[Marxism] Zuma's election & the ANC- my reply to Patrick Bond's second reply.

[Patrick Bond]

noah tucker wrote:
 > Argentina's success following its actions in 2002 (& 2003) is very 
encouraging, and you are absolutely right to suggest that other 
countries can learn much from this
 > experience. However, it is simply not true, as you seem to imply, 
that Argentina now has no relationship with international capitalist 
finance.


For someone devoted to the left info world, comrade Noah, you are going 
to have to become much better at quoting people precisely, if only so 
that you don't waste your valuable time tracking down and rebutting 
things that are not at issue. There is nothing in my writing to endorse 
Argentine int'l financial relations 'now' or in 2007 or at any time 
since the 2002 default and recovery.

What I *actually* said in my initial reply was this: "The arguments in 
the books - which I'm happy to email you or anyone who wants them 
(pbond at mail.ngo.za) - endorse the cases of Malaysia in September 1998 
(exchange controls) and Argentina in 2002 (default), as examples of 
strong, feasible action against international financiers, taken to 
protect the local economy." And then again in the next exchange I wrote: 
"Argentina 2002? Read some about their experience defaulting and 
recovering without recourse to new foreign loans (aside from trade 
finance), at www.cepr.net ".

I didn't say anything about post-2002 developments in Argentina, for the 
simple reason that the Kirshner regime lost the initiative and turned 
elite-reformist. There are plenty of sources on this, such as 
www.jubileesouth.org (anything by Beverly Keene).

noah tucker wrote:
 > ...
 > But either way, the ANC is a mass movement which includes the trade 
unions, the communist party, and many thousands of activists among the 
poor & the working class. The mass base of the movement has changed the 
leadership because of the previous leadership's submission to 
neo-liberalism. As Zuma himself has emphasized, the ANC has a collective 
leadership.
 > You think that the best that can be hoped for following Polokwane is: 
"a bit of a wild time in which people will make some advances because of 
their renewed confidence". > Renewed confidence is very a good thing, 
and so would be 'some advances'. My view is that more is possible- but 
by no means guaranteed.

With a few noble exceptions, the new 'collective leadership' of the ANC 
is a sorry lot, incorporating a variety of scam artists (several 
parliamentarians convicted of travel fund fraud, including the new ANC 
chairperson who got her driver's license through bribery and 
corruption), ex-cons (Winnie Madikizela-Mandela who was #1 vote 
recipient for the ANC's national executive), neoliberals (the former 
minister of privatisation, Jeff Radebe, was #2), and AIDS genocidaires 
(the current health minister, an Mbekite, is still on the national 
executive, as is Mbeki himself). The whole top layer of this party is 
corruption-ridden, thanks to its 'Chancellor House' fundraising 
adventures and a massive arms deal with bribery now under investigation 
by French, British and German firms, probably reaching Mbeki and 
certainly Zuma. This is the crowd you give renewed credibility to on 
your website and several listserves. It's absolutely pathetic, as you 
can read for yourself below.

Setting aside this crew's venality, in a larger political sense, it 
would be good if you distinguished between a reformist reform - which 
some neoliberal nationalists will concede under pressure - and a 
non-reformist reform, which is what the independent left is fighting for 
here. In the ANC's Reconstruction and Development Programme of 1994 (for 
which I served as one of four final editors), we thought we had lots of 
non-reformist reforms; naturally these were the components of the 
programme that were ignored by all the ministers, especially the two 
leading SACP ministers (Slovo in housing and Maharaj in transport).

We also witnessed a huge upsurge in confidence in mid-1994 with wildcat 
strikes, land invasions, building occuptions and the like, which Mandela 
quickly deflated. If you stay at it, what you will learn more about, 
from both SA and Zimbabwe, is that these nationalist parties - 
especially ones fundamentally committed to neoliberalism because of 
their class basis - quite readily turn to 'talk left' rhetoric so they 
can 'walk right' on nearly all major policies. Fanon's Wretched of the 
Earth (Chapter Three) sets out the basic formula. You can find it on the 
web easily enough, and I hope you give it some thought next time you 
report on matters South African, comrade.

***

www.mg.co.za

Dangerous, covert liaisons
Sam Sole

21 December 2007 11:59

What a country. Both our president-in-waiting and our police chief 
separately face the prospect of corruption and racketeering charges; our 
previous national director of public prosecutions was accused of once 
being an apartheid-era spy and all but hounded out of office for 
pursuing the first investigation; our current national director was 
suspended by the president for pursuing the second; our intelligence 
service boss is put on trial for playing politics and accuses his 
political masters of doing the same; our dominant party raises 
R907-million in funding over five years, but won’t say where from and 
will not disclose the details of its R1,75-billion worth of investments.

