Isaac Mogotsi pt. 2: Ramaphosa’s GNU – A Thatcherite revival or the final betrayal of the ANC’s liberation legacy?

Key topics:Thabo Mbeki’s influence on the current Government of National Unity is critical.The 2024 GNU raises questions of inclusivity and representation in South Africa.ANC’s electoral decline reflects a disconnect between leadership and public support..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..By Isaac Mpho Mogotsi*The 2024 South African Election Outcome and the Betrayal of the National Democratic Revolution: How the African National Congress (ANC)'s rule collapsed after thirty years.THABO MBEKI AND THE GOVERNMENT OF NATIONAL UNITY (GNU).“Call me a Thatcherite”, Thabo Mbeki, 1996, quoted in Mark Gevisser's biography Thabo Mbeki and the Dream Deferred, Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2022, page 262.“As the saying goes, I refuse absolutely to rule from the grave”, Thabo Mbeki, Letter to the ANC, IOL, 31 October 2008.“What you are thunders so loudly that what you say cannot be heard”, quoted by Robert Sobukwe, Valedictory Speech, President, Students' Representative Council, University of Fort Hare, 21 October 1949, sahistory.gov.za/archives.INTRODUCTION.The newly appointed, highly hectic, very colourful, busy as a bee, directionless, almost thoughtless, flailing and most tjatjaraag GNU Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture Gayton MacKenzie of the unpatriotic Patriotic Alliance (PA) in his no less colourful albeit hilarious semi-biography The Choice: The Gayton McKenzie Story by Charles Cilliers remarks prophetically thus about himself:“What I seem to develop is a mixture of bravado and stupidity.” (X-Concepts Books, apparently published in 2006 [who knows?], page 109).A mixture of bravado and stupidity is a quality which seems to still define Gayton McKenzie and now increasingly defines Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa-led 2024 GNU, of which Gayton McKenzie is an irascible as well as risible, if not totally farcical, integral cog.McKenzie in the semi-biography also makes another perceptive observation about his life in prison for the crime he committed. He, as if self-propelling to the amazing philosophical stratosphere of French philosopher Michel Foucault, observes:“Prison is a place with a colourful cast. I meet doctors, lawyers, professors, executives and many more who've plummeted from the high life.” (Ibid).This profound and apt McKenzian insight about South African prison life also bears important and direct descriptive relevance to the colourful cast of GNU Cabinet Ministers, Deputy Ministers, their bureaucratic underlings as well as their desperate “Coalition of Losers” political parties who've plummeted from political and electoral high life after our 29 May 2024 national elections, and not forgetting nor excluding their heavy-weight and behind-the-scenes political Dala Lamas and endorsers like former president Thabo Mbeki.In this regard the struggle and post-apartheid history of Thabo Mbeki provides ample clues as to why the Thabo Mbeki Foundation has catapulted itself to the forefront of those calling for a GNU) so-called National Dialogue.It is important to pay a very close attention to these clues around Thabo Mbeki to have a sense of where the idea of GNU comes from at this current political juncture in our country. But these clues also reveal the real forces beyond the Thabo Mbeki Foundation and beyond Thabo Mbeki himself which are gaining and will gain most from both GNU and from the mooted so-called GNU National Dialogue.And this calls on us all to always bear in mind what Patric Tariq Mellet wrote in his phenomenal book The Lie of 1652: A decolonised history of the land (Tafelberg, 2020):“The British and the Boers had to contend with thenfact that, unlike in Australia and the Americas, there was a surviving numerically stronger indigenous African population with a track record of resistance. These Africans were increasingly becoming well organised politically and were connected to a Pan African anti-imperialist and anti-colonial political network.“Britain and its colonists prioritised a different form of subjugation and control over the indigenous African majority population by using a 'divide, conquer, rule and reconfigure' strategy to deal with what they called the 'Native Problem.'” (Ibid, Page 271).It can be safely stated that this colonial “divide, conquer, rule and redefine” strategy remains the core gene of any statecraft activities directed towards the black majority in South Africa to this day, because in their unity and togetherness lies the power and strength of the masses of the black majority to decisively and definitively address the slave ownership, colonial, apartheid, racist and white minority economic hegemony legacies and current realities.Are 2024 GNU and the mooted GNU so-called National Dialogue a new and updated “divide, rule, conquer and reconfigure” strategy by hegemonic Thatcherite, rightwing, white liberal, semi-fascistic Afrikaaner lunatic fringe and black neoliberal forces congregated around GNU to continue the well-worn British colonial playbook regarding the black majority in our country yearning for real and genuine transformation and redress?In a recent newspaper article Dinga Sikwebu wrote: .“Nine foundations that promote the legacies of South Africa's struggle luminaries this week issued a call for a national dialogue to develop a social compact and common vision to guide and reorientate the nation.