Gangster State
Page 16
members in the Free State to dismantle the hegemony of chairman Ace Magashule and his cohort. 16 What apparently started as a band of disaffected party members in the Motheo region grew into a fully fledged faction which became known as the Regime Change group.
The challengers not only aimed to unseat the Magashule bloc in the Free State, but they also planned to oppose Jacob Zuma’s reign as party president at the next national conference in Mangaung by backing then president Kgalema Motlanthe instead.
Far from being mere upstarts and opportunists, the Regime Changers included former provincial chairperson Pat Matosa, MEC and provincial treasurer Mxolisi Dukwana, provincial secretary Sibongile Besani, then national sport minister Fikile Mbalula, and former MK
member and Free State MEC Gregory Nthatisi.
In April 2012, about two months before the provincial conference was scheduled to take place in Parys, an unnamed ANC leader sympathetic to the Regime Change cause told the Mail & Guardian why the chairperson had to go. ‘There is rampant corruption in many government departments and in the form of the Hlasela Fund, which is not a policy of the ANC but a vehicle to enrich Magashule and his cronies,’ the newspaper quoted the senior ANC member as saying.
‘There is patronage and we have seen a skewed distribution of government work in favour of those close to the chosen one. ’17
Magashule framed such criticism as mere political campaigning by the Regime Change group. ‘There is no patronage,’ he told the Sunday Independent. ‘It is people who are too ambitious who say this … I don’t have time for ambitious people.’18
The Regime Changers campaigned hard and were convinced that they would unseat Magashule and his allies. Across the province, the party’s members attended branch general meetings, where it was decided which delegates each branch would send to the provincial conference.
This is the very foundation of the ANC’s internal democratic process, but there was trouble on the horizon. The Regime Changers were confident that they enjoyed the support of branches in four of the Free State ANC’s five regions. 19 However, they underestimated the lengths their opponents were willing to go to in order to quell the anti-Magashule movement.
About a month before the conference, provincial secretary Besani sent letters to then national secretary-general Gwede Mantashe, some members of the ANC’s NEC deployed to the province, and the Magashule-led PEC in which he highlighted ‘material irregularities’
that had occurred when the Free State’s branches chose their delegates for the upcoming conference. Among the problems listed were widespread ‘manipulation of the membership numbers in specific branches’; ‘exclusion of bona fide delegates’; and ‘the establishment of parallel structures and the decision to allow and sanction the participation at the provincial conference of “delegates” from parallel structures’. 20 These complaints, along with other grievances, would form the basis of the Regime Change group’s soon-to-be-launched legal bid.
According to the ANC’s Membership Audit Guidelines, the membership lists compiled at the branch general meetings had to be subjected to pre-audits by the PEC or by each region’s Regional Executive Committee. After that, the National Audit Team had to determine which of the branches were in good standing before
verifying how many paid-up and legitimate members each branch had.
This was a vital process. Once the National Audit Team confirmed that a branch had been ‘constitutionally launched’, that branch could send its paid-up and verified members to the provincial conference. 21 The Regime Changers claimed that their branches had not been given the opportunity to ‘query the audit findings, in breach of the audit guidelines’, according to court papers they later filed.
Despite these grievances, the provincial conference went ahead on 22
June. Besani, Dukwana and other branch members affected by the alleged irregularities did not attend. Unsurprisingly, the Magashule bloc emerged victorious. Magashule was re-elected provincial chairperson, while his allies filled nearly all the other top PEC
positions. The dubiously constituted conference then turned into a pro-Zuma festival. In defiance of an NEC resolution prohibiting party members from endorsing candidates for the upcoming national conference until the nomination processes opened in October, Magashule openly announced his support for Zuma. In fact, the conference could easily have been mistaken for a Zuma campaign gathering. Delegates carried placards warning ‘Hands-off our President Jacob Msholozi Zuma’, 22 and the stage was decorated with large posters bearing the president’s face.23
When Magashule was later asked to comment on the complaints of his opponents in the province, he pleaded innocence. ‘The audit of branches is the terrain of the national office through the ANC secretary general [Mantashe]. Ditto the provincial conference is also the terrain of national [leadership],’ he told the Mail & Guardian.24 But the validity of these audits would soon come under fire. In late August, with the Mangaung conference drawing near, Mpho Ramakatsa, a
former MK soldier, and five other party members from branches across the Free State launched an application in the Bloemfontein High Court.
While the court papers did not expressly identify the applicants as members of the Regime Change group, some media reports branded Ramakatsa as one of the faction’s central figures alongside Dukwana and Besani. 25 Magashule and the rest of his PEC, along with the ANC’s national leadership, were listed as the respondents.
The applicants wanted the latest Magashule-led PEC to be disbanded.