South Africa’s recent history is hardly comprehensible without 
deconstructing the impact of covert networks of influence that find 
expression in the overlap of state intelligence, political funding and 
organised crime.

Consider the following description: “I observed a shadow area, a zone of 
contact between legality and illegality, between the licit and the 
criminal, between clean money and dirty money, between honest people and 
out-and-out crooks. It is a no man’s land dominated by a demi-monde of 
intermediaries of every kind, of corrupters and corrupted enjoying 
complete impunity for laundering money in investments which are clean, 
safe and profitable.”

Sound familiar? The words are those of French MP Francois d’Aubert, 
chairman of an Anti-Mafia Commission that investigated the pollution of 
the French and Italian political systems by an alliance of Italian 
intelligence, the Mafia and a secret political society.

The comment is quoted by Stephen Ellis, the former editor of the 
influential Africa Confidential, in his seminal study Africa and 
International Corruption: The Strange Case of South Africa and Seychelles.

Ellis argues that the Cold War “encouraged the development of relations 
between crime, politics and intelligence activity”, largely because 
“secret services and politicians who purported to be acting for the 
greater good of the West were prepared to tolerate or even promote 
politicians of dubious morality and do deals even with professional 
criminals, particularly in the Third World but also in the 
industrialised world”. In South Africa, the struggle to maintain 
apartheid — and to bring it down — produced a similar dynamic.

The apartheid security services set up hundreds of front companies as 
part of a “total strategy” of counter-revolution, pursuing sanctions 
busting, buying international influence and raising covert funding via 
trade in commodities such as ivory and rhino horn, among other illegal 
activities.

The liberation movement, evidence suggests, engaged in smuggling, 
car-theft and money laundering. It promoted individuals who are 
comfortable operating outside the law, some of whom were little more 
than gangsters.

The networks created on both sides during that struggle, and the 
liaisons they forged with the criminal underworld, have survived into 
the democratic era — and underpin much of the turmoil we have seen since 
1994.

And now the exigencies of the National Democratic Revolution provide a 
similar justification for the same sorts of dangerous liaisons.

South Africa’s situation is not unique. As Ellis points out: “Political 
parties in modern advanced democracies, it seems, are permanently in 
search of funds in excess of what they can obtain from domestic party 
members or sympathisers. The competition for political power is such 
that they may be prepared to seek such funds from unorthodox or illicit 
arrangements with business, or with their own secret services, or a 
combination of the two.”

To some extent this dynamic is simply more overt in South Africa. That’s 
because our long history of covert activity, both by the apartheid state 
and by the liberation movements, has embedded such networks strongly in 
political and business culture — and because the demise of apartheid and 
the rise of conflict within the ANC have both generated greater than 
usual visibility of such networks and processes.

Let’s take the arms deal.

Internationally, numerous examples suggest that the defence trade is 
used almost routinely as a vehicle for covert party funding and the 
creation of unaccountable funds that can be used by political barons and 
intelligence agencies.

The recent revelation that BAE Systems paid more than $2-billion to 
prince Bandar bin Sultan as part of a British-Saudi arms deal is less 
about corruption than the creation of a giant slush fund.

In a tiny insight as to the kind of things that money was used for, we 
know from Bandar’s biographer that, on the instructions of prime 
minister Margaret Thatcher, he paid $10-million to an Italian political 
party to try to influence the outcome of the Italian elections.

The South African deal was little different. Significantly, it was 
managed by a combination of apartheid-era sanctions busters — Tony 
Geogiades, Llew Swan and the John Bredenkamp organisation, to name three 
— and ANC notables, including Thabo Mbeki, Joe Modise and Mendi Msimang.

The spoils that were to flow also emerged as a site of contestation 
between competing tendencies in the ANC — Mbeki’s alliance of 
technocrats and African nationalists facing off against the grouping of 
communists, militarists and ethnic entrepreneurs that coalesced around 
the figurehead of Jacob Zuma.

It is worth remembering that Zuma is fundamentally a political project 
of the Shaik family and his very political survival was partly built on 
Schabir Shaik’s corrupt relationship with the French arms company 
bidding for part of the arms deal.

