The NdB Sunday Show: Jonathan Deal - How law and order has been auctioned off

In this edition of the NdB Sunday Show, Safe Citizen Founder Jonathan Deal talks to Chris Steyn about police- and political capture by cartels, corruption, cadre deployment - martyred whistleblowers. He warns that the country’s is on a knife's edge - and that public revolt over the rot is “a distinct possibility if it is not brought under control and if steps are not taken at high level in public by the Government of National Unity to get control of these issues and actually start holding the people that are complicit in all of this to account…We saw how quickly an Arab Spring arose up on the back of social media and how quickly the public, once they have decided to go ahead with it, dealt with the leaders that had for decades and years disadvantaged them and treated them badly.” Deal adds that South Africa has crossed a “grim threshold” to become a country “where corruption is no longer a crime that happens inside the State, but it appears to have become the very business model of the State itself”. He says he has watched “step-by step the devolution of this country at an increasingly rapid pace and literally seen how law and order are being auctioned off and how the safety of entire communities is becoming collateral damage for a self-sustaining feeding frenzy.” Deals goes on to reveal plans for the launch of a national campaign next week to stop proposed legislative moves that could result in the disarmament of millions of legal firearm owners..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..Watch here.Listen here.Edited transcript of the interview.Chris Steyn (00:02.362)November 16, 2025. You are on the Sunday Show, the NDB Sunday Show with me, Chris Steyn. And today my guest is Jonathan Deal, the Founder of Safe Citizen. Welcome, Jonathan. Jonathan Deal (00:19.704)Thank so much Chris, it's nice to be on your show. Chris Steyn (00:23.784)Jonathan, you wrote to me about the mindset South Africans have to live with, and you named it after an ultra luxury car favoured by a particular looting kingpin. Share that picture with our viewers, please. Jonathan Deal (00:41.76)Thank you. I look forward to doing that. I think just at the outset, I'd like to give this interview perhaps a title that works for me and it's called Power at All Costs. And it's really about unmasking the rot in South Africa's government, the ANC's grip on power. And at the end of the interview, a reference to the immutable wisdom of Chairman Mao. But to get to the Pagani incidents, I like to call it the Pagani mindset. And Pagani is the name of probably one of the most, if not the most expensive cars in the world. They retail for around about 50 million, give or take a million or two. And a short while after whistleblower Babita Deokoran was assassinated for exposing the Tembisa Hospital syndicate, the controversial South African businessman and tenderpreneur Hangwani Maumela reportedly took delivery of one of these vehicles. And this was included, was reputed to be part of a R208 million supercar spending spree. Those cars were recently confiscated by the Hawks Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation in a fairly well-publicised operation in Johannesburg. But why I hold this out and why it's relevant, I think, to what we're talking about today is the question and the reasonable conclusion is that there is such a broad acceptance of and tacit support for the corruption, cronyism, nepotism, dishonesty and plain criminal conduct amongst the political elite, their family and friends and their business associates, that it appears to me that they don't, they just don't see anything wrong with it. It's just become the new normal. Chris Steyn (02:55.102)Jonathan, for weeks now, the country has heard increasingly staggering and damning evidence of police and political capture. I'm sure you have followed evidence being laid at the Madlanga Commission and Parliament's Ad Hoc committee was rapt attention. How would you summarise what we have heard? Jonathan Deal (03:26.004)I have definitely been more involved in it than the average South African, but actually owing to your invitation to join you today on the Sunday Ahow, I spent some time in the last week focusing more, listening to the Madlanga Commission and its testimony and evidence and also excerpts from the Parliamentary Ad Hoc Committee. And I think that what has come home to me very clearly is that South Africa has crossed a grim threshold. It's become a country where corruption is no longer a crime that happens inside the State, but it appears to have become the very business model of the State itself. And I must say to your viewers today that I'm not here as an expert on the Madlang Commission nor on the Parliamentary Ad Hoc Committee and I'm certainly not a polished political commentator. But I'm here as someone who has watched step by step the devolution of this country at an increasingly rapid pace and literally seen how law and order are being auctioned off and how the safety of entire communities is becoming collateral damage for a self-sustaining feeding frenzy. In fact, there's so much shocking information emerging from Madlanga and Ad Hoc that it is easy to lose sight of the overall picture. So today I believe that it's important to articulate how this mess is impacting on the man in the street. Millions, tens of millions of the people in South Africa who will not necessarily access this story on television, on the parliamentary channels, on YouTube, wherever it appears. And essentially what I want to do is just connect the dots about the story and the experience that South Africans already feel in