treasury.
So, once bitten twice shy should be the most fundamental wake-up call for all South Africans. We allowed the ANC to impose Zuma on us when the warning signs were written all over his face. We allowed him to become our number one citizen with a string of more than 700 cases of corruption, fraud, tax evasion and racketeering hanging over his head – and this is what we got, the Zuptas.