On the other hand, it is also worth asking whether the political 
protection Jackie Selebi has enjoyed does not derive from his 
involvement in and knowledge of the funding of the Mbeki faction of the 
party.

The danger to our democracy is clear. As Ellis notes: “The networks thus 
established may become independent of their political instigators, 
creating power blocs with enduring interests which survive changes of 
regime in, for example, Rome, Paris or Pretoria.”

It is conflict within the ANC that has fortuitously exposed many of 
these networks. We dare not let them regain either respectability or 
anonymity

***

Chancellor House should concern us all
Hennie van Vuuren: COMMENT
18 December 2007 11:59

Understanding the role of the ANC treasurer general, and the books that 
he will hand to his successor, sheds light on the course of the ruling 
party. The manner in which the ANC treasury operates sadly has come to 
represent the worst feature of modern democracy: the secret embrace 
between money and politics, where two is company and the electorate 
makes an unwelcome crowd.

A decade ago Mendi Msimang inherited a political party that was nearly 
broke and about to lose its rainmaker, Nelson Mandela. Msimang’s was an 
unenviable inheritance. Makhenkesi Stofile, Msimang’s predecessor, by 
his own admission did not have the financial skills for the job. 
Moreover, the position itself was undergoing transformation. Until the 
early 1990s the ANC received most of its income from the Nordic 
countries, Sweden in particular. As the ANC prepared to govern, suitors 
lined up to fund the party. Some wished to support the ANC in its final 
push for liberation. Others, of course, saw money buying them access.

While these might be the ways of neoliberal democracy, they can be 
regulated to an extent through disclosure, ceilings on expenditures and 
donations, and prosecution for those who break the law. Where this 
doesn’t happen the impact is profound. The Bush government’s torrid 
affair with corporate America is one example; South Africa, where 
private funding of political parties remains unregulated, is shaping up 
to be another.

With the backing of sections of the ANC leadership, Msimang has shrouded 
the party’s finances in secrecy. According to a report in Financial Mail 
earlier this year, Msimang “put a few slides up on a screen … but no 
audited statements were presented” to delegates at the ANC’s 2002 
conference in Stellenbosch.
Of course many opposition parties, including the DA, self-righteously 
denounce corruption while embracing the same secretive methods. But the 
ANC is the ruling party and its donors have the most to gain from 
leverage. What is it that Msimang does not want the world to see?
There is little doubt that the big businesses that kept white politics 
afloat under apartheid are doing the same today, with new players who 
wish to “support democracy” in the Brett Kebble mould.

The most fundamental shift in ANC funding directed by Msimang in the 
past few years has seen party interests seemingly conflate with state power.

Stofile’s comments, as reported in a 1997 interview with The Star, 
provide a useful reference point: “There were a number of options,” he 
said. “One was the National Party option, which formed companies and 
gave them contracts that produced a steady basis of income. We didn’t 
think that would be a good thing to do. We then considered joint 
ventures and also thought that they would not be viable and would be the 
source of conflict.”

Only 10 years later it appears that Msimang is steering the ANC towards 
the so-called National Party option.

Recent reports in the Mail & Guardian suggest that the activities of ANC 
front company Chancellor House should concern every South African, not 
least ANC members.

First uncovered in research undertaken by the M&G and the ISS Corruption 
and Governance Programme last year, Chancellor House was reported to 
benefit from a joint venture giving it access to untapped manganese 
fields worth R7billion.

Next came the announcement, early this year, of a Russian fertiliser 
deal valued at R14billion. The M&G’s most recent exposé links it to the 
massive Medupi power station tender, from which Chancelllor House could 
receive as much as R3billion in turnover.

When these contracts were awarded, the links between Chancellor House 
and Luthuli House were public knowledge. How could senior bureaucrats 
and politicians not have been aware of a very real conflict of interest? 
Allegations of bribery in the arms deal are one thing, but the 
criminalisation of sections of the state would be something altogether 
more dangerous.

It is unclear whether the profits accrued by Chancellor House will 
ultimately benefit the ANC or sectional interests within the party. Such 
funds, if not clearly accounted for, are open to abuse in internal 
battles or to provide patronage.

All this underlines the importance of regulation of party funding. It 
also speaks to the responsibilities of the new treasurer general to be 
elected at Polokwane. Can both nominated candidates -- Phumzile 
Mlambo-Ngcuka and Mathews Phosa -- handle the difficult mix of managing 
money and retaining integrity?

