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President Cyril Ramaphosa wants the Integrity Commission’s reports to be binding as he cleans up the ANC.
After nearly 1,000 days as president of the ANC, President Cyril Ramaphosa finally took the party political wheel after a special ANC meeting to tackle corruption.
While it is usually Secretary General Ace Magashule who communicates party decisions to the public, Ramaphosa took the unprecedented step of holding the August 31 press conference.
Magashule was sidelined and literally silenced (the televised press conference took place on Zoom) when Ramaphosa announced that all party officials facing charges would be forced to stand aside or resign. (Magashule can alter and edit the decisions of the National Executive Committee to suit its agenda as it did with the issue of the South African Reserve Bank mandate.)
Ramaphosa used an arsenal of measures to tackle the corruption that haunts the party and the government he leads. The top-level items are:
- The action on leaders facing criminal charges: Former eThekwini Mayor Zandile Gumede has resigned as provincial MPL; ANC MP Bongani Bongo has confirmed that he will be retiring and provincial party chiefs have asked Nelson Mandela Bay councilor Andile Lungisa to resign.
- Ramaphosa has said that the Integrity Commission will be strengthened and expressed a preference for its findings and report to be binding. These reports are currently recommendations to the party’s NEC and are often ignored by cadres.
- Party leaders must declare their financial interests.
- A policy will be developed to limit ANC leaders and their families from doing business with the state. Magashule caused a mini-crisis when she said that there was nothing to stop this practice when Daily maverick reported that their children had won PPE contracts from the Free State government.
A spring cleaning
The weekend’s special NEC meeting allowed Ramaphosa to do a general cleanup, and the meeting also revealed that he had broad support to do so. The party’s national chairperson, Gwede Mantashe, revealed that NEC member Tony Yengeni, who was reported to have filed a vote of no confidence in Ramaphosa over the weekend, had simply made a “comment.” Mantashe said the “comment” was worthless, as no one else on the party’s national working committee (a smaller part of the 80-member NEC) had endorsed it.
In addition, Ramaphosa ignored the 12-page letter sent to him by former President Jacob Zuma, in which the former leader said that his successor’s strategy was fatally flawed and intended to cover up the corruption of his own administration.
“I am not easy to insult. They say the tallest tree catches the wind, ”said Ramaphosa.
On Twitter, novelist Zakes Mda characterized the moment as “When it comes to the famous letter, I think President Ramaphosa is revisiting Michelle Obama’s playbook to ‘When they go down, we ignore them.” Michelle Obama’s famous phrase about insults is “When they go down, we go up.”
Magashule’s claim that he is being attacked by security officers was met with Ramaphosa’s revelation that he too had faced a similar attack, but that this would not happen in his administration. Both the Minister of Justice, Ronald Lamola, and the Minister of Police, Bheki Cele, have said that there is no truth in the accusations of the secretary general, although he may have referred to the Hawks.
Recently, the World Sunday reported that the Hawks had allegedly tried to get ANC Deputy Mosebenzi Zwane to implicate Magashule in the Estina dairy case. That case concerns the funding of a Gupta family farming project in the Free State that cost hundreds of millions of rand and went terribly wrong. The network is closing in on the perpetrators, as Rebecca Davis reported here.
More arrests in case of fraud related to the Vrede dairy farm and the Department of Agriculture of the Free State
Integrity Commission: the paper tiger to get real teeth?
While Magashule is in office, it will be difficult to make progress on the deeper anti-corruption steps Ramaphosa outlined in his seven-page letter.
That explains why much of the campaign has been transferred to the Integrity Commission, a body that reports to the NEC and is made up of veterans and seniors.
The constitution of the ANC and the terms of reference of the commission give it an ethical weight but not a real power to sanction, since it can only make recommendations to the NEC, on whom the final sanction falls. Ramaphosa said his view is that the commission’s findings should be binding. At the same time, he referred himself (and the issue of how his ANC CR17 presidential campaign was financed) to the body. At the press conference, he revealed that he had been asked to appear before the body before, but that he had requested that it be done once the public protector’s investigation into funding was completed.
Magashule has also been summoned to appear before the Integrity Commission, transferring the action to the body headed by veteran George Mashamba.
Integrity Commission’s summons to Ace Magashule sets the stage for a fierce special ANC NEC anti-corruption meeting
The integrity commissioners are Mashamba (president), Sophie de Bruyn (vice president), Father Smangaliso Mkhatshwa, Cyril Jantjies, Terrence Tryon, Sue Rabkin, Jenny Schreiner, Essop Jassat, Len Rasekgatla, James Nculu, Thandi Lujabe-Rankie, and Dike.
They are all party veterans with a long history in the ANC, but until their powers and functions are clarified, their reports and summons are largely ignored.
Ramaphosa’s stated preference for his findings to be binding has now given him greater stature. The NEC will meet with the commission in order to give it better resources as well.
Is the fight over?
The Magashule faction’s struggle in the ANC has degraded from a hurricane to a spring rain. Speaking of himself in the third person, Ramaphosa said:
“The NEC said that a choreographed campaign against the president will not be successful.”
For now, I could have added. The secretary general has built a powerful office at Luthuli House where Nomvula Mokonyane (who reportedly was part of the weekend campaign with Yengeni and Zuma) and other wounded cadres also work. The charismatic activist has been hurt by the evidence that was brought about her in the Zondo Commission of Inquiry into the state capture. Almost 1,000 days ago, when he was elected president of the ANC in 2017, Ramaphosa said that all he had won was a “beachhead”, defined in battle as a small position from which to mount an attack.
Bosasa Paid For Nomvula Mokonyane’s Big Birthday Party, Witness Says
What this weekend’s special anti-corruption meeting of the ANC has shown is that it has now secured a larger perimeter from which to continue fighting, but that does not mean the war is over. DM
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