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He is the man the modern ANC is designed to nurture and protect. Until he’s sent to prison, and maybe after he’s gone, Ace is as ANC as a Madiba-branded coffee mug.
First published in Daily Maverick 168
Have we already sold out the flashy headlines for “Ace” puns? Probably not. After all, ANC Secretary General Elias Sekgobelo “Ace” Magashule is the editorial gift he keeps giving, a source of corruption and bribery that fills column inches like no other South African politician since Jacob Zuma. It is simultaneously clickbait and jailbait, making the man an irresistible attraction in a country desperate to see someone, but especially Ace Magashule, go on a criminal walk.
This week, they delivered a clever (albeit widely telegraphed) plot twist to us. The former Free State warlord has now faced the rarest of unicorns: an arrest warrant issued to a member of the ANC’s top leadership. Ace is accused of lavishly diving into a rand 255 million Free State contract for an asbestos audit, a classic example of bargain basement bidding fraud, the profit of which accrued to several shoddy business partners who, among other first-class consumer goods, they bought virtually all luxury cars from Gauteng dealerships.
(In keeping with the mob theme, one of the beneficiaries, Ignatius ‘Igo’ Mpambani, was killed in Sandton in front of his Bentley. These things are, of course, standard business protocol in South Africa.)
Under the terms set by a meeting of the ANC’s National Anti-Corruption Executive Committee in August, which ratified a resolution adopted by the party at its 2017 Nasrec conference, the order should have been sufficient to trigger Ace’s immediate suspension. And yet, after a meeting of the party’s top six earlier this week, ANC General Treasurer Paul Mashatile claimed the matter had not even been brought up for discussion, while Deputy Secretary General Jesse Duarte insisted where previously “serious legal advice” was necessary. making a determination about the future of Ace Magashule.
While this should serve as a clear example of Ramaphosa’s figurehead status, it is still surprising that the top six appeared so… optimistic. Unlike former president Jacob Zuma, Ace is a man without charisma and even less sympathy. He is gifted with no discernible abilities; drenched in liabilities. And yet it is a cyst that everyone is too terrified to release.
Why are they so afraid?
The answer is not found in the Alanyana Little Skeletons hypothesis: the argument that everyone in the ANC has something above everyone else, thus neutralizing any potential anti-corruption drive on the basis of mutual blame. While this phenomenon is all too real and can launch the ANC into civil war very quickly, that is not why Ace enjoys effective immunity.
Rather, it is because in the political market, the ANC has no competition and does not face possible censorship at the polls. The whole impeachment that raged five years ago?
He went.
The ANC is now an apex predator. The only threat he faces is his own rapacity and the certainty that he will eat himself to death. It already is.
Electoral porridge
Let’s try to break this down. Several weeks ago, the Independent Media Group, under the sharp gaze of Radical Economic Transformation faction media partner Iqbal Survé, prematurely ejaculated a bogus story that “Ace is being arrested.”
The purpose of laundering this misinformation, probably fixed by Ace himself, was to test the terrain for support.
From the shutters of Saxonwold Shebeen leaped the usual zombie with bloodshot eyes and urine stains: Carl Niehaus; MKMVA “Veterans”; The mayor of Ekurhuleni, Mzwandile Masina. The latter, whose tweet from Johnny Walker is perhaps the fastest in the country, is something of a mouthpiece for the RET faction collective of scammers, thieves, murderers, liars, tax hustlers.
Fallen lawyers, minor mafia bosses, lackeys, businessmen, drug dealers and dirty cops.
Created in Ace’s image, or rather, exemplified in facts and perspectives by their Free State godfather’s Standard Operating Procedures, these people are less of a coherent group than members of roving, overlapping criminal families looking for the next score. If they share an ideology, it is that the “neoliberal” Constitution (and its human vicar on Earth, Cyril Ramaphosa) restricts the economic advancement of black Africans residing south of El Limpopo. And as with any interested ideology, this one is not entirely false. But the way the As-holes have solved this problem cannot be described as pro-black or pro-poor. In practice, their incessant theft is as brutal and exclusive as the colonial methods of enriching minorities.
That said, there seems to be an unspoken agreement that Ace is the man from yesterday. If the NPA case stands, a big yes, considering SA’s creaking justice machine that hasn’t been fixed for years, then Ace will extend his lengthy free housing arrangement, but this time in a correctional facility, and not in one of your choice. . As Masina has hinted during one of his Twitter downloads, former Mafia boss Alexandra, Gauteng boss Paul Mashatile, will bridge the “formal” and “informal” economic currents that flow into the fetid swamp of the ANC and lead the party to the post-Ramaphosa era while maintaining the ANC Mafia’s near-monopoly on corruption. Meanwhile, Ace and his followers are free to peddle conspiracy theories and pantomime fight songs outside of a Mangaung courtroom, largely without the certainty of a party officially desperate to shed the cloak of corruption from their ranks. elderly shoulders.
