Post by cjm on Dec 14, 2015 18:33:04 GMT
Why were top ANC leaders silent when Nene was axed?
Zuma has comprehensively demonstrated that he is an incompetent disaster
Justice Malala
14 December 2015
There are some among us who think that last week‘s shocking removal of Nhlanhla Nene from the Finance Ministry was about President Jacob Zuma.
They are wrong. Last week‘s irrational, irresponsible event was about Cyril Ramaphosa, the man many think can yank the ANC back to its proud traditions and the country back to its winning ways, and his main antagonist for the ANC presidency, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.
What happened last week was about the “good” men and women in the top leadership of the ANC and their ability to now rise and speak their truth to power.
We know, despite Zuma‘s hollow assurances on Friday, that Nene was removed for standing for what‘s right at SAA and on the nuclear building programme. We know that Zuma is a man who has failed to take advice on SAA because of the presence of his close friend Dudu Myeni in the chairman‘s position at SAA. We know that three ministers have been shunted aside or, in Nene‘s case, lost their positions over this.
Crucially, we know that, since 2009, Zuma has comprehensively demonstrated that he is an incompetent disaster who shouldn‘t have been allowed anywhere near the levers of national power.
That explains why, according to an Afrobarometer survey released last month, about 50% of self-identified ANC supporters say they distrust Zuma, and 45% disapprove of him and his track record.
So, for some of us, last week‘s events were depressing but not unexpected or even surprising. A time had to come when Zuma, after destroying virtually all the institutions of accountability in this country, would aim for the honey pot. He first appointed Pravin Gordhan, a fellow intelligence and MK operative, to the Finance Ministry. Gordhan would not budge on fiscal policy or be swayed to enrich the president‘s cronies.
So he was shunted aside to deal with local government. Nene, went the logic, would be malleable. He was, after all, politically weak. But he wasn‘t weak at all. When pressured to look elsewhere while state coffers were being pilfered in the SAA-Airbus deal, he refused. So he fell.
That is why last week‘s events are about Zuma‘s No2, Ramaphosa, the deputy president of the ANC and of the country. Is this what the billionaire lawyer, trade unionist, negotiator and statesman left his billions for — to be part of an administration that runs the Treasury as if it's some irresponsible child‘s piggy bank?
Where was Ramaphosa this week? The pressure on the Treasury‘s director-general, Lungisa Fuzile, must be immense. Will Ramaphosa step up for him and his team?
Where is Gwede Mantashe, the man who drove to Pretoria in the middle of the night to tell President Thabo Mbeki that the ANC wanted him out of the Union Buildings? Where is Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the woman who, as of this weekend, is most likely to become president of the ANC in 2017?
Is this mess — a collapsed economy, anaemic currency, massive state debt, huge unemployment — what she would like to inherit when she ascends to power?
These and many other leaders have been missing in action. It is true that Ramaphosa serves at the pleasure of the president, but sometimes history demands a voice and some action. Just as Zuma went on the offensive against Mbeki in 2005, Ramaphosa should decouple from this disastrous leader of his party. Otherwise the rot that now surrounds Zuma attaches to Ramaphosa too.
What to do? If they are any different from Zuma, then Ramaphosa, Dlamini-Zuma and Mantashe must stand up and show their disgust at what is happening to their party and their country now. Waiting does not just ruin the ANC and South Africa. It ruins them too.
One day one of them will step into the Union Buildings and find the rot is institutional and, because they did not speak out timeously, they will just have to continue on the same rotten route.
This article first appeared in The Times
Zuma has comprehensively demonstrated that he is an incompetent disaster
Justice Malala
14 December 2015
There are some among us who think that last week‘s shocking removal of Nhlanhla Nene from the Finance Ministry was about President Jacob Zuma.
They are wrong. Last week‘s irrational, irresponsible event was about Cyril Ramaphosa, the man many think can yank the ANC back to its proud traditions and the country back to its winning ways, and his main antagonist for the ANC presidency, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.
What happened last week was about the “good” men and women in the top leadership of the ANC and their ability to now rise and speak their truth to power.
We know, despite Zuma‘s hollow assurances on Friday, that Nene was removed for standing for what‘s right at SAA and on the nuclear building programme. We know that Zuma is a man who has failed to take advice on SAA because of the presence of his close friend Dudu Myeni in the chairman‘s position at SAA. We know that three ministers have been shunted aside or, in Nene‘s case, lost their positions over this.
Crucially, we know that, since 2009, Zuma has comprehensively demonstrated that he is an incompetent disaster who shouldn‘t have been allowed anywhere near the levers of national power.
That explains why, according to an Afrobarometer survey released last month, about 50% of self-identified ANC supporters say they distrust Zuma, and 45% disapprove of him and his track record.
So, for some of us, last week‘s events were depressing but not unexpected or even surprising. A time had to come when Zuma, after destroying virtually all the institutions of accountability in this country, would aim for the honey pot. He first appointed Pravin Gordhan, a fellow intelligence and MK operative, to the Finance Ministry. Gordhan would not budge on fiscal policy or be swayed to enrich the president‘s cronies.
So he was shunted aside to deal with local government. Nene, went the logic, would be malleable. He was, after all, politically weak. But he wasn‘t weak at all. When pressured to look elsewhere while state coffers were being pilfered in the SAA-Airbus deal, he refused. So he fell.
That is why last week‘s events are about Zuma‘s No2, Ramaphosa, the deputy president of the ANC and of the country. Is this what the billionaire lawyer, trade unionist, negotiator and statesman left his billions for — to be part of an administration that runs the Treasury as if it's some irresponsible child‘s piggy bank?
Where was Ramaphosa this week? The pressure on the Treasury‘s director-general, Lungisa Fuzile, must be immense. Will Ramaphosa step up for him and his team?
Where is Gwede Mantashe, the man who drove to Pretoria in the middle of the night to tell President Thabo Mbeki that the ANC wanted him out of the Union Buildings? Where is Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the woman who, as of this weekend, is most likely to become president of the ANC in 2017?
Is this mess — a collapsed economy, anaemic currency, massive state debt, huge unemployment — what she would like to inherit when she ascends to power?
These and many other leaders have been missing in action. It is true that Ramaphosa serves at the pleasure of the president, but sometimes history demands a voice and some action. Just as Zuma went on the offensive against Mbeki in 2005, Ramaphosa should decouple from this disastrous leader of his party. Otherwise the rot that now surrounds Zuma attaches to Ramaphosa too.
What to do? If they are any different from Zuma, then Ramaphosa, Dlamini-Zuma and Mantashe must stand up and show their disgust at what is happening to their party and their country now. Waiting does not just ruin the ANC and South Africa. It ruins them too.
One day one of them will step into the Union Buildings and find the rot is institutional and, because they did not speak out timeously, they will just have to continue on the same rotten route.
This article first appeared in The Times