In this episode of the Sunday Show, United Independent Movement (UIM) President Neil De Beer, slams the way “the greater good” seems to be the reason certain politicians are not suspended or fired or arrested or tried or jailed. He delves into the cases of President Cyril Ramaphosa, Vice President Paul Mashatile, former President Jacob Zuma, and Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) Commander-in-Chief Julius Malema. De Beer gives his take on the growing power struggle between African National Congress (ANC) Secretary General Fikile Mbalula and Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi. He talks about another “Web Celeb”, this time Big Daddy Liberty, being appointed to the office of Democratic Alliance (ANC) leader John Steenhuisen. And he warns that escalating violence between foreign Spaza shop owners and township residents could lead to anarchy.
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Highlights from the interview
In this Sunday Show on BizNews, Chris Steyn interviews Neil De Beer, President of the United Independent Movement. De Beer begins by criticizing the idea of overlooking justice “for the greater good,” arguing that criminal allegations against leaders, including Vice President Paul Mashatile and Julius Malema, should be properly prosecuted instead of being dismissed. He discusses several controversial figures in South African politics, including Mashatile’s untested allegations, Malema’s ongoing legal battles, and the unresolved Phala Phala scandal involving President Cyril Ramaphosa.
The conversation shifts to tensions within the ANC, where a power struggle between Secretary General Fikile Mbalula and Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi is emerging. De Beer also comments on the rise of social media personalities in politics, particularly Big Daddy Liberty’s role in the DA, raising questions about the influence of bloggers and vloggers.
Lastly, they discuss the escalating violence in South African townships over spaza shops, with foreign-owned stores being attacked amid accusations of selling unsafe food. De Beer warns that if the government does not intervene, the country could face further unrest and anarchy. The interview concludes with a reflection on protecting society’s most vulnerable, particularly women and children.
Extended transcript of the interview
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Chris Steyn (00:02.765)
It is Sunday, October 20, and it is the Sunday Show on BizNews. I’m Chris Steyn, speaking to Neil De Beer, the President of the United Independent Movement. Good morning, Neil.
Neil De Beer (00:14.88)
Another week, Chris, very good morning. So glad that the rumours that you and I are running away from each other and that this partnership could be sold out is utter rubbish. It’s always good to be here with our Sunday viewers on BizNews to recap another crazy week in my opinion. So hello.
Chris Steyn (00:34.145)
Well, thank you, Neil. You know these rumours. Please don’t refute them because I enjoy getting three marriage proposals every week. I enjoy turning them down. Anyway, let’s get serious and let us look at this label “For the greater good” that is being attached to certain people not getting prosecuted, certain people not getting arrested, certain people not getting fired or even suspended.
Neil De Beer (01:05.41)
Utter rubbish. Chris, I laboured this point with you this week that I wanted to stop and just speak in a small segment about something that surely in the normal citizen’s view is now becoming from a pebble to absolute rock in our shoe and it’s painstakingly ridiculous. This thing where we say we will look the other way on certain serious issues for the greater good. This thing they call the bigger picture. Now let me tell you, Chris, it irks me that in certain circles in this country we are starting to swallow that Oros with the ice, glass and all. So I want to address this today. There can be no way in a country that sees itself as an evolved democracy where the pinnacle of our society is based on law and order and justice. Say no one else to the fact that if you don’t have a country that action builds its foundation on law and order and the law that it is a country doomed to fail.
Now I want to put this on the table because it is clearly sitting right here. Chris, if you have politicians or leaders in society that have absolutely been under the kosh, the spotlight and been put allegations to them of criminality, you cannot say for the greater good, sorry, this is my weekly spew, this is my weeklikse kom uit, because I need to put this on the table.
I’ll use one person in particular who’s now being seemingly classed in the, leave him alone, because of the greater good. Wat se gemors is dit? If they guilty, the greater good says, go to jail. Because that’s what civil society demands. I want to rest by Mr. Paul Mashatile as a subject of this discussion and just say that this gentleman has got a litany of allegations. And that’s our problem Chris, allegations that are not being tested in court.