Delegates might wish to consider the words of the late ANC treasurer 
general, Thomas Nkobi, who warned in 1991: “We [the ANC] have the 
national responsibility and duty to create and sustain alternative, 
reliable sources of funds and the only sources that will be reliable are 
those sources that come from our people.”

If not the people, then who -- and at what cost?

Hennie van Vuuren heads the Institute for Security Studies corruption 
and governance programme in Cape Town

***

Scorpions reveal new Zuma evidence

Mail & Guardian Online Reporter and Sapa | Johannesburg, South Africa
15 December 2007 12:50



New allegations against African National Congress (ANC) deputy president
Jacob Zuma have been included in an affidavit before the Constitutional
Court, South African Broadcasting Corporation news reported on Friday.



Johan du Plooy, a senior special investigator for the National
Directorate of Public Prosecutions (known as the Scorpions), said
investigations had uncovered substantial new evidence against Zuma, who
is due this weekend in Polokwane for the ANC's 52nd national congress.



Jacob Zuma told the public broadcaster: "Allegations don't mean the man
is guilty until the court says the person is guilty. Whether people are
worried about it or not is a different matter. If I'm taken to court and
the judge says 'Zuma, we find you guilty' as I walk out of court I will
say to the ANC 'I'm stepping down'".



The affidavit is in response to an application to the Constitutional
Court by Zuma and French arms company Thint to appeal the Supreme Court
of Appeal's ruling that warrants for search-and-seizure raids obtained
by the Scorpions were valid.



Raids

Zuma and his lawyer Michael Hulley's premises were raided by the
Scorpions on August 18 2005. The raids were carried two months after
Judge Hilary Squires convicted Zuma's former confidante and financial
adviser Schabir Shaik on two counts of corruption and one count of fraud
in the Durban High Court.



The corruption charges related to Shaik's attempt to solicit a R500
000-a-year bribe from French arms manufacturing giant Thales
International (formerly Thomson CSF) for Zuma.



Mauritian documents



The state is also seeking documents from Mauritius, including the 2000
diary of Alain Thetard, the former chief executive of Thales
International's local subsidiary Thint, which reportedly details a
meeting in March 2000 between him, Zuma and Shaik.



In papers filed with the court in November, Hulley said said the
search-and-seizure warrants gave permission for documents related to the
investigations into Zuma to be seized, but that the problem was the
warrants never "remotely described" the investigation.



Such a vagueness in the warrants "thus allowed on the face of it, a
general ransacking of the premises targeted".



Hulley went on to point out that the "judicial process" was equally
divided over the raids.



"The court of first instance [the Durban High Court] and the two judges
in the SCA found for the applicants herein; three judges of the SCA
found for the respondents.



"The outcome in the SCA has simply demonstrated that the issues are
contentious and of principle. It is thus clear also that there are
reasonable prospects of success on appeal."



Affidavit details payments

The Shaik trial uncovered 229 payments to Zuma.



The affidavit said the number of payments now stands at 354. This means
the full amount received by Zuma was R4-million, compared to the
R1,2-million uncovered in the Shaik trial.



The Shaik trial heard of four instances in which Shaik benefited from
his relationship with Zuma. The new evidence suggested an additional 28
instances, bringing the number to 32 instances.



The affidavit further claims that Zuma fraudulently failed to declare
this income to the South African Revenue Service. The affidavit also
alleged that Zuma received funds from other sources.

***

Sunday Times, 30 December
Zuma’s Men Target Mbeki


Paddy Harper, Brendan Boyle and Moipone Malefane, Sunday Times, 30 
December 2007


Furious backlash over corruption charges
NEC member hints Mbeki might be removed from office


President Thabo Mbeki faces a bruising showdown with members of the ANC 
National Executive Committee (NEC) over the decision to charge newly 
elected party president Jacob Zuma.

Zuma will go on trial in August for allegedly receiving bribes totalling 
R4-million from convicted fraudster Schabir Shaik and French arms dealer 
Thint in return for abusing his party and government positions to 
further their interests.

Zuma faces 18 charges, including corruption, fraud, racketeering, tax 
evasion and money laundering.

As the full extent of the alleged web of corruption involving Shaik, 
Thint and Zuma became clearer through the indictment issued in the 
Pietermaritzburg High Court on Friday, Zuma’s backers have, for the 
first time, directly accused Mbeki of involvement in a “political 
vendetta” against the newly elected ANC president.

