Extract from The Zuma Years

Extract from
                               The Zuma Years

   Contents
    Introduction
1. The presidency
2. The cabinet
3. The public service
4. State-owned enterprises
5. Foreign policy
6. Foreign policy makers
7. The ANC
8. COSATU
9. The opposition
10. Parliament
11. Money and politics
12. Local politics
13. Traditional leaders
14. The judges
15. The universities
16. The corporate boardrooms
17. The professions
    Conclusion

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6
           Foreign policy-making in Zuma’s world
As she walks across the large colonial hallway of Tuynhuis, the president’s Cape Town office next to
Parliament, Ambassador Lindiwe Zulu crosses paths with Collins Chabane, the minister in the
Presidency responsible for performance monitoring and evaluation. It is 13 February, the day before
the president’s 2013 State of the Nation address. The sun is shining and everyone powerful in
government is in town.
         ‘Good morning! Are you the Kitchen Girl?’ Collins asks cheerily as he sees her. She laughs
loudly, as is her wont. She knows exactly what he is referring to; the previous Friday, the Mail &
Guardian had run a piece identifying Jacob Zuma’s key advisors or ‘kitchen cabinet’.
         ‘People like me know all about what being a kitchen girl is like,’ she throws back at him as
they pass, she teetering a little as her high stilettos sink into the plush red carpet, the svelte Collins
swiftly bustling onwards towards the cabinet meeting room.
         Zulu heads the other way, to the left, towards the mountain, down a short corridor and then up
a narrow staircase to an even narrower corridor where her temporary office is located. It’s obviously
temporary because, from my vantage point on the two-person sofa inside, it has precious little in it,
apart from Zulu’s laptop bag, iPad and handbag.
         I’ve been looking forward to seeing Ambassador Zulu again. (South Africa seems to have
adopted the American approach to public office, which is that you retain your title even after you
have left office.) Her name keeps cropping up in conversations and in documents.
         I first met her in the 1990s, when she was a member of the Gauteng Provincial Legislature.
She was young – in her mid-thirties – certainly considerably younger than most of her fellow ANC
MPLs, and far smarter and modern too. As the deputy speaker, she had a vision for the legislature
that far outstripped anything else in the other eight provincial legislatures, which is why the Gauteng
legislature ran so fast and so far ahead.
         My memory of her from those days was as one of the most impressive young ANC people I
had encountered and someone who was as authentically democratic in her political instincts as she
was crisp and forthright in her points of view.
         Since then, she has built up a formidable CV, working in the Department of International
Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) as special advisor to foreign minister Nkosazama Dlamini-
Zuma; and as ambassador to Brazil – a significant posting.
         Zulu is now Zuma’s chief advisor on foreign affairs, but my gut tells me she is more than that.
I have a hunch that she is becoming to Zuma what Mojanku Gumbi was to Thabo Mbeki: one of his
most influential lieutenants.
         Perhaps one of the most striking findings of Anatomy of South Africa, especially to anyone
not close to the inner workings of the Mbeki presidency, was the presentation of Gumbi as one of the
five most powerful people in South Africa. Advocate Gumbi, originally appointed as legal advisor to
the president, had ended up years later representing Mbeki in meetings with Robert Mugabe in
Zimbabwe and captains of industry at home.
         Her job title had elongated over time. She had earned her place close alongside Mbeki
through her devotion to duty and her loyalty. Unlike Zulu, however, Gumbi was not an ANC person.
Her background was AZAPO, which contributed to Mbeki’s trust in her. She was absolutely no threat
whatsoever; she had only his support and patronage to go on. Without that, at least so far as her
position in government was concerned, she was nothing.
         So any comparison between Zulu and Gumbi has its limits. Zulu is on the ANC’s National
Executive Committee (NEC), and has been since the national conference in Polokwane in 2007. She
was elected for a second term in Mangaung in December 2012, in thirty-sixth place in the list of
eighty. This gives her additional power, vested in her strength within the organisation itself.

