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A fight for corruption is intensifying within South Africa’s monolithic ruling party, and its outcome could determine whether the continent’s most developed nation prospers or fails.
South Africa has dealt with a level of corruption over the past decade that has progressively slowed growth, bankrupted state-owned companies and emptied institutions. As party members take to the streets to protest against corruption and public outrage grows, President Cyril Ramaphosa is accelerating his anti-corruption campaign in the ruling African National Congress.
With an economy crushed by the coronavirus lockdown and now in its worst state since the end of apartheid, the party’s very survival may be at stake if Ramaphosa fails to deliver on his promise.
Ramaphosa wrote to ANC members in late August saying the party was “accused number 1” in the court of public opinion and then demanded a commitment from its main decision-making committee that officials facing disciplinary and criminal proceedings they must retreat. Pressure is mounting to go ahead with arrests and prosecutions.
“Cyril doesn’t have to worry about stepping on some toes; the public will stand up for him, ”said Matthew Parks, parliamentary coordinator for the South African Congress of Trade Unions, the 1.8 million-member labor group that is a key ally of the president. “What we want from the president is a decision, to put people in prison.”
So far, that has not happened.
The president stripped his defense minister, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, of three months’ payment after she allowed senior ANC officials to accompany her on a formal visit to Zimbabwe, blurring the lines between government and party business. .
On Thursday, the Directorate for Priority Investigation of Crime, known as the Hawks, indicted Angelo Agrizzi, a former executive at the Bosasa services company, and Vincent Smith, a high-ranking ANC politician who oversaw a parliamentary committee on prisons. Agrizzi previously told a judicial commission that Bosasa paid bribes to obtain government contracts in prisons.
Senior government officials were also arrested this week for alleged corruption in a state housing project in the Free State province.
But aside from Zuma, who faces corruption charges that were reinstated after being removed more than a decade ago, and former Security Minister Bongani Bongo, no prominent figures have been detained.
The dilemma for Ramaphosa is that as much as the public supports his fight against corruption, it is within the centennial ANC that the battle is fought.
So far, his ability to act against corruption has been limited by his victory in the party elections in late 2017 that left two key allies of former President Jacob Zuma in the ANC’s six main decision-making bodies, making him It limits your space to act.
With the next ANC elective conference scheduled for 2022, Ramaphosa may need to placate the various factions of the party if he is to serve a second term as president.
The lack of prosecutions has led to further dissatisfaction with the ANC, as testimonies in various commissions of inquiry into corruption have been broadcast almost daily for more than a year.
“I don’t see any new moment when it comes to the ANC, and when it comes to the president, the only thing new is public outrage,” said Ralph Mathekga, political analyst and author of books on South African politics. .
“It is a question of who is arrested; there are people who are disposable. There is still a sense of exercise to save face. “
The extent of the corruption within the party became clear when it was revealed that the husband of Ramaphosa’s own spokesperson had won contracts to supply the government with the medical equipment necessary to combat Covid-19.
ANC Secretary General Ace Magashule was caught up in the scandal when it emerged that his two sons won similar tenders, although they have not been accused of wrongdoing.
South Africa is now in a very different place than many expected when it emerged from the end of apartheid as the so-called “rainbow nation”, a term coined by Archbishop Desmond Tutu in reference to the country’s many ethnicities and popularized by his early black president, Nelson Mandela.
With the economy on the verge of registering its biggest annual contraction in nine decades and 42% of the potential workforce that is unemployed or has stopped looking for work, Ramaphosa has no choice but to act.
The ANC faces voters in a municipal vote next year and general elections in 2024.
“The idea of the ANC losing power is not far-fetched,” said Ntsikelelo Breakfast, professor of political science at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa.
“It is an unsustainable situation; we are stealing from the mouths of our children, the elderly, the sick and the vulnerable, ”said Martin Kingston, vice president of Business Unity South Africa and president of the local Rothschild & Co. unit.
“We are not going to mobilize the capital that is required at the national or international level without comprehensively addressing crime or corruption.”
That’s key, given that Ramaphosa has bet the country’s economic recovery on an unprecedented plan to attract up to R2.3 trillion ($ 137 billion) in private investment in infrastructure over the next decade.
The national monopoly of power is mired in corruption scandals and a debt of 29,000 million dollars, the state arms company cannot pay the salaries and the national airline is insolvent.
The result has been state bailouts that have deepened the country’s debt burden and seen it take out its first loan from the International Monetary Fund, a step the ruling party has strongly opposed in the past.
Until Ramaphosa can carry out a decisive attack on corruption, the economy cannot progress, said Claude Baissac, director of Eunomix Business and Economics Ltd, which advises on political risk.
“For South Africa,” he said, “Ramaphosa’s effort at this time is the last chance.”
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