Zuma’s supporters are expected to vent their anger on Mbeki as they also 
consolidate their grip on the ANC at the first NEC meeting on January 7 
when they elect the powerful National Working Committee.

A week later, the party leadership, top government representatives and 
officials gather for their annual lekgotla, where Zuma’s team is 
expected to set the tone for the remainder of Mbeki’s term by laying 
down a set of demands for immediate policy shifts.

There could also be skirmishes over Mbeki’s peremptory appointment of a 
new SABC board, the left-wing opposition to inflation targeting and the 
controversial cross-border municipal boundaries such as Khutsong. Any 
fledgling efforts at compromise have been crushed by anger at charges 
against Zuma, which many see as deliberately timed to weaken him at the 
forthcoming lekgotla and NEC meeting.

A senior member of the party’s NEC said: “Mbeki might have provoked 
something he may not be able to control at the NEC meeting.”

Hinting at the possible removal of Mbeki from office, he added that 
“we’ve all along said the two centres of power won’t work”.

Former National Intelligence Agency Director-General Billy Masetlha, who 
is now an NEC member, told a gathering of Umkhonto weSizwe veterans in 
Soweto on Thursday that “if they [the government] defy us [the ANC], we 
will punish them”. He was speaking on the ANC’s recommendation that the 
Scorpions be incorporated into the South African Police Service (SAPS).

ANC Youth League President Fikile Mbalula, who was one of the kingmakers 
in Zuma’s election campaign, said: “The decision to charge Jacob Zuma is 
not a decision of the judiciary; it is a decision of the state, and the 
state is led by Thabo Mbeki.”

He questioned why, in the case of SAPS Commissioner Jackie Selebi, Mbeki 
had refused to comment, saying he was “not a prosecutor”, while in 
Zuma’s case he had gone to ANC structures and told them Zuma was guilty 
of corruption.

“Jacob Zuma, as president of the ANC, could not have been charged 
without the full backing of Thabo Mbeki.”

Mbalula added that the timing of Zuma’s initial court appearance — 
August 14 — was aimed at disqualifying him when ANC structures nominated 
their choice for president of the Republic in June.

“This is a blatant and desperate attempt to block Zuma’s ascendancy to 
the highest office of the land,” Mbalula said.

“The State President has even said that Zuma will not become president 
of South Africa … Mbeki is part of this. He is not immune from this 
case.” Mbalula was making a veiled reference to Mbeki’s role as chair of 
Parliament’s sub-committee that approved the arms deal when he was still 
the country’s deputy president.

Zuma has previously told the Pietermaritzburg High Court that Mbeki is 
the only one who can shed light on the issue.

Mbalula said the decision to summons Zuma during the Christmas period 
was aimed at weakening the ANC at its first NEC meeting on January 7 to 
offset Zuma’s victory at the Polokwane conference.

Echoing Mbalula’s allusion to Mbeki’s involvement in the arms deal, 
Cosatu spokesman Patrick Craven yesterday demanded a full judicial 
investigation into the arms deal.

“The timing of the indictment has all the hallmarks of vengeance, 
deep-seated anger and frustration by the NPA [National Prosecuting 
Authority] … It indicates a level of personal anger against Zuma,” said 
Craven.

Businessman Tokyo Sexwale, who is now also in the party’s NEC, entered 
the fray yesterday, saying: “The timing of charges with a court date 
already decided, is extremely disturbing and adds fuel to the 
speculative fires that organs of the state may be manipulated for 
political purposes.”

Yesterday Zuma met with his attorney, Michael Hulley, for a briefing on 
the case which will go straight to the Pietermaritzburg High Court, from 
whose roll it was struck in September 2006 by Judge Qed’usizi Msimang. 
Zuma’s legal strategy will be to apply for a mistrial when the case sits 
on August 14. When the case was thrown out, his counsel, Kemp J Kemp SC, 
had already prepared a motivation for the mistrial application.

Gwede Mantashe, the ANC’s secretary-general, said yesterday the 
“sequence of events”, including the announcement by the NPA that it 
would charge Zuma two days after he was elected ANC president, needed to 
be “looked into carefully”.

A Markinor socio-political trends survey released this week found a 
representative sample of South Africans split over their support for 
Zuma with 35% saying they believe that Zuma is guilty of charges 
relating to the arms debacle and a further 34% saying that corruption 
charges against him were an attempt by his political enemies to 
discredit him.