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‘Politically,’ Zulu tells me, ‘this is very important. When I speak, I can speak not only with
the president’s authority, but with that of the ANC.’
        Take Swaziland, she says: ‘COSATU are pushing it, and they are right to. Because I am not
part of DIRCO I don’t have to worry [about longer-term diplomacy]. The Mangaung resolutions on
Swaziland are much stronger and so when I meet with the king of Swaziland I say “Your Majesty,
the ANC has taken the position”.’
        This is extraordinary stuff. Sitting demurely on the two-person sofa in the colonial surrounds
of Tuynhuis, with glorious Table Mountain looking down imperiously, I pour coffee and let what she
has just told me sink in. ‘Did you meet with the king of Swaziland alone?’ I ask.
        Yes, she says; twice, both times alone – just her and the king. Twice since Mangaung, armed
with the tough new resolution that was passed by the ANC at its national conference in December
2012.
        Imagine how that went down with the Swazi royalty. Zuma likes protocol. But he also knows
how to play power politics. What better way to show who’s boss in this relationship than to send one
of my advisors to meet with you?
        A woman, nogal. Alone.
        It tells us a lot about Zuma. And it also tells us a lot about Zulu, and how much she is trusted
by the president and how much influence she has.
        But the other point is this: Zulu clearly sees no difficulty whatsoever in using the ANC to
buttress her position in such circumstances. She goes to meet with the head of state of a neighbouring
country, but does so not only as the advisor to the president of South Africa, but as an elected
member of the ANC’s top decision-making body, its NEC. She knows, as we must all acknowledge,
that the liberal nicety about the division between state and party means little these days in South
Africa, and under Zuma the overlaps are even greater.
        One of the oldest clichés is that foreign policy begins at home. Like most clichés, there is a
large grain of truth in this. Thus, in order to understand the way in which a country positions itself,
especially when the global community is so obviously closely attached and the interests of nation-
states so interdependent in a globalised economy, it is essential that the drivers of policy at home –
those, at least, that impact on foreign policy – are understood.
        Navigating the murky waters of a country’s foreign policy is not the easiest of expeditions to
undertake. However, for the purposes of getting a grasp on how a country relates with the outside
world, such an exploration is necessary.
        As the Zuma era emerged and then unfolded, so foreign relations took on a different hue.
Under Mbeki, there was considerable international interest in South Africa’s foreign policy – partly
because Mbeki himself paid a lot of attention to it and was a well-known figure on the international
stage, with a substantial reputation as an international diplomat, and partly because South Africa
continued to ‘punch above its weight’ in international affairs.
        While Mbeki sometimes confused diplomats with his rhetorical flourishes and his convoluted
or obscure reasoning, over time more seasoned watchers of South Africa’s foreign policy-making
were able to make sense of things, not least because it was evident that foreign policy was controlled
by a very small group of people.
        Mbeki’s attitude to Zimbabwe made for many a bad headache, and South Africa’s record as a
member of the UN Security Council (2007–08) surprised and even shocked some commentators. For
example, South Africa controversially opposed, in league with Russia and China, the condemnation
of human rights abuses in Myanmar and Zimbabwe, further sanctions against Iran over its nuclear
programme and the inclusion of the issue of climate change on the Security Council agenda. i
        Yet, despite this, the general view of South African political risk was relatively measured and
comfortable.
        When Zuma appeared on the horizon, and then toppled Mbeki, the political risk analysts had
to re-calculate; Zuma was a far lesser-known commodity. Apart from his forays into Great Lakes
peace-making, not much was known about his attitude towards international affairs and little if

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anything could really be discerned from his domestic-policy positions because these were generally
regarded as an ‘ideology free zone’.
        Moreover, the stakes rose as South Africa’s domestic conditions weakened. For those us who
are either self-proclaimed or regarded as ‘political analysts’, increased political risk is good for
business. In the immediate aftermath of Marikana in August 2012, for example, the requests to
postulate poured in – often from investment banks with increasingly twitchy clients. I did telephone
conferences for the likes of Citibank and UBS; where usually the number of asset-manager clients
who would likely call in would be as few as twenty, in the febrile post-Marikana mood, it increased
to sixty or seventy.
        Although the post-Mbeki concerns were primarily about domestic policy, there were also
questions about foreign policy. Moreover, it was – and is – clear that perceptions about South Africa
in the international investor community are often informed by how the country positions itself on
global matters and foreign affairs, and also how agile and articulate its foreign policy makers and
diplomatic representatives are in addressing concerns and reassuring investors.
        Thus, those that make and deliver foreign policy wield significant influence over events that
impact on South Africa at home, as well as abroad.

