Molefe and his band of train robbers were blatant sell-outs

The struggle for freedom in South Africa has not been easily attained. For many, it meant sacrifices by men and women of all colours – some of whom did not live to see Nelson Mandela being inaugurated as the country’s first democratically elected president.

While Mandela and other Rivonia treason trialists languished on Robben Island, there were those that chose an easy way out by accepting the Nationalist Party-led government’s policy of separate development. This meant regarding underdeveloped Bantustans like the Transkei, Ciskei, Bophuthatswana, Venda and KwaZulu-Natal as homelands that symbolised freedom for black people.

These became reserves of labour for mining companies and businesses – a well from which to draw a cheap workforce. Then Bantustan leaders Mangope, Mphephu, Sebe, Buthelezi and Matanzima, lived on handout budgets from their masters in Pretoria. Freedom fighters had coined slogans and songs to refer to them as “sell-outs”.

Now, years into democracy, least did we expect a new kind of a sell-out – the one from those entrusted with the running of the country’s state-owned enterprises – and it comes from within the ranks of the ruling ANC.

The chilling testimony by MNS Attorneys managing director Tshiamo Sedumedi, who jointly authored the damning report into the multibillion-rand graft and capture of Transnet with colleague Mncedisi Ndlovu, tells how trusted ANC-deployed business leaders Brian Molefe, Siyabonga Gama, Thamsanqa Jiyane and others were in 2012 prepared to ditch the hard-won broad-based black economic empowerment (BBBEE).

The waiver of the BBBEE, which was a requirement in the request for proposals (RFP) documents for bidders, was not done to empower a local white-owned company but the foreign-based China South Rail (CSR), with no presence in South Africa.

To borrow the phrase used by Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, what Molefe, Gama and Jiyane did equated to “changing the rules when the game is on”.

I want to take it further: this was a blatant selling out of the gains attained in the struggle for freedom. It was not only these executives selling their souls to the highest bidder, but reversing the gains that Mandela and his people strove to achieve in redressing decades of apartheid in business.

What stopped Molefe, Gama and Jiyane from turning down a bizarre recommendation by Transnet’s cross-functional evaluation team’s recommendation to drop the BBBEE? On principle, we would have expected them to do so.

The MNS report has recommended that Transnet lay corruption charges against Molefe, former chief financial officer Anoj Singh, board subcommittee chairperson Iqbal Sharma, Gupta-associate Salim Essa and others.

The report also recommends that Transnet pursue Molefe to repay money that the company lost due to misleading the board about the cost of another huge tender – the type-1064 locomotives build programme – which ballooned from R38.6 billion to R54 billion, with Gupta-linked companies hugely benefiting.

If this is not selling out, what is a sell-out? No amount of reprimand or tongue lashing will be enough to ensure that what happened at Transnet does not recur.

Brian Sokutu.

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