“The foundations foster the values of Chief Albert Luthuli, Oliver and Adelaide Tambo, Robert Sobukwe, Desmond and Leah Tutu, Ahmed Kathrada, Steve Biko, Jakes Gerwel, Thabo Mbeki and Phumzile Mlambo Ngcuka.”To reorient or to disorient?That is the uppermost question of the current political moment post 29 May national elections.That anyone could refer to former Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka as a “struggle luminary” reflects the severe deterioration and poverty of political science, journalism and intellectual depth in our country.But the less frivolous point to make about this list of foundations supporting the call for the purported GNU National Dialogue is the loud statement it makes about the exclusion of the other well-known and famous foundations of struggle luminaries like the Chris Hani Foundation, the Solomon Mahlangu Foundation, the Moses Kotane Foundation, the Winnie Madikizela-Mandela Foundation, the Nelson Mandela Foundation, the June & Andrew Mlangeni Foundation, the Dollar Omar Institute, the Moses Mabhida Foundation etc.It fools no one that the preponderance of foundations of “struggle luminaries” on the list of foundations calling for the so-called National Dialogue and the deliberate and calculated exclusion of conservative and rightwing foundations like the Helen Suzman Foundation, the FW de Klerk Foundation, Freedom Under Law, the Afrikaner Foundation etc is meant to convey a veneer of struggle aura and irreproachability on the list.But this only emphasises how much the list shared by Dinga Sikwebu is exclusionary although purporting to enumerate nine foundations calling for a National Dialogue.This call for the so-called GNU National Dialogue is not inclusive at all. It is neither national nor dialoguing.It sounds like an imposition on society from high up.Who anointed these nine self-important foundations to be the ones leading such a mooted National Dialogue instead of our elected seventh national Parliament? Why do these self-elected foundations spearheading the call for a mooted National Dialogue fancy themselves to be more suited for this national task than our national Parliament which has just been recently elected by a vast majority of South Africans?These nine foundations “that promote the legacies of South Africa's struggle luminaries” seem to forget Karl Marx and Frederich Engels's aphorism that the King and the kingdom are not the same.And who funds these foundations making the call for a GNU National Dialogue? If they insert themselves uninvited by our society as movers and shakers of the mooted National Dialogue, can these foundation at least publish, in the spirit of disclosure and transparency, the list of all their funders and the quantum they received from such funders to date so as to remove the lingering but pervasive suspicion that it is their funders who are calling the GNU National Dialogue tune behind their back? For he or she who pays the Piper calls the tune. No?.Interestingly this is what the self-same Dinga Sikwebu reveals about who is the main driver of the mooted GNU National Dialogue, who happens not to be the nine foundations he mentioned:“When President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the formation of a government of national unity at his inauguration , he revealed the new administration's intention to convene a national dialogue bringing together political parties, civil society, labour, business and other stakeholders. He said the aim of the dialogue was 'to forge a social compact to realise the aspirations of our National Development Plan'. Parties that signed the statement of intent for the government of national unity subsequently committed themselves 'to an all-inclusive national dialogue to discuss critical challenges facing the nation.'”That the Thabo Mbeki Foundation, in lock step with president Ramaphosa, is leading calls by these nine foundations for a so-called GNU National Dialogue is not at all surprising because the post 29 May 2024 ANC of Ramaphosa enjoying only 40% of electoral support is a complete vindication of Thabo Mbeki's infamous dictum in the early naughties about “better few but better” ANC membership when he sought to shake down the ANC by expelling the SACP and COSATU from the ANC-led Tripartite Alliance for their firm opposition to the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) neoliberal, rightwing and Thatcherite ANC government policy at the time.The laughable 40% electoral support now being enjoyed by the ANC of Ramaphosa, Fikile Mbalula, Gwede Mantashe and Siphiwe “Gebuza” Nyanda is the clearest indication that ANC members, voters and supporters have abandoned it in droves since Ramaphosa ascended to lead it, thus making show that Mbeki's “better few, but better” dictum self-fulfilled.The funny thing is that the SACP's Blade Nzimande, who bitterly opposed Mbeki over GEAR in the early naughties, is now on the same side as Thabo Mbeki regarding his support for both GNU and the mooted so-called GNU National Dialogue.But to his credit it is not Thabo Mbeki who has ideologically somersaulted like an experienced Russian gymnast.It is SACP's Blade Nzimande who has somersaulted.The funnier part is that president Cyril Ramaphosa claims that the mooted so-called National Dialogue will “foster a social compact to realise the aspirations of the National Development Plan” when even the government-appointed National Development Commission (NPC), which oversees the National Development Plan (NDP)'s monitoring and implementation, recently declared in its 10-year review report that most of the NDP's targets were not met and many critical ones worsened during the period under review.How the mooted so-called GNU National Dialogue is supposed to whip life into such a near-dead and moribund long-term vision whose expiry date is fast approaching is a flight of fancy and the triumph of blind faith over concrete, lived experiences of South AfricansThe reason behind the manufactured frenzy and artificially engineered elite excitement over the formation