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10
                       Parliament and civil society
Being a great parliamentarian: A surprisingly exciting job
The first time was especially nerve-wracking. Walking out of arrivals at OR Tambo International
Airport to be whisked away by a person whose identity he did not yet know – a source who had
promised him information so alluring that it was worth flying all the way from Cape Town.
        It turns out that the life of an opposition MP in South Africa can be quite exciting – if you
have a penchant for a John le Carré-type lifestyle, that is. And if you want to do your job properly
and effectively. For DA MP David Maynier it has become ‘a way of life’ – one in which, ‘forced
underground, you have to conduct yourself like an investigative journalist’.
        Maynier has received a variety of threats since he took on this role. ‘You’re taking an
enormous risk,’ his fiancée had told him the previous night. She was worried. He was too. As he
stepped out into the dry Johannesburg air and felt the slight pinch in his lungs and the tightening in
his chest that high altitude causes in those of us who live by the sea, his heart was pumping for
reasons other than the need to get more oxygen to his brain.
        The questions circulated in his mind: Who is this guy really? Will he even pitch? Who are his
real bosses? Will he have the documents he says he has? Will I be able to use them? What the hell am
I doing?
        Suddenly, a car drew up and with barely a second’s thought Maynier got in. Instinctively, he
sensed all would be well. And it was. The source’s identity was now revealed. Though he was
required, immediately, to dismantle his cellphone before being driven off to an undisclosed, secret
venue, Maynier was no longer so fearful that he was putting his life in danger.
        Such sources have been crucial for the role that Maynier now plays in Parliament: that of
watchdog-in-chief over matters of defence and state security. Or, to put it even less elegantly, royal
pain-in-the-butt to the government and the ruling party.
        To be a great parliamentarian in South Africa – and in my view Maynier is a great
parliamentarian – requires a special kind of resourcefulness.
        Despite his boyish looks, Maynier is tougher than he seems. This is, after all, the man who
charmed Lindiwe Sisulu – one of the ANC’s tenacious leaders, who is no pushover in any situation
and who, as well as being ‘very smart and very hard-working’, according to Maynier, ‘also has a
sharp sense of humour’.
        Maynier pursued her – politically, that is – for three years, unrelentingly, from the time he
took up his seat in the National Assembly in 2009 as the opposition party’s shadow minister of
defence and military veterans. Sisulu had just been appointed by President Zuma to serve as defence
minister.
        For all her attributes as a politician and strengths as a minister, Sisulu is not always inclined
towards transparency. Maynier had to dig and dig to get information about a number of important
defence projects. They fought hammer and tongs. At one point, Maynier challenged Sisulu on the
number of flights she had taken on luxury Gulfstream jets chartered by the defence department while
she was defence minister. Maynier claimed there were 203; Sisulu claimed only 35; Sisulu’s
successor, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, subsequently revealed that there were actually 229. Sisulu sent
Maynier an electronic calculator as a present. He responded by sending her a custom-made luxury
comfort pillow – which was ‘suitably pink, with feathers’ – to use when flying commercial.
        Even though Sisulu subsequently told Maynier in Parliament to sit his ‘flea-infested body
down’, Maynier says this was ‘not personal and it was incumbent on me to calm people who on
social networks do not understand the repartee and that though it may have been unparliamentary it
was not hate speech, as some people had suggested’.

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‘I think we have a similar sense of humour. The public does not get to see this side of things,’
explains Maynier. ‘The fact that behind the scenes there is collegiality between MPs of different
parties. There is also a lighter side. And, frankly, there needs to be some levity.’

