kameraad mhambi

South Africa might really be a gansters’s paradise. Glen Anglioti’s evidence before Justice Joffe in the Gauteng supreme court has been fascinating and makes for grand political theatre. How boring British politics seem by comparison.

“…Agliotti has mostly been composed and eloquent, speaking in the same controlled tone about the murder of Brett Kebble and his dislike for Aigner shirts. Casually, he has spoken about his alleged corrupt pact with Jackie Selebi, the man who was until recently commander-in-chief of South Africa’s 150 000-strong police force.

Agliotti could have been lying for three consecutive days about every meeting, dinner party, shopping excursion and cent he gave Selebi.

But assume that he was speaking the truth — that he had the top cop on his payroll for a number of years. What are the implications?

Were we a criminal state where the head of law enforcement was for sale to the highest bidder?

Were ­senior police officers part of a syndicate to protect and further the interests of a self-confessed drug dealer?”

Two further important questions are asked:

“…how deep-rooted is corruption in the South African Police Service and can normal South ­Africans ever be expected to trust the men and women in blue again?

And former president Thabo Mbeki, who protected Selebi at all costs, will have some serious questions to answer if the court finds Selebi guilty.”

Kameraad Mhambi also found the fact that Gerrie Nel, the state prosecutor, is described as “not nice” by Agliotti as rather funny.

In another good piece of journalism we learn that there’s a backlash looming against the ascended left inside the ANC. Billy Masetla is the first senoir ANC NEC member to speak out:

“He singled out SACP boss Blade Nzimande as the main architect behind the left’s socialist agenda within the party, saying he found it strange that Nzimande had abandoned the SACP to join the Cabinet and was now trying hard to influence the direction of the ANC.

“For example, on the issue of expensive cars for ministers, comrades wanted to respond to Cosatu but had to retreat because they are not sure of the backlash…

The problem … is that JZ [Zuma] was carried so much by the alliance partners to … where he is.

“He initially had little support in the ANC itself but [the alliance partners] pushed for him. That has compromised the movement because now we have to carry them, whatever we do.”

Stirring stuff. Were set for another titanic battle for control of the ANC. Which side will Zuma choose, if any?

In the same article Julius Malema disagrees.

“”I do not think there is any dominance of the left within the ANC,” he told the M&G, saying rather that there is “openness among comrades”.

He said Cosatu and the SACP were raising critical and substantial issues.”

Malema is the subject of an in depth look at his background in the third piece I want to draw your attention to. It clear that Malema is far more infuential than many have thought. The article is excellent and important. South Africans need to understand the breeding ground for the Malema phenomena.

“People understand the anger in what he is saying,” says writer Jabu Ngwenya, author of I Ain’t Yo’ Bitch, a recently published novel about the experience of young people in South Africa.

“I admire him. He’s got the balls to stand up and speak his mind.””

Malema was feisty from a young age.

“One weekday in the late 1990s, as schoolchildren went about their classroom business, a lone teenage boy stood at the corner of Landros Mare Street and Hospital Road in Polokwane, holding up a placard, writes Mmanaledi Mataboge. He was protesting against the late delivery of stationery at schools, corporal punishment and “ineffective” school principals. Within minutes, he was joined by hundreds of schoolchildren.

The boy was Julius Malema and his solitary protest, which gained such rapid momentum, signalled one of the ANC Youth League president’s precociously early steps on the road to crafting a career in politics.”

Three excellent pieces of Journalism and they are all from the Mail & Guardian.

The Mail & Guardian is a huge asset to South Africa. It has a proud history for revealing some of the worse excesses of apartheid, during the late 80’s and early 90’s. since then its always been proudly independent, but the quality of the reporting was’nt always up to scratch.

It improved a lot under its previous editor and now its got a new editor and its improving still. It seems to now be going through another purple patch. The fact that politics in South Africa are now much more open than in the stifling Mbeki era helps of course.

The only article that I would like to mention today that is not from the Mail & Guardian is from Politics Web, by  Mphuthumi Ntabeni. The subject is Julius Malema and his supporters:

“To be a true revolutionary you must keep quiet even when the country rots away in a funereal pace. You must laud backroom fixers and backstabbers with no principle and ideas, who believe in nothing beyond their own re-election and power. You must believe in populist flash-in-the-pan rhetoric. You must call public expenditure used to mobilize political support deliverance. If you don’t you don’t ‘get nice things’, as Malema will tell you.”

Do these three themes, the gangsters in government, the left seeking to take over, and the rise Julius Malema have anything in common? Yes, I think they do.

All these are about the inability of the government to govern and because of that – the inability to better the lives of poor South Africans.

Related deployments:

1. Julius Malema is obsessed with whites
2. Julius Malema vs Deborah Patta – video interview
3. Birds of prey: Terror and Julius take to Twitter