of GNU and the call for the mooted so-called GNU National Dialogue was provided by an unexpected quarter earlier before our recent national elections.Under the title “Tumbling support for the ANC ends liberation era”, the fortnightly newsletter Africa Confidential of 4 January 2024, four months before the elections, wrote the following about the fate of Cyril Ramaphosa in the event the ANC's electoral support fell well below 50%:“The fate of President Cyril Ramaphosa depends on how far the ANC vote falls; if below 45%, there will be a concerted push for a new leader.”A good political reading of GNU is that it is some form of a short-term political insurance until the next ANC national policy conference or the ANC national general council or even the next ANC national conference given to Ramaphosa by the Democratic Alliance (DA) of Vrau Helen Zille and big white business funders of Ramaphosa's 2017 #CR17 campaign to assist Ramaphosa to remain in power, however tenuously, despite Ramaphosa leading the ANC into its second most debilitating, disastrous and humiliating electoral defeat since 1994.The biggest loser, whose party's national electoral support dropped by a staggering magnitude, is being repolished by the artificial construct of 2024 GNU to look like the most brilliant political player and winner in the electoral history of our post-apartheid democracy.Of course it is all a big, fat political joke..Without the DA and big white business' support to him, there was no snowball chance in hell that Ramaphosa could have survived such cataclysmic electoral devastation on the ANC and still remain in power.Following the loss of life during the campaign of Umkhonto We Sizwe (MK), the ANC's military wing in then Rhodesia (now Zimabwe) in the late 1960s and following the subsequent Chris Hani Memorandum, the venerable exiled ANC leader OR Tambo convened the ANC Morogoro conference in Tanzania in 1969 in order to put the ANC on a more sustainable, sure-footed and correct path in the struggle against apartheid white minority rule.OR Tambo did the same following some mutinies in Angola camps of MK in the early to mid 1980s by convening the Kabwe ANC conference in 1985.That was great and highly responsible leadership on the part of OR Tambo during moments of severe crises the exiled ANC confronted.What has Cyril Ramaphosa done by comparison following the ANC's catastrophic loss of power in democratic South Africa following the 29 May 2024 national elections?He did not call an emergency ANC conference or ANC National Dialogue or ANC national policy conference about what to do with such unprecedented and devastating ANC loss of power.He instead consulted, according to available media reports only one man Thabo Mbeki, other than his cowered fellow ANC NEC members.Neither did he call an ANC conference or National General Council or ANC policy conference to debate the desirability of either a GNU or a mooted so-calledGNU National Dialogue.Ramaphosa instead consulted leaders of political parties who have spent years, if not decades, plotting to bring an ANC government down.This is a very strange and disconcerting political reaction of an ANC leader in the face of such unprecedented and historic loss of power by the ANC.One can even go as far as saying, using the leadership measure of OR Tambo on Cyril Ramaphosa, that this is very un-ANC, if not outrightly undemocratic.This is clearly not how OR Tambo would have reacted if he were the ANC president today. The historical record shows that Tambo would have first consulted the entirety of ANC membership before forming GNU or embarking on the so-called National Dialogue. If he could so widely consult ANC members in exile under very difficult conditions, he would have found it easier to consult ANC members as such under conditions of our democracy and constitutional order. And that is a distinctive mark of a great ANC leader who was never obsessed only with his political self-preservation and survival at any cost.But to understand why Cyril Ramaphosa behaves this way, it is important to recall why he and the then Minister in the Presidency responsible for the development of the National Development Plan (NDP) Treevor Manuel bitterly opposed the convening of the ANC national policy conference (ANC NPC) to debate and adopt the NDP before it was adopted by the ANC national conference in Mangaung in December of the same year.As reported by the media in mid 2012, both feared that the ANC NPC would reject the NDP.GNU is thus also a thinly veiled cover-under-political-fire for Cyril Ramaphosa offered by the DA of Vrau Helen Zille and big white capital in order for him to temporarily escape due political reckoning within the ANC for being by far the worst ANC leader since the formation of South Africa as a modern Nation State in 1910.How this man can declare that “I am very happy” at the formation of GNU, without having first engaged in broader consultation with the ANC membership at large, makes perfect sense in that context. Were it not for GNU Ramaphosa would not be preening and parading himself about with his characteristic hardly suppressed mischievous grin like when the DA of Vrau Helen Zille propelled him in our parliament into a second term as the country's president. At that parliamentary moment he reminded one of the Cheshire cat in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland which has just stolen cream from its owners' saucer as he appeared completely devoid of any visible remorse for or self-reproach over the enervating electoral calamity which befell the ANC on 29 May under his lacklustre and boringly ponderous leadership..The man is going about his business of State unflappably as if he has just delivered to the ANC its biggest electoral victory since 