They argued that the processes leading up to the Parys conference had been ‘manipulated and abused’, and that the ‘principle of fair political play was flagrantly undermined’, while ‘the election was not free and fair’. They also wanted the court to overturn the national ANC
leadership’s recognition of the PEC as a ‘lawful, authentic and representative leadership structure’. In late October, Bloemfontein High Court judge Mojalefa Rampai ruled against Ramakatsa and his fellow applicants. But his judgment was based solely on ‘fatal procedural defects and irregularities’ in the application itself. Rampai did not rule on the ‘substantive merits’ of the case, namely the alleged irregularities at the branch meetings. 26
The six disgruntled party members insisted on having a court pronounce on the alleged irregularities. They therefore took the matter to the Constitutional Court. This allowed them to present to the country’s most senior judges a detailed, branch-by-branch breakdown of the underhanded tactics that had prevented some party members from attending the elective conference.
At the Fidel Castro branch in the Motheo region, for example, ‘a properly elected chairperson and branch secretary’ requested that they be allowed to ‘participate in the audit process’ and ‘complained about
the creation of a parallel branch to theirs’. 27 According to the court papers, Magashule’s PEC simply ignored the request and never gave them an opportunity to review the audit. The Constitutional Court judges were not impressed with the PEC’s reason for doing so: The respondents’ answer to this allegation is that an audit could not be carried out because members of the ‘regime change group’ seemingly wanted their own membership file audited. One thing is clear, no audit was conducted nor is it suggested that members of the Fidel Castro branch are not entitled to have their membership numbers audited only because they support the so-called regime change. In our view, the members of the Fidel Castro branch were entitled to have their membership audited to assess their good standing and failure to do so amounts to conduct inconsistent with the Membership Audit Guidelines and is thus an irregularity. 28
Ramakatsa belonged to the Joyce Boom branch, also situated in the Motheo region. On 6 May 2012, this branch held a ‘legitimate’ and
‘quorate’ meeting where delegates were ‘properly elected to represent the branch at regional and provincial conferences’. The branch also nominated some of its members to be elected to the PEC. Despite submitting a report to the PEC that
set out in ‘remarkable detail’ the credentials of the elected deployees and the branch’s legitimacy, the PEC simply barred the branch from attending the provincial conference. Magashule and his fellow respondents tried to convince the court that the meeting in May ‘never took place’. Again, the judges dismissed this response. ‘Other than the bare denial, the respondents do not furnish even the slightest evidence that the meeting did not take place,’ they noted. The court found that the respondents ‘in effect
disenfranchised members of a branch in good standing’, an action that was also ‘inconsistent’ with South Africa’s Constitution. 29
Members of at least four branches in the Thabo Mofutsanyana region were also found to have been ‘disenfranchised’ by being denied
‘representation at the provincial conference’, this time due to a disconcerting dereliction of duty by certain members of the ANC NEC.
In the months before the provincial conference, the National Audit Team determined that several branches in this region had to rerun their elective processes because of alleged irregularities. NEC members who formed part of the National Audit Team were supposed to oversee fresh elections at the affected branches; however, they failed to pitch up at the branch meetings, which meant the elections could not take place.
As a result, several branch members in this region could not attend the provincial conference. Bizarrely, despite the fact that there were no fresh elections, the affected branches were somehow still represented in Parys by mystery ‘delegates’. 30
The court papers revealed that the provincial conference was attended by many more of these supposed ‘delegates’ who had no business being there. Members of the Lovemore Koto branch in the town of Petrusburg, which forms part of the Xhariep region, were denied an opportunity to view the preliminary and final audit reports on the delegates to be sent to the conference. Lovemore Koto and two other branches in this region were also eventually represented by mystery delegates. ‘There is no denial that no preliminary audit report was presented to these branches. Nor do the respondents deal with the serious allegation that the provincial conference was attended by delegates who were not duly elected by the branches concerned,’ the court found.31
Magashule and his fellow respondents sought to convince the court that not a single ‘branch delegate not authorised to do so attended the provincial conference’ and that no ‘branch delegate entitled to attend was denied the opportunity to do so’. But the Constitutional Court judges found these ‘bare denials’ unconvincing and ‘generic’. ‘This is particularly so because where … the appellants adduce facts which support the categories of irregularities, region by region, they are not seriously disputed,’ they said. They set aside the Bloemfontein High Court’s earlier ruling and declared the Parys conference and its decisions and resolutions unlawful and invalid. 32
The Constitutional Court reached its decision on 14 December 2012, two days before the ANC’s national conference was due to get under way in Mangaung. As a result, the NEC barred the PEC from voting at the conference, but Magashule was allowed to attend in his capacity as a member of the NEC.33 Furthermore, the court’s ‘declaration of invalidity’ only applied to the provincial conference.34 Mantashe explained to the media that Free State branch delegates could still attend the national conference, seeing as the processes through which they had been elected were overseen by the party’s electoral commission and not by the Magashule-led PEC. 35 This undoubtedly helped ensure the Zuma slate’s victory at Mangaung, but there were also suspicions that the membership numbers in pro-Zuma provinces such as the Free State, KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga had been
‘rigged’ in order to send more delegates to the conference. 36 The Free State’s ANC membership figures, as reflected in an organisational report presented by Mantashe at the conference, certainly made for very interesting reading. Before the Polokwane conference in 2007, the province had 61 000 members. In January 2012, the figure stood at 76
334. By that June, there were 121 074 members, which means the party somehow recruited almost 45 000 new Free State members in just six months.37
The Constitutional Court decided that either the NEC or the national conference needed to fix the dual problems of the discredited Free State provincial conference and the disbanded PEC. 38 During an NEC
meeting on the sidelines at Mangaung, the ANC’s national leadership appointed a task team of twenty people to organise a fresh provincial conference. But it appeared as if the deck was stacked against the Regime Change faction. The task team included Magashule, social development MEC Sisi Ntombela and a bunch of other party figures aligned to Magashule’s camp. Besani was one of the few task-team members who stood outside the fold. From Ramakatsa’s viewpoint, the national leadership had put in charge the very people who were behind the irregularities criticised by the Constitutional Court. Ramakatsa contended that he and his fellow applicants were not consulted when the task team was formed.39
The follow-up Free State conference was held at Phakisa Freeway, the motor-racing circuit in Welkom, over a weekend in May 2013.
