The ANC’s security state witch-hunt against Emma Powell is a warning to us all

Key topics:

• ANC brands truth as treason in targeting MP Emma Powell

• Powell exposed SA's global disgrace; ANC responds with surveillance

• State security now silences dissent, not threats, under ANC rule

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By Elliot Koen 

One of the most telling signs that a government has lost its legitimacy is when it begins to  brand the truth as treason. This week, we witnessed precisely that, as South Africa’s ruling  party, that tired, corrupted relic known as the African National Congress, decided that Emma  Louise Powell, a sitting Member of Parliament, is now to be treated not as a legislator, but as  an enemy of the state. 

Her crime? Speaking the truth. In Washington. To people who matter. About what South  Africa has become under ANC rule: a captured, compromised, disgusting morally bankrupt  country masquerading as a constitutional democracy. 

It is grotesque, but entirely predictable, that after Powell blew the lid off the fact that  Mcebisi Jonas, President Ramaphosa’s envoy, was denied Diplomatic Visa entry to the  United States, the ANC went into Soviet mode. They summoned the National Security  Council. They invoked “classified reports.” They deployed a whisper campaign, dutifully echoed by media foot soldiers at the Sowetan, painting Powell as a rogue operative working  against the national interest. 

This is more than just cynical politics, it is authoritarianism in the ANC’s native tongue. We  have come accustomed to this vile behaviour for decades now. 

The leaked report accuses Powell of organising an “unauthorised trip” to the United States, as if elected Members of Parliament now need a hall pass from Luthuli House to represent  the views of millions of South Africans abroad. It claims she spread “disinformation” about  the government’s foreign policy, which, for the record, involves open alignment with Iran,  

Russia, and the world’s most violent terrorist movements like the PFLP, PLO and Hamas,  while prosecuting lawfare against democracies like Israel in the Hague. 

This sort of alignment masquerading as “foreign policy” is quite simply diplomatic self immolation. 

And it’s Powell who gets targeted? Coincidentally this report from the foot soldiers of Ramaphosa’s media lap dogs have stated that Deputy Minister Andrew Whitfield was fired by  “Cupcake” because of this secret report, so secret the Sowetan has seen it. Give me a break.  

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In any functioning democracy, a parliamentarian exposing misconduct or incompetence at  the highest levels of state would be celebrated. In South Africa, under the ANC, she is  surveilled. Maligned. Her name is dragged through the dirt in newspapers by anonymous  “insiders”, the same insiders who’ve kept silent as state coffers are looted, as electricity grids  collapse, as police forces fall under the sway of mafias.

Let us call this what it is: a political purge by intelligence memo. A regime turning its spy  agencies inward against dissenters. A desperate party treating fact-telling as sedition, and  shamefully trying to suppress not just speech, but thought. 

This week, we should all be asking a very serious question: What happens to a democracy when the ruling party uses state security to silence elected opposition MPs? The answer is  already here. It stops being a democracy. 

It becomes a state of quiet tyranny, policed by informants and legitimised by frightened  journalists. The kind of place where corruption is endemic, but truth is criminal. The kinds of  states that do this are ones like Iran. 

Emma Powell is not the problem. She is one of the few brave enough to call this country  what it is becoming. She exposed the ANC’s disgrace abroad, yes, but it was the ANC who  disgraced itself and the ANC cannot stand it. Where are the proud NGOs, sweethearts and saints of South Africa now to pose for photos and offer to stand with her? No doubt they will  be silent. One can only ask why this is, and if you're sharp enough, you will figure it out  pretty quickly. 

They hate her not because she lied, but because she told the truth, clearly, unflinchingly, and  in a room full of people whose respect the ANC can no longer buy. 

This campaign against Powell is disgusting. It is vindictive. And above all, it is a warning: that  the ANC will sacrifice democracy itself to preserve its monopoly on the narrative, even if the  cost is South Africa’s standing in a free world. 

Those of us still watching from the sidelines should take note. If they can try to crush her for  telling the truth, they can come for anyone. This is the point we have reached. A state that  once claimed to liberate its people now turns its surveillance apparatus inward, punishing  those who dare to speak inconvenient truths. What should concern every South African is  not just that intelligence is being gathered, but that it is being directed not at terrorists or  foreign threats, but at journalists, parliamentarians, and ordinary citizens who refuse to fall  in line. It is political enforcement masquerading as patriotism. The ANC no longer protects  the state. It protects itself, and it does so at the expense of every principle this democracy  was built upon. Once a government crosses that line, it rarely steps back voluntarily. It must  be forced back by the very people it seeks to silence.