1994.It is the height of political delusions of grandeur.And this also is what undergirds the entire concept and architecture of the wobbly 2024 GNU – a nonsensical political flight of fancy unmoored and disconnected from South Africa's contemporary political realities and societal challenges.THABO MBEKI AND GNU.In his biography of Thabo Mbeki the inimitable author Mark Gevisser makes the truly astonishing statement that the former USA Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Chester Crocker in 1982 sent a special envoy Robert Cabelly to make contact with the exiled ANC in Lusaka “through the young man whom the Central Intelligence Agency had identified as the most open to the West: Thabo Mbeki.” (Mark Gevisser, Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred, Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2022, page 197).Gevisser does not shed light on what basis the CIA so assessed Thabo Mbeki.In a sort of an oxymoron Mark Gevisser however states that Robert Cabelly's mission to make contact with Thabo Mbeki in 1982 was “so secret that not even Reagan and the White House knew about it.”Former USA President Ronald Reagan and the White House would not know about a mission based on the CIA's assessment of Lusaka-based and exiled Thabo Mbeki, who belonged to a liberation movement Reagan believed was “terrorist”, as being “most open to the West” of all the exiled ANC leaders and a mission sponsored by USA Assistant Secretary of State Chester Crocker, one of the most loyal albeit also one of the most infamous of the footsoldiers of the very rightwing, conservative, highly anti-Communist, destabilising and deeply racist Reagan administration?That sounds to me like a bull and a cock story fit for children's popular nursery rhymes.But wittingly or unwittingly Gevisser provides possible intelligence collection point which might have assisted the CIA to form its highly controversial but not to say inaccurate opinion [who is to say?] of the exiled young Thabo Mbeki.Gevisser writes that prior to this Robert Cabelly mission to contact him, Thabo Mbeki had begun “decade-long courtship of the American liberal establishment” following the establishment of the African American anti-apartheid lobby hot on the heels of exiled ANC president Oliver Tambo addressing the UN Special Committee Against Apartheid in 1981.Gevisser further writes that “Mbeki became a frequent visitor to the United States, usually staying at Chrichton's apartment, and meeting the great and the good at the side of of Peggy Dulany, the philanthropist daughter of David Rockefeller and a major patron of the anti-apartheid movement”. (Ibid).It is highly plausible that the CIA, unbeknown to Mbeki, was covertly monitoring these meetings of Mbeki with “the great and good at the side of Peggy Dulany, the philanthropist daughter of David Rockefeller...”Or was the CIA already then aware of what Raymond Parsons in his book The Mbeki Inheritance: South Africa's Economy, 1990 – 2004 characterised as '...a very evident lack of rapport between Mbeki on the one hand and such ardent (at the relevant times) communists as Joe Slovo, Chris Hani and Mac Maharaj”? (Ravan Press, 1999, page 85).It is also highly conceivable that the impressions which Peggy Dulany and others in the USA formed of Thabo Mbeki during these decade-long meetings and “courtship of the American liberal establishment” found their way to the South African business titans under apartheid in the early 1980s and led to them deciding to launch a visit in 1985 to meet with the exiled ANC leaders in Lusaka.About this Mark Gevisser writes that “in 1985 Mbeki persuaded a skeptical (sic) Oliver Tambo to meet a delegation of South African businessmen and editors led by Gavin Relly, head of Anglo American, South Africa's largest corporation, and hosted by the Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda.”.In his interesting January 2009 paper titled “True Confessions, End Papers and the Dakar conference: a review of the political arguments” the Afrikaaner historian and author Hermann Giliomee stated that after Frederick van Zyl Slabbert and Alex Boraine, formerly leading lights of the official opposition Progressive Federal Party (PFP) in the hated and wicked racist apartheid white parliament, identified Goree Island of Senegal as a suitable venue for talks in 1987 between “mainly Afrikaans-speaking South Africans and leading members of the ANC...Slabbert and Boraine raised the funds in the United States, and found George Soros, a well-known international financier, willing to donate a substantial sum...”Thus billionaire George Soros too like Paggy Dulany, the daughter of billionaire David Rockefeller, became a sort of benefactor of the ANC in exile for the Dakar conference in which Thabo Mbeki played a commanding role on the side of the exiled ANC.In the heated political atmosphere around the current GNU another very startling statement made by Mark Gevisser in his Thabo Mbeki biography is that Thabo Mbeki is the brain behind the Government of National Unity of 1994 to 1996 and which was led by Nelson Mandela.Writes Gevisser:“One senior ANC official chose to describe the difference between between Mbeki and Ramaphosa as that between 'architect' and 'builder'. This is accurate , to a point. Certainly Mbeki designed the foundations, and many of his fundamental concepts – often developed out of 'sketches' provided first by Tambo, Mandela, and Julius Nyerere – prevailed. These included the multi-party process, the two-phase interim government , and the compromise ultimately embodied in the 'sunset clause' (proposed by Slovo but first suggested by Mbeki), which prescribed a Government of National Unity (GNU) and guaranteed ancien regime officials their jobs.” (Ibid, page 