If you are a member of the ANC in good standing, this should be celebrated. Under immense pressure from factions within the organization, along with various law enforcement agencies, opposition politicians, the media and civil society, the party’s mafia sponsorship union is fighting mightily to maintain the integrity of its operations. Ace’s antics in the Free State, be it the Estina debacle, the asbestos audit, or the theft of valuable artwork (among many others), are not, as President Ramaphosa and other stalwarts would have you believe, aberrations.
They are examples of behavior that the modern ANC is designed to nurture and protect. Until he’s sent to prison, and, maybe, after he’s gone, Ace is as ANC as a Madiba-branded coffee mug.
Bum-choice
How glorious it would be if the bastards were eliminated, exclaims the WhatsApp group admin of the Bryanston community.
Yes, but by whom? And with whom would the ANC be replaced?
What electoral miracle would the gods conjure to drive them out of their majority position?
What would a post-ANC South Africa look like?
As things stand, there is no way to imagine or discuss this alternate future, because it remains a complete impossibility. Barring the discovery of a multiverse in which Helen Zille is not radicalized into a white supremacist by Twitter bots and Podbros, and in which the EFF does not create an organized crime syndicate at the Chávez level rather than a political party, the ANC is the only viable national option.
(And don’t play the game of blaming the voters, who are always acting in their own perceived interest. In this case, it’s the relative stability of social subsidies, topped off by nostalgia and the vastness of ANC sponsorship networks.)
This reality was underscored by the results of this week’s super by-elections, in which the main opposition parties were repressed and beaten up by bullies in the schoolyard, including FF +, GOOD, Plaaslike Besorgde Inwoners (uh. ..) and the Tsogang Civic Movement (heard from them?). In New Matjhabeng (Welkom), the composition of the council has returned to what it was before the wonder of the DA during the 2016 municipal elections. Tshwane is once again in the hands of the ANC. Meanwhile, the EFF did not win a single room, including Room 14 (Luthuli Park Seshego) in Polokwane, where the ANC made breakthroughs in Julius Malema’s homeland.
Members of the upper echelons of the ANC, including their advisers, talk a lot about retribution at the polls and how careful they must be to address voter discontent. But just like little kids raging about monsters lurking under their beds, it’s fun to be scared of imaginary ghosts. Three years ago, the Office of the Prosecutor ruled four of South Africa’s five major metropolitan areas, sometimes as poorly as the muppets they were chosen to replace. Now they are reduced to one meter and work on an identity platform that serves white people who a) do not seem to be buying them and b) make up less than 8% of the population. Their political self-immolation has been nothing short of astonishing, but it is a vital factor in spreading impunity for cadres like Ace Magashule, who can now be sure that nothing they do is punishable at the polls, because there is no alternative to their endless corrupt shit.
Meanwhile, the EFF is hampered by the fact that they are supercharged criminals of the ANC variety, except without the historical coverage provided by Madiba and OR Tambo, as well as their principled stance against the country’s now semi-official policy of anti- government. African xenophobia.
At least they get to play as kings in various subways and municipalities, and they delight in the pieces of tenders issued in exchange for their support. But their rise to power is through the ANC, where they have already been reabsorbed, a merger that will be formalized once the Ramaphosa generation steps aside or dies.
What does Ace Magashule have to fear? Nothing but the law, and the law rarely wins in South Africa.
And that’s less threatening when you can use the resources to defend yourself with expensive legal scorched earth tactics, a la Zuma, while reframing the charges against you as “counterrevolutionary” and “politically motivated.”
Ace Magashule is likely to stay with the ANC while he’s not in jail, because he’s the ANC.
The euphoria over his arrest warrant, and the noise that will follow, will do nothing to change the landscape on the ground: there is nothing but the ANC except the ANC. An endless hall of mirrors that leads to the same thing: the majority government.
Is there a fight? Of course. It takes place on the same fronts as always: rule of law, fact-based media, civil society, action on the street.
But for real political alternatives, South Africans cannot remain so complacent.
It’s time to build genuine political alternatives to the ANC, one lonely neighborhood at a time, one independent candidate at a time, until the green, gold, and black wall begins to crumble and the Aces are eliminated. DM168
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