ANC’s handling of the PPE Masuku-Diko saga shows how corruption blurs the lines of state and party



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By Opinion Article publication time9h ago

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By Sipho Mabaso

The reaction of the ANC Gauteng to the metonymic corruption of the EPP demonstrates a confusion between party and state.

It happened on Thursday, July 30, 2020. Two press conferences, one in the morning by the ANC Gauteng, and the other in the afternoon by the prime minister of the ANC-controlled provincial government of Gauteng, to express a decision: the suspension – labeled “Leave of Absence” – of three ANC deployed to state institutions for up to a month, due to alleged corrupt practices, following Sunday Independent reports on the likely manipulation of contracts for the supply of personal protective equipment (PPE ) to inappropriately benefit themselves and their close relationships.

On Sunday September 20, 2020, we still await the publication of the report of the ANC Provincial Integrity Commission of Gauteng on the sanction of the three suspended ANC deployments: Gauteng Health MEC Bandile Masuku and his wife and the official of the Joburg City Loyiso Masuku, and her friend Khusela Diko, spokesperson for President Cyril Ramaphosa, for now.

Protect Diko
Protect Diko and Loyiso Masuku
Gauteng Health MEC’s ​​Dr. Bandile Masuku was caught and is being investigated for his roles in an alleged irregular tender for PPE worth R125 million. Stock Image

The Masuku-Diko Troika is likely to reluctantly recall September 2020 as the spring of many winters, a time they would rather forget, or the ANC, an unsurprising own goal.

The main cause of corruption is the blurring of the boundaries between the party and the state. The two press conferences confirmed this indistinction.

Because the allegations of misconduct and cronyism specifically relate to possible troika malpractice in their respective capacities as government officials, the state president, the prime minister of Gauteng, and the mayor of Joburg are the appropriate public officials. they had some business hosting press conferences on this saga issue to announce the suspension of the troika.

However, we first learned about the suspension of ANC Gauteng, the party. The Gauteng provincial government press conference only came later, like a rubber stamp.

While the sequence of press conferences was intended to demonstrate that the ANC is bent on uprooting endemic embezzlement within its ranks, what it really confirmed was the indifference between the state and the party, and hence the corruption.

Since the past two decades, a relentless omnibus of political corruption scandals has persisted because the ANC has failed to clearly separate the party from the state and thus has provided ample opportunities for its deployments to loot state resources, which demonstrated that corruption is probably the real frontispiece to your rule book.

The decision to suspend the Masuku-Diko troika should have been communicated exclusively by its employers, namely President Cyril Ramaphosa, Gauteng Prime Minister David Makhura and Joburg Mayor Geoff Makhubo, not the ANC Gauteng.

With reference to the Masukus and Diko, ANC Gauteng Secretary General Jacob Khawe, the first to announce the provisional deterrence, indicated that the provincial political party structure applied a uniform sanction that the Masukus, similar to Diko, should take leave of their jobs for up to a month.

Was the troika employed directly by the ANC? No. Herein lies the main reason for rampant corruption.

When public resources destined to allow the State to fulfill its mandate with the citizens are divided among people of high connection within the ANC, through stratagems such as overpricing, cronyism, nepotism and outright banditry, a population increasingly Ignorant must take decisive abstergent action: heed Mandela’s advice on what to do, if and when the ANC does what the NP did. ‘

One hit, no. We develop a new type of citizen: the thinking citizen.

Mabaso is a freelance journalist

The opinions expressed in this document are not necessarily those of Independent Media.



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