Jeremy Cronin | PoliticsWeb | 14 February 2018 | Lenin is reputed to have once said “there are decades where nothing happens, and weeks where decades happen.” It would be an exaggeration to claim decades have been happening in South Africa in the past few weeks. We are not exactly living through “ten days that shook the world” as John Reed once described the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.
But we are certainly living through a rapid and considerable shaking up of South Africa and notably of the ANC and the state.
After a prolonged and painful period of ANC leadership paralysis, with one scandal piling up after another, suddenly, since mid-January, a flurry of long delayed developments has kicked off, and with an increasing tempo. There is a real sense of falling dominoes.
Most notably, of course, as Umsebenzi is being produced, an ANC recall of President Jacob Zuma, something the SACP has long insisted upon, is now surely imminent.
But a Zuma recall is just one of multiple and interconnected developments. There have finally been decisive moves on Eskom, led by the deputy state president Cde Ramaphosa acting as de facto state president and in clear disregard for the nominal president. In similar fashion, Cde Ramaphosa declared publicly at Davos that there would be no nuclear deal.
The Hawks have found wings, swooping on the scandalous Vrede dairy farm Estina deal, even dragging the current Public Protector into belatedly issuing her own pathetically anodyne report on the matter (a report that somehow manages to leave the Guptas out of the equation).
Yes, much of what is happening is still half moves, reluctant shifts, or just the beginnings of long suppressed investigations. But we shouldn’t underestimate what is afoot, or fail to act vigorously in support of the momentum that has now opened up.
Everywhere, former Gupta political lackeys are jumping ship. Scoundrels are running for cover. Looters are turning whistle-blowers:
– The former Group CEO of Prasa (Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa) has tossed a few colleagues under the proverbial bus (his trains don’t work);
– A key player in the 1990s arms deal saga, Ajay Sookal, has crept from the woodwork to spill some of the beans at a People’s Tribunal. (It is a tribunal that in a matter of days has put to shame the earlier, spineless Judge Seriti Commission into the arms deal).
Apart from implicating two French presidents and several prominent ANC politicians in a massive cover-up, Sookal has recounted some illuminating anecdotes, like how Duduzane Zuma was fired by the Guptas and left without taxi fare when his father was suspended by Mbeki… only to be re-hired and gifted with a fancy Dubai apartment when his father’s fortunes turned.
Source: PoliticsWeb
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