ANC’s year-end woes: Debt, legal battles and parliamentary scrutiny

Usually, by mid-December, the whole of SA has about it the air of the end-of-year school breakup. Looming ahead are weeks of sunshine and freedom. Christmas prezzies! New Year celebrations! So, too, with our politics – but not this year.

There’s plenty afoot to keep President Cyril Ramaphosa and his henchmen preoccupied through the festive season break. At least one such crisis is existential for the party itself.

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It owes a single creditor R102.4 million, which with interest compounding daily is now about R150 million, for work done prior to the 2019 general election.

To stave off foreclosure, the ANC secretary-general made a Hail Mary application for intercession to the Constitutional Court on grounds that had already previously been unanimously dismissed by nine different judges in three different courts.

While the application buys some time, a delegation of ANC veterans – people who have largely withdrawn from party affairs and sometimes from party membership but remain inexplicably attached to its survival – along with Ramaphosa, approached the creditor, Ezulwini Investments, and asked it to stay liquidation proceedings briefly.

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The agreed deadline was Tuesday. In a statement that afternoon, Ezulwini’s lawyer said the parties had started “urgent, without prejudice” settlement negotiations.

Shafique Sarlie said Ezulwini trusted that these would be finalised soon, “regard being to the constraints imposed by the imminent annual shut-down and the festive holidays that are upon us”.

Interestingly, it seems that the ANC might just be tight-fisted, rather than empty-pocketed. Sarlie says that the R150 million owed by the ANC is “chump change” for the party.

“We must remember that in their own forensic report, there’s the allegation that they spent in excess of R1.2 billion on the 2019 elections. Now, with inflation etcetera, one expects that they have in their war chest for the coming elections … more than that.”

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While it seems then the ANC will escape financial bankruptcy, these are not great optics for a party that is gearing up for a crunch general election. Not only will any sensible potential service provider want upfront payment but it may trigger some scrutiny of the Byzantine ways in which the party is funded and by whom. Russia? China?

The sale of Phala Phala game to billionaires in the United Arab Emirates?

There are other pressures that detract from the ANC’s festive spirit. Parliament has shown itself to be unusually feisty in the closing days of the year.

In a break from the ANC-dominated oversight committees’ normal practice of rubber-stamping ANC executive actions, the public enterprises committee put its minister, Pravin Gordhan, in its sights.

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Gordhan, for more than a year, has refused point-blank to allow parliament sight of key documents relating to the sale of SA Airways to a private consortium chosen by Gordhan.

He laughably insists the entire process has been “transparent” while simultaneously refusing them access to the documentation, even in camera, on grounds of contractual confidentiality.

But parliament, weary of what ANC chair of the committee Khaya Magaxa describes as a protracted “bloodsucking” process of getting the arrogant Gordhan to comply, is flexing its muscles.

The parliamentarians have chosen the mildest course of action. They have reported Gordhan’s intransigence to the Speaker for a ruling. If that fails, the committee can either issue summons for the documents or refuse to support the deal.

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BusinessLive quotes ANC MP Thokozile Malinga saying defensively: “People are looking at us as if we are lenient. They must know that we have done our best.”

We’ll have to wait for 2024 to see the MPs’ assertions tested. But in the meantime, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.