Lobbying Parliament
In contrast to Maynier, Nkwame Cedile probably is as tough as he looks. A large-framed man,
probably in his late thirties or early forties, he has a big paw and a firm grip, which he squeezes
tighter as I reach for his name.
         ‘You’re looking for who?’ he asks.
         ‘Nkwame Cedile,’ I reply.
         ‘Well you’ve found him.’
         I’m in Community House, Woodstock, Cape Town. I haven’t been here for a while. It takes
me back to when I first came to South Africa in early 1994, working for the ANC. Most of the 1994
campaign planning was undertaken in the simple rooms of Community House; this is where I
attended my first meeting of the ANC Western Cape campaign’s ‘white voters committee’ – one hell
of a striking irony for someone fresh off the boat from England who’d come to South Africa during
the dying days of apartheid and hadn’t expected to discover racial segregation in the ranks of the
ANC (though for electioneering purposes it made perfect sense to segment the campaign along the
lines of the main racial groups).
         Now Community House is home to a small collection of non-governmental organisations
(NGOs), as well as the Labour Research Service that has long been housed here. The Right2Know
(R2K) campaign offices are on the second floor, which is why I am returning to Community House.
R2K has been at war with the ANC for over three years, fighting the Protection of State Information
Bill, better known as the ‘secrecy bill’, that caused so much controversy locally and dismayed
overseas investors and other observers intent on looking for signs of an emerging authoritarian streak
within the ANC.
         Cedile’s toughest moment during the whole painful, drawn-out secrecy-bill affair was not the
thinly veiled threats he received from the ANC or the public accusations that he and other R2K
campaigners were ‘foreign agents’, but the moment when he had to ask Helen Zille to take off her T-
shirt or leave.
         As he admits this to me, I contemplate what it must be like to have to ask the robust Western
Cape premier and DA leader to remove her top … given how fond Zille is of wearing her royal blue
DA T-shirt at virtually any opportunity. But the occasion was not, recalls Cedile, ‘appropriate’. It was
an R2K campaign meeting in Gugulethu, the famous Cape Town township, in early summer 2011.
Thousands had turned up – ‘far more than we expected,’ he recalls.
         The campaign was really working: it was joining the dots between the secrecy bill and its
threat of greater state control of information – with the deeply unattractive prospect of more cover-
ups of corruption – and the daily concerns of ordinary people. Making that link was R2K’s greatest
accomplishment thus far. As an early campaigner for the right to information and the founder of one
of the leading organisations in the R2K campaign – the Open Democracy Advice Centre (ODAC) – I
was profoundly impressed by R2K’s strategy and its achievements. I had seen campaigns for the
right to know gain massive public support in India, with tens of thousands marching on the streets of
Rajasthan, but I had always harboured substantial doubts about whether anything like that level of
popular support could be garnered in South Africa, even though at ODAC we had worked hard to
assist communities and social movements such as Abahlali baseMjondolo by making access-to-
information requests relating to housing, water and other socio-economic issues under the Promotion
of Access to Information Act (PAIA) passed in 2000.
         So when I participated in a march to Parliament on 27 October 2010, I was impressed with
the turnout of 2 000 or so people wearing the bright red R2K T-shirts, and especially impressed that
R2K organisers, Cedile and Murray Hunter, had succeeded in getting such a range of grass-roots
organisations to join the campaign. It wasn’t just the chattering classes and the professional NGOs