Neil De Beer (03:35.084)
And it seems that the Vice President of this country, who currently serves under allegations of nepotism, of taking funding from SOEs, being involved in transactions where there is huge movement when he was in Gauteng in property, and it’s just a litany of 18 alleged charges, even lodged and charged formally by the DA to the Presidency where he did not, this is Paul Mashatile, where he did not make certain clear, clear declarations in Parliament about his assets.
Neil De Beer (04:03.416)
I’m just standing by one. I’m not even going into the others that are currently mentioned in the Zondo Commission.
Mr. Julius Malema that sits there fires a firearm, allegedly, on a video in public and he’s still in court. That he’s able to strike a police officer and get set free
Neil De Beer (04:30.498)
And that is currently still not being able to be prosecuted for any VBS. Is this the greater good?
When we didn’t want to send Jacob Zuma to jail and he then had to go on contempt, not all the other charges, the greater good of the country, we don’t want looting and problems.
The Phala Phala issue
Neil De Beer (04:56.93)
We are not going to investigate. Parliament swipes it and says not necessary. And the NPA says no case will have success. Greater good. Chris, do you see a pattern now about how this thing is being shaped to say maybe for the greater good, maybe for the stability? What a lot of nonsense, Chris. Because I will prefer that the greater good is that we have people that have got honour and integrity running the country and not criminals, de facto alleged people that are in the dark and being put on the side and said well for the greater good of the country. Chris, this is not going to be for the greater good of the citizen of this country if we don’t get down to it and say to the people even to the President face the music and go clear your name so that Phala Phala or any allegation is wiped clean.
Neil De Beer (05:55.662)
This is what a country demands, a country that I would like to live in. And I think this is going to just continually go around and around until the citizens of this country gets up and says no more. So the greater good, this thing about rather that than that, I think it is becoming a farce and we must get up as citizens and say, no, no, we will not allow the bigger picture because that bigger picture could be an ugly picture in the future.
Read more: Neil de Beer: “Incompetent” Angie, “competent” John & his “Ché Guevera” advocate…
Chris Steyn (06:27.749)
Meanwhile, there’s been an investigation into a second break-in at President Cyril Ramaphosa Phala Phala farmhouse, mere months after millions were stolen there. Do you think it’s going to be another of those investigations that remain an investigation?
Neil De Beer (06:49.592)
Well, Chris, it’s an absolute, absolute thriller of a story, and it is starting to sound like a trilogy of Lord in the Rings. Dark versus light, ponder versus none. It is ridiculous when you start like I did reading the dockets this week. And the reason I refocused myself is because of the massive so-called stand-up in parliament of people now saying there should be a public prosecution of the president. MK Party Judge Thlope directly or ex-judge getting up and saying to the President, you should be prosecuted. And Cyril turning around saying, well, now it is in the round of another litigation. Chris, this news story broke, not because of the people on Phala Phala. In actual fact, when the thing occurred, only two years after. But only because Mr. Arthur Fraser, ex-person of the Secret Service brought it up to the light that such a theft of 580,000 US dollars occurred. Now Chris, it seems that’s not the right amount. That is just the amount that was so-called stolen. Because the accusation was that he had 4 million US in his house and the thieves only stole 580,000 US dollars. That was February 2020. And the only reason that came out was because an outsider spilled the beans.
Now we hear in the next investigation that in actual fact on the 7th of June of the same year 2020 there was in actual fact a secondary burglary but now under declaration nothing was stolen. Funny enough the person that got robbed, stolen from Honourable Cyril Matamalas Ramaphosa denied that such things ever occurred pre the docket being opened. He now again denies that anybody broke into his house. And in the same time, I think you will remember, he answered in Parliament, Chris, on a question he said, no, no, no, but he admits. And it was for the sale of buffaloes. And then they turned around and said, but wait, Mr. President, according to the President’s Code, you are not allowed to do business while you’re a sitting President. But he admitted it.
And then we’ve got this absolute crazy situation where the National Prosecuting Authority, Chris, after all of these things about buffaloes and mattresses and dollars comes out, now they say that they cannot see that any prosecution on this matter will bear success. Are we in La La Land? The Greater Good.
Chris Steyn (09:29.921)
Must be for the greater good.