their bones. And lastly, if this comes across as politically focused, it is. And it's because that the ANC, in my view, has politicised all public service, Jonathan Deal (05:43.807)…,all state institutions, all state assets, and that it seeks to completely dominate our country with its National Democratic Revolution. Jonathan Deal (05:58.008)So. I think that one of the ways that I best illustrate this to your viewers, and I learned this a long time ago in my campaign against various mining technologies, was to use something called Elephant Metrics and just break down the costs to the country and to its people of this corruption. And whatever way we slice it there is somewhere around about 1.4, 1.5 trillion rands worth of monetary loss to South Africans. That is from various reports. And this includes irregular expenditure, unauthorised expenditure, fruitful and wasteless expenditure. Some of the key contributors were the looting of COVID-19 funds, SOE bailouts to the amount of over 520 billion rand, 300 billion rand of that post 2020 due to corruption and mismanagement - and, of course, ongoing State Capture fall-out. Now that 1.4 trillion I thought to myself, well what could South Africans do with that money? Well let's talk about two things that are really needed in this country for the man in the street: hospitals and schools. And so I asked my friend at GROK to do some calculations for me and he came back, or she, depending on who's answering, with an average cost per new public school of round about a hundred million rand, 80 to 124 for a standard primary school, a hundred and forty million rand for a secondary school with 32 classrooms and smart technology. Or... Jonathan Deal (07:47.17)The cost for a 500 bed public hospital along the lines of say the Pexley-Cassemé hospital in Durban at about 4.5 million rand per bed, including ICU theatres and equipment. The contextual impact of that is that if we split that money between hospitals and schools, this country, for that 1.4 trillion rand of looting, could have had 482 new 500-bed hospitals or almost 2,000 new schools. And that would have given us about 250,000 beds or been able to accommodate 1.5 to 2 million learners in our overcrowded schools or even in areas where there are no schools. If we drop the allocation, split between the two things, hospitals and schools, and just focus on one, we would be able to buy 560 hospitals or 14,000 schools. And this figure highlights corruption's devastating opportunity costs. It was enough money to transport, to transform public services for millions of people. And that, Chris, is the financial impact on South Africans - and I believe that this mess belongs at the door of the ANC and its cadre deployment. Chris Steyn (09:14.878)How have you assessed President Cyril Ramaphosa's conduct during his Presidency, especially when it came and comes to allegations of corruption involving people close to him? Jonathan Deal (09:33.398)After listening to the testimony of the Commission, obviously I don't live with my head in the sand either, so I'm well aware of things that we hear and that we learn of in the public over the last number of years, and again, at an increasing pace. It seems that the devolving, the unraveling of our country and our State-owned institutions and public services is just at an increasing pace. And the man that seems to sit or that de facto sits front and centre in that tableau is President Ramaphosa. He just appears to be completely shocked when, and to quote him in fact, I don't know how many times he's told us how shocked he is about various things, but just missing in action. And what becomes worse is that after the most damaging, the most destructive, the most worrying and chilling revelations around the public service and what is facing South Africans, it’s almost as if a day or two later somebody writes him a script and he comes back into the public and he starts singing the ANC's praises or attacking an organisation that may have had the temerity to criticize his lack of action. So it is an enormous indictment and if he is going to remain the face of leadership in this country, I think that we are going to be in increasingly serious trouble..Read more:.Jonathan Deal: Warning of large-scale public disobedience over ANC’s “disarmament agenda”….Chris Steyn (11:18.162)The African National Congress is trying to distance itself from its former election fixer, Brian Mogotsi, who failed to stage his own assassination. But do you think it's too late for the party? Jonathan Deal (11:37.858)They can't distance themselves from this. It's impossible. It is a perfect reflection of the tenets of the National Democratic Revolution. This is not by accident. It is not because these people are stupid. As far as I'm concerned, it is a purposeful and calculated march to impose the precepts of the National Democratic Revolution on the country. And their posturing around not being involved in this and not wanting this, does not fly. It doesn't fly with me and I don't think it flies with any South African that thinks about it. Chris Steyn (12:23.88)Well, after a recent two-day retreat, the 10 leaders of the parties in the Government of National Unity came out with a message of unity. So how do you rate the role the Democratic Alliance has played since it joined the Government of National Unity? Jonathan Deal (12:53.151)I think that, and of course it's always very easy to sit on the outside and judge or criticise other people's action or lack of action and it's not necessarily a good thing to do if one has not been in their shoes for a period of time. I would have preferred to see a far more robust engagement with the government, far