242).So according to his biographer, it was Thabo Mbeki who first suggested the 1994 – 1996 Government of National Unity (GNU) and its attended Sunset Clause which “guaranteed ancien regime officials their jobs.”However Jan Heunis, who led the apartheid National Party expert team at the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) Kempton Park negotiations on the political transition, offers a different albeit not less revealing narrative of how the ANC and apartheid National party cobbled together an agreement between themselves which excluded the masses of our then disenfranchised black majority.In his book The Inner Circle: Reflections on the last days of white rule (Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2007) Jan Heunis writes:“One evening, Van der Merwe having cornered me and Mac Maharaj having cornered Fink, they brought the two of us in an office in the World Trade Centre, impressing upon us, at some length, the need for a sunset clause. After a while I jokingly told Mac Maharaj to bugger off since they were wasting our time, and Fink and I commenced drafting what became Section 250 of the 1993 interim constitution., the sunset clause. By two o'clock the next morning the sunset clause was done.” (Page 201).Whether Jan Heunis was offering an accurate description of the infamous Sunset clause is neither here nor there.What is important is how Heunis reveals the process ANC and apartheid National Party elites used and still use (in the case of ANC Thatcherites, rightwingers and neoliberals) in settings such as CODESA or the mooted so-called National Dialogue to strike elite pacts and to ram these down the throats of their unsuspecting political constituencies as unsolicited and often very reactionary, backward, Thatcherite and rightwing ideas and present them as meeting the political demands of the masses.Was it any wonder therefore that Sowetan Live posted on X on 5 June 202 that “ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa met former president Thabo Mbeki to seek guidance on a way forward after a dismal showing at the polls”?Lizeka Tandwa of Sowetan wrote among other things that:.“Insiders' privy (sic) to the meeting said Ramaphosa met Mbeki on Saturday after it emerged the party would need to enter into a coalition”.As I indicated above, Ramaphosa's first instinct as the leader of the ANC of Ramaphosa did not seek political guidance from the entirety of ANC members in the form of an ANC national conference or an ANC National General Council or an ANC national policy conference.Thus the ANC, DA and white big business elites-induced post-election national frenzy and excitement over whether it will be a coalition or GNU was unleashed on unsuspecting South Africans following the 29 May elections to divert the attention of the voting masses from what The Conversation of 11 June 2024 opined was “Cyril Ramaphosa's leadership style” which “didn't impress voters”, namely the ANC's greatest calamity since its founding in 1912.Or what The New York Times' John Eligon on 29 May 2024 headlined as “South Africa's Black Elites Sour on the President They Championed.”In this sense GNU was just a contrived raucous political circus caravan on the move to entertain and defocus the masses across our country and to take their breath away immediately following the 29 May polls, so to speak, in order that the voting masses did not hold Ramaphosa to account for bringing the greatest electoral ignominy on the ANC.It looks like this blatant political trick is working in the immediate term.But will its spell hold beyond GNU's honeymoon period?After meeting the now deflated but still arrogant, clueless and shameless leaders of the come-uppanced ANC of Ramaphosa, Fikile Mbalula, Gwede Mantashe and Siphiwe “Gebuza” Nyanda post-election to discuss GNU or a coalition government, and as if reminding us of the defining but hardly heralded huge roles Peggy Dulany, George Soros, Gavin Relly and other South African business titans played in the life of the exiled ANC, an exasperated Gayton McKenzie, former jailbird, self-declared national xenophobe champion par excellence, self-advertised millionaire, Vrau Helen Zille bribery-accused, now leader of the unpatriotic Patriotic Alliance (PA) and one of the noisily hectic Ministerial props of the current GNU revealed in palpable indignation the true face of who was the real behind-the-scenes mover pushing for the formation of GNU, not Ramaphosa nor the nine foundations named by Dings Sikweby it appears.Thus reported Ntombi Nkosi and Jonisayi Maromo of Cape Argus on 5 June 2024:“Business needs to stay out of these talks”, fumed McKenzie, almost beyond self-control. “Business has been dominating these talks, they want their agenda to be pushed in these talks. Business has been relentless in arranging the forced marriage between the ANC and the DA, none of them really wants that”, McKenzie informed Jonisayi Maromo of IOL.