Chris Steyn (09:35.093)
Right. So, Neil, meanwhile, the Government of National Unity has to cope with the apparent power struggle between the ANC secretary general and the ANC Gauteng Premier. Your thoughts?
Neil De Beer (09:51.95)
I heard a discussion the other day when someone said, Neil, what is your opinion on Lucifer Lesufi? And I went, that’s a Donald Trump thing, know, Crooked Hillary. People are starting to give people names. And I said, Lucifer Lesufi. And I went, oh my goodness, is that how far people are now characterising this man, an ambitious man, who is clearly on a track of somewhere?
You know, there’s something called Water Shedding that’s appearing in Gauteng. And they took him on and said, now that the so-called lights are on, we don’t have water. And Lucifer Lesufi gets up and he says, aha, but this is a national competency. This has nothing to do with provincial. In what lala are you?
And then we’ve got this innuendo of words between Fikile and Lesufi this past week, where I am telling you, if it was a cat fight, nails out. They are now currently squaring up at each other, where you can clearly see, where Fikile says that that man will toe the line, that he will not challenge the ANC, and that I am the Secretary General and therefore I am in charge. I am telling you, shots fired.
That thing’s not going to end and you can clearly see a power struggle now heading up between the Lesufi’s grouping and Fikile’s grouping at the Luthuli House. I think that we should watch and I think that absolutely in the following couple of months, moving to the 2027 matter, I am saying it will not calm down. It’s just going to heat up. And again, Chris, that debate is about power, it is about control and nothing to do about the betterment about the citizens that they are supposed to lead.
Chris Steyn (12:00.887)
In a lighter moment, Democratic Alliance leader John Steenhuisen has appointed Big Daddy Liberty to his office. Neil, isn’t he still trying to get rid of the previous Web Celeb he appointed?
Neil De Beer (12:15.79)
I think this is a new era that bloggers are great parliamentarians, that bloggers and vloggers and social media people have got this immense attraction on standing on the boxes of political parties and say what they want to say, but this time it’s a different arena.
So this is not the first time that we are seeing now within the DA that social media personalities like Big Daddy Liberty, not the first. We’ve had Renaldo Gouws, we’ve had Cabanac, we’ve had also a young guy called Liam Jacobs, Mr. Ding Dong Deli Dong. We’ve got four people in the DA that are known socialites on social media, all of them thrust in a political arena. And I’m trying to make sense of it by saying, is this the new era that we are moving into.
And I’m afraid to say up till now, if you look at the fall that the DA has put in with the new gentleman Big Daddy, you’ve now got two in and you’ve got two out. Well, the one is not wanting to go, by the way, because Cabanac is refusing to leave and rumour is he’s still pondering the slippery slopes of John’s office. So is this a good thing?
Chris, I think the dynamics of politics have changed in the sense that three quarters of political battle is fought on TikTok, is fought on vlogs and blogs. But does that give the person who is put in that position the experience, the knowledge? The jury is out and it doesn’t seem at this moment that it’s 100 percent. We will have to watch the space.
I actually have connected many times with Sihle. He is a graduate. He is a person that I must tell you, out of all of them, has a lot of insight. I like him. I have a huge respect for the way that he addresses things, not his politics in all. So let’s see. mean, but John reaching out, it seems, to the social media space to do what? I think we will need to watch that closely.
Chris Steyn (14:41.517)
Neil, let’s quickly go to the defections and the high profile departures from the Economic Freedom Front. Where did Commander-in-Chief Julius Malema lose the plot?
Neil De Beer (14:54.22)
The day he was born. I think what we need to… I don’t know. You know when you look at the demise… No, no. Let’s look at the rise of the EFF. Let’s look at the departure of Julius Malema, President of the Youth League. People like Floyd Shivambo all leaving and starting this thing called the Economic Freedom Fighters with a bang.
No one will argue that most probably one of the most definitive political party brands in this country is the Red Devils. You can deny it. But if you look at the total branding, the total movement of how they built themselves as the new youth league, as the Youth League outside the ANC, there was no argument that when they got the 10 percents that they were moving into a second based era.
And no one will deny that they were the third largest party in parliament. So these are not things that are rumouurs, they are fact.