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like ODAC, the Institute for Democracy in Africa (IDASA) and the Institute for Security Studies, but
a much broader coalition of groups, which gave it far greater political strength.
          As I note in Chapter 1, civil society has in some respects weakened in recent years, in
particular the democracy and human rights sectors. While Equal Education has emerged as a
powerful campaigning organisation, and R2K itself has been dynamic and effective, other important
organisations such as IDASA have closed. Few organisations, if any, pay much specific attention to
Parliament – except for the Parliamentary Monitoring Group (PMG), which, I am proud to say, I
founded with fellow NGO parliamentary observers Alison Tilley (then of Black Sash) and Advocate
Susannah Cowen (then of the now defunct Human Rights Committee), in 1995. PMG continues to
provide invaluable reports of the proceedings of parliamentary committees (in the absence of any
official records).ii
          The ANC must be delighted by the plight of organisations such as IDASA. Well, some parts
of it at least – the parts that don’t much care for real debate, that treat NGOs as ‘foreign agents’ and
that are so intellectually insecure that they run for cover at the first sniff of anything approaching a
fact-based exchange of views.
          Of course, in the case of the R2K campaign and the secrecy bill, the ‘debate’ was toxic from
the word go. From the government side, it was run and relentlessly pursued by the securocrats who
have a much greater hold over such matters since Zuma came into power. Cedile reminds me that the
Mail & Guardian, with a simple bit of technological investigation, revealed that the documents given
to the ANC members of the National Assembly ad hoc committee that considered the secrecy bill
were authored by a Dennis Thokozani Dlomo, then an intelligence advisor to minister of state
security Siyabonga Cwele.
          Cwele accused the R2K campaign in Parliament of being ‘paid proxies’ of ‘foreign spies’,
and referred to them as the ‘Right to Lie campaign’. Incidentally, Cwele subsequently rewarded
Dlomo in 2012 by appointing him acting director-general of the State Security Agency (a position he
still holds at the time of writing, notwithstanding stories emerging in the press about probityiii).
          Hunter says that ‘they pushed the idea that we were “obsessed with openness”’ and, as the
public war of words worsened through 2010 and 2011, so the claims about the R2K campaign
became more and more vitriolic.
          But when I ask Cedile who had the power in the battle between R2K and Parliament, he
surprises me at first: ‘Parliament is a powerful institution.’ As he proceeds, however, I realise that he
is paying careful respect to the institution – it is, after all, the primary democratic product of the
struggle for freedom. And Cedile is of an age where that still matters a great deal; for any black
person who fought against apartheid, the victory – expressed in the form of universal suffrage and a
Parliament that free and fair elections deliver every five years – is something that should be treated
with respect.
          But he is quick to qualify his initial statement: ‘Powerful, but vulnerable as well.’
          ‘To what?’ I ask.
          ‘They are nervous about perceptions. Look how they announced the secrecy bill during the
World Cup [in mid 2010]. Look how quick they are to remind people, through the media, that “we
liberated you”. They were nervous, jumpy and called us names. And a new phenomenon emerged –
impressing those in power.’