“Believe me when I tell you I speak with people in the DA and the ANC, but business is putting its foot down that they will marry”, declared McKenzie, hot under the collar.Continued Nkosi and Maromo:“McKenzie said the 'forced marriage' being pushed between the ANC and the DA seeks to disenfranchise the 45% of voters who chose the MKP in Kwa-Zulu Natal, and the consequences would be dire. He said there is 'a sick obsession' to exclude Zuma from all avenues of governance.''They are trying to put a coalition that excludes Jacob Zuma. Business needs to leave its obsession to see Jacob Zuma hanging from a tree. Make peace with the fact that people love Jacob Zuma, despite all the efforts that have been done, let us move on. Let us put the country first. For business the country can go to hell, as long as Jacob Zuma is not part of it (the government). Political parties see it and they only say it behind closed doors”, declared Gayton McKenzie.Better and clearer truth telling than this has not been witnessed in South Africa since Nelson Mandela told FW de Klerk, the last oppressive colonial and apartheid white president, off at the CODESA talks in Kempton Park pre-1994.Following the adoption of Statement of Intent on GNU by the ANC of Ramaphosa and the DA of Vrau Helen Zille, one of the post-election editions of the rabidly pro-big business Business Day screamed with wild joy that “Election outcome a boon for JSE and bonds”, in reference to the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.The question of course now must be:.If those big white businesses who contributed so massively to Ramaphosa's 2017 #CR17 campaign to become the ANC leader the first time were pushing for either a coalition government or GNU involving the DA of Vrau Helen Zille, how would Ramaphosa ever be able to resist their pressure or guile, given how “they put their foot down” as revealed by GaytonMcKenzie?All indications point to the fact that 2024 GNU is the most zoologically pro-business, the most Thatherite, the most rightwing, the most neoliberal and the most pro-West post-apartheid government democratic South Africa has ever had.Fasten your seatbelts!Even Argentina's new, loony and far right president Javier Milei will, in comparison to GNU, look like Dr Imtiaz Sooliman of Gift of the Givers charity.Former Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng once questioned why anyone would give you a million Rands, 3 million Rands, 5 million Rands, 50 million Rands or 100 million Rands to ascend to high political office, saying maybe there is a free lunch only for a thousand Rands, but not for more. He said that such donations in multi-millions of Rands is nothing but “capture in advance” for political control and influence and that it is “an investment” by the donor(s) for which there will be “payback time”. (Watch YouTube, Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng 67 Minutes Leadership Talk on the even of Nelson Mandela Day, 17 July 2019).Are the same business people who pushed so hard for DA/ANC (DANC) coalition about which Gayton McKenzie bitterly complained the same donors who may have pushed for GNU behind-the-scenes after the ANC of Ramaphosa was shamed by public outcry into abadoning an DANC coalition? Are the same donor(s) pointed to in former Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng's jeremiad as engaging in “capture in advance” when making multi-million Rand donations also the same business people who contributed to Cyril Ramaphosa's 2017 #CR17 campaign to lead the ANC?How can these questions be answered? Can public disclosure and transparency, instead of sealed court documents, assist South Africans “to connect the dots” on these matters?And it should be recalled that Ramaphosa once intriguingly declared to the Inaugural South African Investment Conference in 2018:“We should treat our entrepreneurs as heroes and move away from from what we had been fed and accustomed to, where we mistreat our entrepreneurs and businesspeople and called them all sorts of names, like white monopoly capital. That must end today.” (www.sanews.gov.za).No ANC leader before Ramaphosa had ever expresssed such blatantly pro-business language.Entrepreneurs and business people as our “heroes”?Exploiters of labour as our “heroes”?Goodness gracious!This must have been news in the ears of the pro-business DA of Vrau Helen Zille. And it might have served as the first courtly love signal to the DA that emanated from the ANC of Ramaphosa regarding a possible political “toenadering”. No wonder that already then DA's sub-graduate and subaltern, if not substandard, John Steenhuisen was offering himself already ready to join and serve in the Cabinet which Ramaphosa would form after the 2019 elections.But truth be told, Cyril Ramaphosa was also articulating and conveying a lunatic fringe, extremist and fundamentalist pro-business posture which even economists Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek would find hard to swallow from an ostentatious black parvenu of the Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) oligarchic variety in democratic South Africa.Yet Ramaphosa revealed his ANC policy ignorance by abrasively dismissing, like Thabo Mbeki before him self-contradicted on, the term white monopoly capital (WMC), thus reminding us of The Guardian (UK) headline of 22 April 1999 shouting “Black heroes sell out to capitalism”.The Guardian article about the financial woes of black empowerment NAIL conglomerate outed Cyril Ramaphosa, believe it or not, as having been “...the source of the leak to the press which embarrassed the remaining directors into dropping their attempt to claim the share options.”Cyril Ramaphosa having been “the source of a leak to the press which embarrassed” his fellow NAIL directors?Holy molly!Just when you thought things can't get politically worseYeah, so much for the business ethics of “black heroes” selling out to capitalism, to paraphrase The Guardian article of 1999.Given Sigauqwe of Mail & Guardian, in an article titled “Mbeki warns against use of 'white monopoly capital' phrase” of 14 July 2017, wrote:“Former President Thabo Mbeki has warned against the use of 'white monopoly capital' phrase and says it is 'an abuse of a phrase which was used in scientific economic literature'”However Mbeki biographer Mark Gevisser reveals the following close association between the exiled young Thabo Mbeki and the phrase white monopoly capital (WMC), long before we heard the nauseating pro-apartheid propaganda that the phrase was coined by the British PR firm Bell Pottinger to enable the so-called State Capture:“In 