more robust engagement. I was absolutely shocked that things like NHI and Expropriation without Compensation were reported allegedly by the media before the head of the formal opposition even knew about it. That indicated to me that either the ANC just completely ignores any sense of the meaning of the word unity in the Government of National Unity or that the leaders of the Democratic Alliance and the other organisations in the GNU have not got their ear to the ground properly.So I would like to see something a lot more robust. And I do believe it's time. And I think that if the DA were bold enough to pursue this hard, they would...get a lot of backing from a lot of South Africans who have traditionally voted for other parties. And Helen Zille stands as a sterling example of somebody with chutzpah and guts. And I think that she will turn Johannesburg around if she's given the opportunity. Chris Steyn (14:32.702)Now, South Africa is increasingly being called a Mafia State. Let's go over to Mexico, a Narco State. And yesterday we saw protests. Protesters trying to overrun the palace because of alleged links of politicians with drug lords. Now we're sitting here in South Africa with politicians being linked to the biggest cartel bosses in the country. How much more do you think the people will take or can take? Jonathan Deal (15:12.395)If I have to draw on common sense and the warnings of people like Rob Hersov who is well quoted on this aspect in South Africa, I think that we are sitting on a knife's edge or on top of the proverbial tinderbox waiting for a spark. And what makes it even more possible to occur, of course, is social media. We saw how quickly an Arab Spring arose up on the back of social media and how quickly the public, once they have decided to go ahead with it, dealt with the leaders that had for decades and years disadvantaged them and treated them badly. And it's not a spectre that one would want to see in South Africa. No person, no person at all. But I think that it is a distinct possibility if it is not brought under control and if steps are not taken at high level in public by the government of national unity to get control of these issues and actually start holding the people that are complicit in all of this to account. Chris Steyn (16:30.514)We have seen discreditation attempts of the whistleblowing KZ in general from various quarters, even the media itself, but the public is firmly behind him and regularly warn that if he's touched, they will march behind him. Now, he's by no means the kind of man who would want to a revolution Jonathan Deal (17:05.921)…And your reference to whistleblowers actually brings me to something that I would like to highlight here which was absolutely chilling for me. And that was the spectre of criminals chilling with the elite and being very close to the ANC. And I'd like to quote from some of the notes that I made. The criminals appear to have State officials and certain politicians on speed dial. And social media has now consistently revealed them supping together at fine restaurants, driving super cars and generally living the high life amongst each other. The unending allegations of politicians and state officials living in loaned luxury mansions and driving loaned luxury cars show that they actually don't care what the public thinks and they don't see anything wrong with accepting presents from known gangsters and criminals. And so in prepping for this interview, I actually spent more time than usual on Madlanga. It's one thing to pick up a newscast or news clip or a cast on social media and just look at that in the context of all the rest of the news of the day. But I would like to draw out the testimony of two people on the Madlanga Commission and they are not the worst testimony that we've heard. But the most riveting testimony that I heard simply because of its simplicity came from Lieutenant Colonel Kelebogile Thepa of the EMPD. And the testimony commenced with a well-groomed Colonel poised and confident in her facts. As she progressed through her story, she became visibly uncomfortable… Jonathan Deal (18:54.645)…until she broke down in tears when she had to describe what she endured from three thugs who hijacked her in her car. And what was clear was the palpable terror that she experienced. She thought she was going to die. And it was for me, because it is far from the worst incident that has been revealed, even more chilling. And she has at least emerged from that alive and with her integrity intact. Another episode that I watched just last night was a testimony of witness D, who step-by-step described the murder of a suspect, criminal suspect, and the eventual orders from senior officers from various law enforcement agencies at the scene, allegedly also including Brigadier Mkhwanazi of the EMPD, whether he was there or not, or giving orders remotely, to go and dispose of the body of this criminal suspect who then died. In that story, Witness D names names in detail, ranks and law enforcement agencies. There was even reference to an amount of about 500,000 Rand in cash somewhere in the suspect's house and reference to certain officers on the site helping themselves to articles from the now dead suspect’s. Probably the most horrifying line in that testimony for me was around the interrogation of the suspect with plastic bags and water and someone asking Did he talk? This was to one of the officers involved in the apparent interrogation and that officer responded he won't be talking to anyone ever again. The question is how can the public feel safe in this landscape? When I was a child, I knew that if I was ever frightened or lost or in danger, I could