Now, Chris, here’s the thing. What happened? What happened to that rising of an undoubted South African political power in our demographic of South Africa, where if you saw red, it’s EFF, where they were frontlining striking to the current seemingly shadow they are.
Now it is clear if you look just at Julius, and if you look at his appearances specifically, I saw him yesterday appearing at the now deceased Tito Mboweni’s funeral, and if you look at how he looks like. This is half the man, and I’m not just talking about his physical being. You can see he is no longer what he was.
And in this week, three defections, not just from members, but highlining members, some of them not yet admitting that they’re going to MK, but that’s the obvious route they are going. And I’m sorry to say when they moved in the last national election from 10 to nine, they broke a stride upward and seemingly to slip and slide backward.
Now, is it because of the thunder being stolen by the Jacob Zuma family clan?
Read more: De Beer: SA’s “Wrecking ball” politics
Neil De Beer (17:18.986)
Or is it internally that there are so many rumblings in himself? We can easily go blame MK for the demise. I don’t think so Chris. I think inside the worms are aloft. They are eating at the inside of this red apple. And I think there is a destructive mode inside for many reasons.
And I’ll quickly outlay three. One, there can be no doubt that Julius Malema is President for life. There can be no doubt that anybody that has aspirations to grow in that party, I think are currently being shoved out or oppressed. So we are clear there will be no leadership contestation at the end of this year of their place in their conference. And I think that’s why people like Floyd and them have hit the ceiling and went somewhere else. So that’s clear. I think the leadership style and the way that people are being used and seemingly abused in the EFF is another criteria, but there’s unhappiness. And I think certainly, yes, without a doubt, the new spokesperson for RET, Revolution and Economic Transformation is no longer the EFF, but indeed the MK. So it doesn’t bode them well. 2026 again will showcase where they stand and what power they still deem, but I think it’s a watered down revolution at this time.
Chris Steyn (18:49.615)
Last thing, let’s go to the townships where there is, if I may call it, a Spaza Shop War raging. Children have died from contaminated snacks, killings, looting.
Neil De Beer (19:04.344)
Chris, this is serious. This is an underlining revolution. We are using these words a lot these days because this is seemingly the mantra of what’s happening in the underlying scores. That revolt started when we had the looting, when we had the matters. The looting started maybe as a political in-hap, but then it turned into plain and simple thuggery and theft.
And what’s happening was this continual uprise of so-called xenophobia and then the matter of immigration and then illegal people being here. You could see a spike in the last two months of many restaurants being actually hit by authorities to try and show that they are doing something about people that are not documented.
This last week, what happened, is a total shift to a new level where the actual spaza shops, where people are making apparently food stuffs that are illegal and uncontrolled by Health, are now having a regurgitation against the people consuming it. And it just so happens that the accusation is that it’s coming from the foreigner shops and therefore they were vehemently attacked this week and in one stage, Chris, they were becoming uncontrollable.
This thing seems to not be going away. On all fronts, people are now saying that they’ve had enough, that the authorities are not doing enough, although you can see there are matters of intervention. I fear that if we don’t control this and look at those scenarios and handle it, that again it’s going to flare up and then to an uncontrollable situation.
Unfortunately, the majority of this is happening in the informal settlements, the places where there is the rifeness of poverty, etc. And in many cases, these are the only ways that people can go buy stuff. It seems, though, that the same people that are buying the stuff are now turning on them, burning them down. And I see the weird thing is when they burn it down because they say children were poisoned, the first thing they do is they loot the product that I was saying is causing such poison.
Neil De Beer (21:26.584)
Don’t know where the balance lies, but I’m watching it and I am absolutely saying that the authorities must immediately step in. Otherwise, Chris, we’re going to anarchy again.
And we also have to think about the people that are eating these products, that are sitting there, that that is probably the only access they have and that is not good. And it’s children, Chris, and you know me, if we can’t protect our women and children in our society, what kind of society do we have?
Chris Steyn (21:56.555)
Indeed, Neil. Thank you. That was Neil de Beer on The Sunday Show with BizNews and I am Chris Steyn. Have a good Sunday, Neil.
Neil De Beer (22:06.232)
Thanks Chris, Blessings.
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