Ramakatsa and the Regime Change group again boycotted the event. 40
They were adamant that the same ‘mistakes and irregularities’ that caused the Constitutional Court to declare the previous year’s conference in Parys unlawful had preceded the latest gathering. 41 With no Regime Change challengers present to spoil the party, Magashule again became chairperson, while some of his closest allies were elected unopposed to top spots on the PEC. Mosebenzi Zwane, who still enjoyed relative obscurity, became the ANC’s Free State treasurer.42
Then deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa, who had popped in to
address the conference, seemingly chose to side with the Magashule bloc with regards to the Regime Changers’ successful Constitutional Court challenge the previous year. ‘Whilst we respect the rights to legal recourse of any individual, including ANC members, the emerging of a culture of taking the organisation to court must be discouraged and it must come to an end,’ Ramaphosa told an appreciative audience of Magashule backers.43 He failed to recognise the fact that Ramakatsa’s group only took the ANC to court after they had first submitted their grievances to the party’s top national and provincial leadership structures. 44
In the weeks after the Welkom conference, Ramakatsa vowed to again fight the latest outcome in the courts. 45 ‘I wonder whether comrade Ace and those who conspire with him to wreck the ANC sleep well at night. For them the ANC is merely a vehicle for self-enrichment,’ he told Volksblad. 46 It would be one of his last public utterances as an ANC member. Instead of continuing his legal battle against the Magashule faction, Ramakatsa turned his back on the ANC. In July 2013, he was introduced as the national coordinator for Julius Malema’s newly established Economic Freedom Fighters.47 Thus ended one of the strongest challenges ever to Magashule’s hegemony.
The Regime Change movement faded into oblivion and the chairman and his allies were again free to rule the ANC roost in the province, at least for the following four years.
The Constitutional Court’s judgment did not inspire those implicated in dubious political practices to mend their ways. In 2017, Magashule and his allies again received a lashing in court following complaints about their conduct. This is unpacked in Chapter 29.
12
Fourth estate capture
State capture is most efficiently curtailed by a free and independent media. The ideal environment for raiding the public purse is therefore one in which the fourth estate – the press – does not function optimally.
Under Ace Magashule’s watch, the Free State government moulded the province’s media landscape into a friendlier and more forgiving space by propping up allies in the industry and effectively suppressing critical publications.
Local journalists who exposed Magashule’s skeletons were threatened and intimidated, but the province’s foremost critical media voices were ultimately muzzled using what appears to have been a deliberate fin
ancial strategy. Millions of rands in taxpayers’ money were channelled
to
blatantly
obsequious
media
platforms
while
simultaneously withheld from those that refused to toe the line.
A calculated plan to capture the province’s collective budgets for advertising, communication, printing and related services began to take shape a year into Magashule’s first term as premier. Up until then, the Free State’s provincial departments were responsible for managing their own budgets for media and communications services. But in March 2010, Wisani Ngobeni, the chief director of communication in the Free State premier’s office and Magashule’s long-time spin doctor, compiled a report that paved the way for the centralisation of the separate departments’ media budgets. 1
Instead of creating a new entity to oversee expenditure, Ngobeni proposed that the premier’s office become the ‘implementing agent’ for
these services. ‘The current process of [placing] advertisement[s] in the media is time consuming and makes it impossible for departments to advertise on short notice,’ Ngobeni explained in his report. Centralising to the premier’s office would ‘enable Departments to buy media space without the administrative burden of obtaining quotations,’ he argued. 2
In April 2010, the province’s executive council ‘resolved to centralise the communication services of all the provincial departments in line with the turnaround strategy for communication’, according to a damning report by National Treasury concluded in early 2013. 3
A prevailing story told by those with insight into the workings of Magashule’s Free State is that ‘the fourth floor’, a reference to the premier’s office in the Lebohang government building in Bloemfontein, always had the final say in how the various departments spent their budgets. In most instances, the control Magashule and his colleagues exerted over these cash flows was through informal arrangements. The 2010 ‘turnaround strategy’ for media services, however, formalised Magashule’s capture of this segment of the province’s expenditure.