instinctively turn and run into the doorway of a police station or the arms of a policeman. Not so today. The public now when we approach a roadblock, we don't know whether we are going to meet a band of criminals dressed in police uniforms with official looking cars, a band of real policemen with criminal intent or even… Jonathan Deal (21:14.344)…a group of real policemen actually doing their work of serving the public. And it's absolutely shocking. And I don't know how the public is expected to trust the police to look after them in circumstances like this. Chris Steyn (21:32.542)Well, Jonathan, meanwhile, millions of legal firearm owners fear being disarmed and left defenseless if proposed amendments to firearms legislation became law. Safe Citizen is fighting that. Give us an update, please. Jonathan Deal (21:53.483)I'm really keen to go there. would, however, just say something else that I want to highlight about the cost of being honest, the deadly cost of being honest in South Africa and the unsung heroes and in fact now martyrs around whistleblowing. There are 10 from August 2023 to...September the 5th, 2025. There are 10 high profile assassinations that have taken place of whistleblowers. The most brutal, ruthless shooting of these people outside their homes, outside their children's schools, in the public, just like stuff that we watch in the movies. And the observations around those whistleblower assassinations are that most of the victims were gunned down in drive-bys or in ambushes near their home school or work. And often after exposing, tender fraud. For example, in health, home affairs, municipalities. KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng are the most prevalent provinces involved in that. There seems to be impunity that they can get away with it. The hitmen are only convicted in around about 20% of the cases and never the big kingpins behind it. And in the broader context, Corruption Watch and Human Rights Watch report reprisals in about 90% of the cases, including murders. And even on Madlanga, we heard from witness A….Read more:.The NdB Sunday Show: Prof. Theo Venter - Cat’s Metro Capture, Gigaba’s fall, Trump’s G20 boycott - and the GNU’s unity breakthrough….Jonathan Deal (23:36.498)…about somebody in Gaugeng who resembles the whistleblower who was mistakenly assassinated. So it's just completely out of control and I think within that context, it brings us to the context of security in the country, how the public is supposed to respect the Parliament, how the republic is supposed to...rely on the police to keep them safe. And I think at a time when...This type of thing is happening is very clear that the State has an agenda to disarm law-abiding citizens. It is only the ANC that suggests that crime can be brought under control by disarming law-abiding and licensed gun owners. Before I go into that, there's something else that I want to talk about that. And it came from the Cape Times on Thursday, where they had a headline that said, Under Siege, and subheading Families and ommuters grieve as deadly violence grips Cape Flats communities. So we all know about the gangs of Cape Town and the inability of the police and even the military under the infamous Bheki Cele to control them. Jonathan Deal (25:09.988)What I want to highlight in the same article on the front page of the Cape Times is the absolute hypocrisy of the ANC. Here's the reported ANC statement that was inside that report on the siege. The ANC spokesperson said the crisis unfolding across the Western Cape is not only a policing issue. These killings require an urgent and extraordinary response from all spheres of government. The ANC calls on national government to declare a state of disaster on violence and underdevelopment in the Western Cape. Such a declaration must be accompanied by a coordinated national intervention that combines policing, social development, job creation and community development. So let me ask this: Are these not the exact areas of government capacity that have been systematically destroyed by the ANC? Is this not the result of the useless cadre deployment, nepotism and corruption enabled and protected by the ANC? And now they are talking of policing after what we have heard in Parliament. And social development. When the social development money is spent on mansions and sports cars, not on job creation, they who preside over one of the highest employment rates in the world. And community development, really, by keeping communities fractured with more racist laws and raising the black-white divide at every party's speech at any possible occasion. We all know, Chris, about AI, that when fed garbage, AI will respond with garbage. And I think that the AI model that fed that line to an ANC spokesman for inclusion in the Cape Times was not armed with the context of what the ANC has done and continues to do to this country. So if you look at what happened around the gangs and how it's actually manifested in this last week, apart from years and years in Cape Town… Jonathan Deal (27:21.312)This is what happened in parliament recently. The ANC voting against enhancements to SAPS Anti-Gang units. In July this year, the ANC's Parliamentary Whip blocked a DA motion in the National Council of Provinces that sought to hold Police Minister Senzo Mchunu accountable for his May 2025 promise of extraordinary measures to bolster SAPS in the Western Cape. That motion was tabled by MP Nicholas Gotsell specifically aimed to expand the SAPS Anti-Gang Unit to target drugs and organised crime in hotspots like the Cape Flats. And it's to me, it's like the CEO of the country doesn't care what promises his directors, the ministers, make