1978, a still-militant Mbeki had written that 'black capitalism has no redeeming features whatsoever', now, however, he found himself moved by the accounts his interlocutors gave of their difficulties as black entrepreneurs, up against not just apartheid but white monopoly capital too”..This is how Thabo Mbeki acknowledged the historical ANC phrase white monopoly capital (WMC) in 1978, which today the same Thabo Mbeki reckons is “abuse of the phrase which was used in scientific economic literature” and which Cyril Ramaphosa calls on us to stop using in order to acknowledge that entrepreneurs and investors are “heroes.”You really can't make this stuff up.It's no surprise therefore that all the major business formations of big white capital have declared themselves “very happy” with GNU led by the ANC of Ramaphosa and the DA of Vrau Helen Zille.ON THABO MBEKI, GEAR AND NEOLIBERALISM.In his his article “GEAR and Neo-liberalism (Part 2) of 28 March 2016 Thabo Mbeki claimed that “...some in our country have decided to blame everything on allegedly neoliberal economic policies – using the label neo-liberal as a swearword rather than as an outcome of serious analysis!'.This offensive and deliberate intellectual mischaraterisation and hallowing of the term “neoliberal” by Thabo Mbeki is surprising because under his ANC presidency, as big white business representative and now University of the North West Professor Raymond Parsons wrote:“A closely-reasoned and gratifying recent exposition came in the party document on 11 October 1998, and debated and approved by the national conference shortly thereafter. This paper was moreover reportedly prepared by or under the supervision of Joel Netshitenzhe, now head of the Government Communication and Information Services, and probably as close and trusted an adviser to Mbeki as anybody with access to the president.” (Ibid, page 108).This paper referred to by Raymond Parsons warned that “suspicion of State power per se...can be as destructive as the neo-liberal agenda that seeks to transfer the power of the state to the private sector”.I submit that instead of over-intellectualising and over-thinking in his attempted definitional abortion of what truly neo-liberalism is in Part 1 of his paper “GEAR and Neo-Liberalism”, this is a simple, straightforward and practical ANC definition of neoliberalism crafted under his ANC presidency which Thabo Mbeki should have deployed and embraced to judge whether policies pursued by the ANC governments between 1994 to 2008, when he was our country's first deputy president and subsequently president, were neoliberal or not.Because on almost on all other intellectual arguments and debates, Mbeki is prone to quote copiously from ANC documents, especially those he agrees with.Or to simply matters even further using the ANC's own 11 October 1998 definition of what neo-liberalism is, the question we need to ask is:Did any State power migrate from the South African democratic State to the private sector during the period when Thabo Mbeki was national Deputy President and then President after Nelson Mandela?Or was it the power of the private sector, in any form, which was lost to the State?What clear empirical and historical evidence demonstrates is that the South African private sector in all the period of its organised existence since the discovery of diamonds near present-day Kimberly in the Northern Cape in the 1860s to date the private sector has been the most powerful, dominant, self-assertive,, internationalised, conniving, cocky, self-confident, unafraid, arrogant and power-hungry during the 30 years of ANC rule under our democracy and constitutional order.About this there can never be any doubt.At no time in our history since 1652 has more power migrated from the State to private and other non-State actors than during the 30 years of ANC rule.About this too there cannot be any doubt.Under the ANC rule, the South African private sector has become more than a behemoth. It functions almost like a State within the South African democratic State.It thus did not come as a bolt from the blue when Ngoako Ramatlhodi, a former national Cabinet Minister and a leading ANC National Executive Committee (NEC) member who also worked very closely in exile with Thabo Mbeki and Oliver Tambo, the exiled ANC leader, bitterly decried this trend of power migrating from the democratic State in his article titled “The ANC's Fatal Concession” published in the Times of 1 September 2011. Ramatlhodi wrote amongst others things that:“The objective of protecting white economic interests having been achieved with the adoption of the new Constitution, a grand and total strategy to entrench it for all times was rolled out. In this regard, power was systematically taken out of the legislature and the executive to curtail efforts and initiatives aimed at inducing fundamental changes. In this way, elections would be regular rituals handing empty victories over to the ruling party....