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11
                                Money and politics
Maybe because it was the first time all morning that I had managed to hit my drive into the centre of
the fairway, but I finally found myself strolling down the lush green grass of the ninth hole of the
Clovelly golf course alongside one of my playing companions, Sipho Pityana. As usual, he seemed at
ease with himself and the world. And why not? It was the Christmas holiday; after an initial early
morning shower, the air was clear and warm; the surrounding mountains looked glorious; and the sea
glistened beyond the end of the valley cradling the charming little course.
       I made an idle comment about the erratic condition of my game. But Pityana stopped suddenly
in his tracks, turned to me and hissed fiercely: ‘It makes me so very angry! It has got to be stopped!’
       I was astounded. Rarely has my tendency to slice my drives so ludicrously far and wide of the
fairway provoked such passion. I began to form an apology or an excuse when Pityana again cut me
dead: ‘The greed, the greed!’
       He walked on, shaking his head. Now I was truly flummoxed. I caught up with him just as we
reached our balls, which, for the first time, were just a few yards apart in the middle of the fairway,
but still a fair distance from the lengthy but narrow raised green on the left, nestled dangerously close
to the thorn-covered mountainside.
       Pityana began to elaborate as I wrestled with the dilemma of whether to aim ambitiously for the
green with a fairway wood, risking everything, or to lay up with a prudent little six iron.
       ‘There is this obsession with money. It’s greed, pure and simple. It’s driving corruption. Too
many comrades are involved and they should know better. It’s time to take a stand, Richard.’
       This was fast turning into one of those conversations you never, ever forget. Like the one I was
to have six months later on the way to a meeting in Ghana. The SAA plane was stopping at Lagos,
the destination, it turned out, of the man sitting beside me. When I first took my seat next to him, I
was too tired to bother to assess if he was South African or Ghanaian or Nigerian, and he was
napping. We sat in silence as the plane took off and through most of our meals. It was only once the
wine and food had begun to revive us that we struck up a conversation.
       After some preliminaries, in which I established that he was a South African businessman on
his way to Nigeria to close a deal to set up a new call centre there, I asked him about his history.
With our tray tables cleared and a full glass of dark Cabernet in front of each of us, my companion
was forthcoming. He had begun life as a teacher in the apartheid era, in a Johannesburg township; it
was hard, but then he moved into human resources at a large mining company and things began to
improve for him and his family. He worked his way up, but then, a few years into democracy, he was
retrenched. Bravely, extraordinarily, with a recklessness that made him shake his head as he
recounted his story, he threw all his money into setting up a call-centre business. There were
precarious moments, but he got through them; and now, he is a millionaire with an enormously
successful business.
       I was strangely moved by his story. So simple, and yet so full of resonance for the old and the
new South Africa. I asked what he thought about modern entrepreneurs. This was the ‘Pityana-on-
the-ninth-at-Clovelly’ moment. The glass of wine, luckily drained, went flying, as my companion
threw up his arms in disgust and, in animated fashion, proclaimed his deep-seated disgust: ‘They’re
not entrepreneurs! They’re not businessmen! What have they done to earn their wealth? Nothing!’
       We discussed the tenderpreneur class for a while. I could easily understand his frustration. He
had worked hard; had worked his way up. And then had to watch as these young whippersnappers,
with little or no education, thrust their way into ‘business’ simply by gaming the system.
       This is just one of many similar conversations I have had on planes in recent years, in which
hard-working black South Africans, who have earned their places in business or government, express
their anger about the current situation. Many hark back, longingly, to the Mbeki era.
       Obviously, that was an era in which they made good, and advanced. Although Pityana’s route
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to wealth was different to my travel companion’s, it was no less decent. A former exile, he was made
the director-general (DG) of labour during the crucial reform period of the mid-1990s, but then, after
a rather trickier period as DG of foreign affairs in which he did not see eye-to-eye with the then
minister, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, he moved into business.
       There was a period of ‘apprenticeship’ – what Pityana calls an ‘incubation period’, when I ask
him about it during an interview, which we conduct, rather incongruously, after a misunderstanding
between our PAs, amidst the noisy chatter of the ‘ladies who lunch’ at Melissa’s in Newlands, Cape
Town – at Nedbank, under the watchful eye of Chris Liebenberg, who urged him to ‘learn business
first’ before embarking on the big BEE deal that would make him very wealthy, very quickly, as the
founding executive chairman of Izingwe Capital, a BEE company that in 2004 was given a 30 per
cent shareholding of Aberdare Cables, one of the world’s leading cable companies.
       Sitting among the chattering classes of Cape Town’s southern suburbs, where, incidentally, he
is more than comfortable (he has a house in Bishopscourt and a penchant for meetings at the Mugg &
Bean in Constantia Village), Pityana tells me in no uncertain terms that ‘the credibility of BEE
schemes’ depends ‘on the way in which we conduct ourselves and that we should not be greedy
vultures’. Unfortunately, ‘some people let the side down’.
       While in government, he says, ‘I had numerous opportunities for “funny business”. But the
respectability one has sets the tone. A black person has an extra burden – to dispel the stereotype and