and break. The impact on SAPS of that was that the rejection stalled reinforcements at a time when gang related shootings were surging. For example, 44 shot and 26 killed in one weekend in early November 2025. And this signaled indifference to provincial needs as the National Council of Provinces is actually meant to amplify these voices. In news reports, the DA's official statement on the 3rd of July decried the vote as evidence of ANC sabotage, noting that it undermined the efforts to deploy more officers to high crime areaa, we have, on the one hand, the ANC puffing themselves up in the newspaper and saying all of these grand things, which very much refers back to what I said about President Ramaphosa in the beginning. It doesn't matter how things devolve, how things unravel, they will just find another way to come into the media and puff themselves up. It's like watching Fikile Mabalula. If you listen to Fikile Mbalula talking about the ANC in public, he is speaking of just the most wonderful political party that was ever given breath in the whole world. It is just a complete disconnect with reality. Jonathan Deal (29:40.477)So this I think ties in very nicely to working towards our conclusion of this discussion, depending on what other questions you've got for me, and that is around the push to disarm private citizens. In 2021, we were presented with a bill that amongst other things suggested, not suggested, stated that self-defense would no longer be a good reason to own a firearm. In other words, apparently the state and the police would be able to look after you. There was a hue and cry around that and there were eventually 118,000 written objections submitted to the African National Congress. It was such a big response that the Civilian Secretariat, I think, had to arrange for another server or another institution to actually start keeping track of those responses. And I think we all know that if you get 118,000 responses, there are...millions more who feel the same way but have just not taken the effort to sit down and draft a response. And at the beginning of this interview, I made a reference to the immutable wisdom of Chairman Mao. And one of his most famous quotes leads into what we have discussed today. And that is, political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. And I hope that your views will just allow me to quote from some of this commentary. For Mao, Jonathan Deal (31:30.826)…the barrel of a gun symbolised the necessity of a disciplined armed force to seize and consolidate power in a society marked by oppression and inequality. Unlike liberal democratic theories that prioritise consent or institutional legitimacy, Mao argued that power is fundamentally coercive and those with the means of violence cannot, without the means of violence, cannot hope to challenge entrenched elites or establish a new system. He was not advocating for indiscriminate violence. He stressed that the party must control the gun, ensuring that military power serves political objectives. This is evident in his accompanying statement, our principle is the party commands the gun and the gun must never be allowed to command the party. In modern context Chris, it raises questions about the reality of regimes that maintain power through militarisation rather than popular consent. And I have to ask, is that where the ANC wants to take us? Today, this quote of Mao remains a provocative lens for examining power dynamics. In stable democracies, political power stems from elections and institutions, but Mao’s words resonate in situations of insurgency, state repression, or civil conflict, where control over armed forces can determine who governs. So for example, ongoing debates about gun control, state monopolies on violence, or the role of militias in unstable regions echo the tension between the force and legitimacy that Mayo highlighted. I hope that that makes that point quite powerful. Chris Steyn (33:25.096)So what's the next step for Safe Citizen, Jonathan? Jonathan Deal (33:31.116)I'm absolutely excited and delighted to report to you and to the viewers this morning that our focus has happily brought about a joint campaign between Dear South Africa and Safe Citizen. DearSouthAfrica.co.za has an enormous reach. There are 1.5 million, least 1.5 million subscribers on their database and we expect to launch that campaign in the next week. It will be a national push to alert the citizens of South Africa of this dire threat to their safety, this Firearms Control Amendment Bill. And we're also excited to share that we are in conversation with AfriForum and others around the concerted resistance to the ANC plans for firearm owners. And those plans of the ANC make complete sense if one considers them against the backdrop of what we've discussed today. So I want Safe Citizen to be promoted and viewed and actually a voice for the public in South Africa. I'm not here to represent big business, the legal profession, politicians or institutions. The most important voice in this country is the voice of the general public. And they have not been heard in this debate and they are not heard in the absolute chaos and shambles of life in South Africa from a safety and security point of view. And if I have a voice and a continued voice, I will continue to at every opportunity try and carry across the view of the public, for the public and to the public. Chris Steyn (35:29.458)Thank you. That was Jonathan Deal, the founder of Safe Citizen, speaking to me, Chris Steyn, on the NDB Sunday show. Thank you, Jonathan.

The NdB Sunday Show: Jonathan Deal - How law and order has been auctioned off

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