“In the past 17 years, we have witnessed sustained and relentless efforts to migrate the little power left with the executive and the legislature to the judiciary. The main drivers in this process [have been] the opposition, who feel relatively strong in those fronts, given the mainly still untransformed judiciary.”In light of Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki-led ANC's adoption of definition of what neo liberalism is in 1998, it is safe to say that Ngoako Ramatlhodi, and not Thabo Mbeki in his treatise “GEAR and Neo-Liberalism”, was spot on and pretty much echoing the ANC ideological line of march.But Ramatlhodi was not alone in this ideological epiphany.Two years after Ngoako Ramatlhodi published these searing observations about our democratic State being completely denuded and void of power, which was being migrated to private spaces and non-State actors, his fellow senior ANC NECE member and former Thabo Mbeki Cabinet Minister Ronnie Kasrils had this to say about the balance of forces between the democratic State and the all-powerful and Goliathic private sector since 1994 in an article titled “How the ANC's Faustian pact sold out South Africa's poorest”, which appeared in The Guardian (UK) of 24 June 2013:“From 1991 to 1996 the battle for the ANC's soul got under way, and was eventually lost to corporate power; we were entrapped by the neoliberal economy – or, as some today cry out, we 'sold our people down the river'...All means to eradicate poverty, which was Mandela and the ANC's sworn promise to the 'poorest of the poor', were lost in the process. Nationalisation of the mines and heights of the economy as envisaged by the Freedom charter was abandoned. The ANC accepted responsibility for a vast apartheid-era debt, which should have been cancelled. A wealth tax on the super-rich to fund developmental projects was set aside, and domestic and international corporations, enriched by apartheid, were excluded from any financial reparations. Extremely tight budgetary obligations were instituted that would tie the hands of any future governments; obligations to implement free-trade policy and abolish all forms of tariff protection in keeping with neo-liberal free trade fundamentals were accepted. Big corporations were allowed to shift their main listings abroad. In Terreblanches's opinion, these ANC concessions constituted 'treacherous decisions that [will] haunt South Africa for generations to come.”If it waddles, quacks, nibbles and swims like a neoliberal duck, it surely must be a neoliberal duck!For his part Alan Hirsch, who was Chief Director for Economic Policy under the Thabo Mbeki State Presidency at the Union Buildings, the seat of South Africa's national executive power, commented thus about GEAR in his book Season of Hope: Economic Reform under Mandela and Mbeki (University of Kwa-Zulu Natal Press, 2005):“The new government felt that conservative fiscal and monetary policies would ultimately raise the rate of investment through reducing the cost of capital. This was a key part of the rationale of the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy.” (Page 141).To wit, according to Alan Hirsch, GEAR, which replaced the more radical, pro-poor black majority and pro-working class Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), had pursuit of “conservative fiscal and monetary policies” with the aim of attracting investment as “a key part” of its “rationale”.So why does Thabo Mbeki quibble so much in his 2016 “GEAR and Neo-Liberalism” two-part paper with the characterisation of GEAR as neo-liberal?The answer was provided by Mbeki himself in his latest Address to the Thabo Mbeki African School of Public and International Affairs School (TM – School) at the University of South Africa (UNISA) on 24 March 2024, where he sang loud praises to his time in power as Deputy President, under Nelson Mandela, and President of the country and damned the ANC rule of the country when he and Nelson Mandela were no longer the leaders of our country between 2009 to 2022.This is according to what Thabo Mbeki called “Three Ages” of a “paradigm” regarding 30 years of our democracy, in line with a paper presented in the USA by the CEO of the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR).According to Mbeki and the SAIRR CEO “Age Number One...1994 -2007...the country is going up all the time” and under Age Two (2008 -2022) “we have the direct opposite...happens (sic)...we go the opposite direction.” (Watch YouTube, Conversation with former President Thabo Mbeki, 13 March 2024).All things said and done and in all events, and contrary to what he declared in his letter to the ANC in 2008, Thabo Mbeki does appear to still habour an insatiable appetite for power and to want to “rule from the grave”, perhaps even through the mooted GNU National Dialogue.Is this characterisation of 30 years of South Africa's post-apartheid democratic era by Thabo Mbeki and the SAIRR CEO factual, truthful and evidence-based?Not according to former president Thabo Mbeki's own biological younger brother Moeletsi, going by what Moeletsi Mbeki wrote in his book Architects of Poverty: Why African Capitalism Needs Changing (Picador South Africa, 2009).That Moeletsi Mbeki's Architects of Poverty book was published in 2009 is a sure give-away that its comments and observations about the post-1994 South Africa and the ANC were directed at what Thabo Mbeki and the SAIRR CEO called Age Number One where “...the country is going up all the time”, allegedly.And what does Moeletsi Mbeki have to say about this Age Number One which happened under Nelson Mandela and his biological elder brother Thabo Mbeki, during which, according to Thabo Mbeki “things were working”?Moeletsi Mbeki in his book makes directly contrarian claims to the claims made by Thabo Mbeki and the SAIRR CEO about “things were working” and that the country was going up all the time..Read more:Harber’s dismissive response mirrors ANC’s mishandling of legitimate issuesBNC#7: Paul Mashatile – The GNU; US-SA relations; Iran; Budget; Gauteng; corruption; EFF/MK; the future of the ANCSeán McLaughlin – Gauteng: Corruption? Factions? And the ANC’s endgame?.*Isaac Mpho Mogotsi: Founder & Executive Chairman - Centre for Economic Diplomacy in Africa (CEDIA), Cedia African Times Editor-in-Chief. isaacmogotsi@centerforeconomicdiplomacy.com https://centreforeconomicdiplomacyinafrica.com

Isaac Mogotsi pt. 2: Ramaphosa’s GNU – A Thatcherite revival or the final betrayal of the ANC’s liberation legacy?

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