Zuma’s hold over ANC’s top brass boggles the mind

Not so long ago President Jacob Zuma blatantly admitted that he knows who is on the take within his party. That he doesn’t fire those people or bring charges against them exposes the president’s motives.

He cultivates “holds” over people so they can be forever loyal to him. Many in the party have fallen into his trap to the extent that they can no longer stand up for what is honourable and right.

Those who are “on the take” are not only the ones who steal taxpayers’ money, but it includes those who are the beneficiaries of the state’s largesse through all kinds of rewards in cash and kind.

“It is our time to eat” has become a party slogan that drives the greed, and it is this noose that is strangling the party and is the reason why all votes of no confidence in the president have failed.

There is a long list of deployed cadres who have benefited from financial resources, all manner of perks, tenders, and kickbacks from corporations. Minister Faith Muthambi claims that the R42 million spent on luxury cars is a necessity – they are the “tools of the trade” – in Marxist terms “their means of production”. Problem is, politicians produce nothing. They are the ultimate consumers of the money that workers earn from a hard day’s work.

Unlike politicians who have more recesses than any other in the world, their productivity is not on a par with South Africa’s working classes. If they were, education, health, unemployment and poverty would improve. As things stand, they can’t even drive the National Development Plan.

Back to Zuma and his deployed cadres. In his long term of office, he has deployed, redeployed and re-redeployed friends who have become enemies. Desperate to fire Pravin Gordhan and Mcebisi Jonas (which has now happened), as the ultimate act of revenge for protecting the Treasury from Zuma and his predators, he is very much between a rock and a boulder.

These two men brazenly undermined his grand plan not only to own and control the economy, but also to reward his dear carpetbagger friends from India.

ANC cadres are allowing this family access to our family silver with their eyes wide shut. And even if they oppose it, they seem helpless from preventing the looting of the state coffers.

Enter Brian Molefe. He with a chequered past, was probably best qualified to replace Gordhan. No fool, and one of the few with financial qualifications from prestigious institutions which includes Universities of London, Harvard and Wharton Business School, he willingly allows Zuma to use him at a time when the president’s demise is imminent.

Mega-wealthy (owner of properties worth R31.1 million) and once occupying one of the most powerful positions in the country as the head of the Public Investment Corporation, why would Molefe be Zuma’s useful idiot?

His stint at Eskom ruined him as revealed by the former public protector’s State of Capture report that caused his resignation. Bought for life, he could not escape his Faustian pact with Zuma and the Guptas. In fact, all leading members of Luthuli House are entangled in the web Zuma has woven so skilfully to keep them in subservience.

That they could allow a man they despise so deeply to entrap them boggles the mind.

Perhaps even Zuma baulked at the reaction he would have faced in appointing Molefe, and so instead went with the relatively safer choice of Malusi Gigaba.

FILE PICTURE: Rhoda Kadalie, anti-apartheid activist, making a speech in Athlone.

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