to show competence at all times. I would rather make money slowly and do it right, than sacrifice my
values and principles.’
       The full history of BEE, and that extraordinary period in which BEE capitalists emerged
seemingly overnight during the late 1990s and early 2000s, has yet to be written. Clearly, it had a
significant impact on the landscape of corporate South Africa. But it was also an era that, according
to people like Pityana, set the right tone – one of education and intellectualism, in which, as Pityana
recalls now, Mbeki liked to engage with the ‘business intelligentsia’, such as Saki Macozoma at
Standard Bank. It was not the bling, get-rich-quick culture of accumulation and conspicuous
consumption that seems to be the hallmark of more recent years.
       Which brings me back to the cloistered course at Clovelly in late 2009. When our mutual
friend, AngloGold Ashanti’s shrewd, seasoned public affairs man, Alan Fine, had invited me to join
the two of them for a round, I had been delighted not only because of the charm of the Cape seaside
course’s layout and its old-world charisma, but also because of the potential to put forth an idea for a
new organisation that I had been incubating – what is now the Council for the Advancement of the
South African Constitution (CASAC).
       The idea had originated with the first signs of attacks on the Constitution in the run up to the
ANC’s national conference in Polokwane in 2007. During its development phase, a number of
conversations took place among constitutionalists that essentially honed in on the question: If the
constitution is under threat, who will defend it?
       The late, great human rights activist and ANC cabinet minister Kader Asmal had launched an
ill-thought-out ‘constitutional charter’ initiative, in which citizens could sign up to a charter, but he
had not mobilised the resources to administer the ‘charterists’, and so it quickly fizzled out.
Undeterred, he, with Mamphela Ramphele, convened a conversation in 2008 in the middle of the
Cape winter: I remember attending a dinner in a chilly downtown restaurant, at which Geoff
Budlender and others called for a new organisation that could mobilise support at different levels of
society to defend the progressive values and principles of the Constitution.
       I ran with the idea, reporting loosely to Budlender and Ramphele, consulting with a range of
interested, progressive constitutionalists, and raising a US $1-million grant from Atlantic
Philanthropies, eventually launching CASAC from its greenhouse – my research unit at the
Department of Public Law at UCT. I had also drawn my old friend, Lawson Naidoo, into the project
and, nearing the end of 2009, we were poised to move towards the official launch phase.
       But we needed to find a leader. Naidoo had suggested we talk to Pityana, with whom he had
worked closely for the ANC in exile in London in the eighties and early nineties. We wanted
someone who could not be easily dismissed as a ‘counter-revolutionary’ or as DA aligned and anti-
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ANC. I had met Pityana when he was still the widely respected labour DG in Mandela’s government
and had liked him greatly then.
       He certainly fitted the bill in many ways; and there was no doubting his ANC credentials – if
you were to cut Pityana in half, you would find the letters A-N-C inscribed.
       Which made his outburst on the ninth hole at Clovelly all the more captivating. Perhaps he
would be the ideal person to lead CASAC? I had planned on maybe broaching the topic at the
nineteenth, when the game was over. I really did not want to interrupt a summer holiday unless it was
clear that a work conversation was not inappropriate. Now I found myself talking about it as we
approached the ninth green, and we continued talking about it at the halfway house and, sporadically,
depending on the accuracy of my drives, through much of the rest of the round.
       When CASAC was launched at Liliesleaf Farm in Johannesburg in September 2010, Pityana
was at the helm, the new organisation’s first chairman. And he has led CASAC with distinction ever
since. Pityana’s anguish in December 2009 reflects a viewpoint held by many ANC ‘traditionalists’ –
that is to say, ANC comrades who grew up in the cradle of the struggle and were fully immersed in,
and schooled by, the ANC’s approach to politics.
       One of the most distinctive aspects of the last few years has been the way in which such
traditionalists have responded to the current challenges and the plight of the ANC. The ANC is a pale
shadow of what it once was – a ‘mongrel’ party, with all manner of strange bedfellows and
opportunists who have inveigled their way into the organisation for nefarious purpose.
       Some have reacted by leaving the ANC to join other parties – most notable was the formation
of COPE in 2008. Although his older brother, Barney, was closely associated with COPE, Sipho has
never entertained the idea of leaving the ANC. He prefers to fight from within, to wrestle for control
of the ANC with the charlatans who have driven its reputation ever downwards.
       Of course, it would be idle to ignore the class considerations involved in this and any other
authentic attempt to understand the current trajectory of the ANC. The overlap between the worlds of
business and government – of money and politics – is a crucial part of the modern South African
story, just as it is a pivotal part of the old South Africa’s history, including the apartheid era.

Notes

i
   See, for example, one critical summary of South Africa’s record on the UN Security Council: Olivier Serrão, ‘South
    Africa in the UN Security Council 2011–2012’, Berlin: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, 2011, http://library.fes.de/pdf-
    files/iez/08166.pdf [last accessed 11 April 2013].
ii
    See the Parliamentary Monitoring Group’s website at www.pmg.org.za [last accessed 23 April 2013].
iii
    Anon, ‘Top spy in R45m graft probe’, City Press, 2 June 2012, http://bit.ly/17Uc6OZ [last accessed 23 April 2013].

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