A reprise of founding principles of ANC’s Tsunami of Sleaze – Ed Herbst

Veteran journalist Ed Herbst

CAPE TOWN — It seems the Auditor General’s report on Wednesday showing that irregular SOE expenditure has soared by 50% in a single financial year was the final straw for veteran journalist and unrivalled ANC-snouting documenter, Ed Herbst. Here he lays it all out, giving links, which if you follow them, powerfully back up his assertions, the sum of which leaves one in no doubt that the ANC is a party beyond redemption. One has to ask oneself where the redemption would come from, so deep, wide and normative is ruling party corruption today. Concepts like liberation, black economic empowerment, land redistribution and a better life for all, are still shouted from the Luthuli House rooftops by top party cadres who’ve entirely lost their moral compass. It’s become a free-for-all in a hierarchy where a seemingly endless fountain of wealth spouts from the top of a pyramid built on the shoulders of those jostling for previously unheard-of-riches at the bottom. Well-deployed by the well-connected to the well of endless bounty. Until it dries up and they turn on one another. Then we move from patronage to the rule of fear. This is satire at its acerbic best. – Chris Bateman

Read more: This is war! Zuma, Gupta bots target UK enemy #1: Peter Hain, campaigner for SA justice

By Ed Herbst*

Comrades!

The glorious National Democratic Revolution is proceeding apace and as planned.

Read more: Paul O’Sullivan blows his cover: Why I helped Jacques Pauw – and you should fight Zupta, too

Auditor General Kimi Makwetu has just announced that that irregular expenditure by government departments and SOE’s has soared by more than 50% in 2016/17 compared to the previous financial year and now tops R45 billion.

This indicates that the ANC’s deployed cadres have been true to their snouting principles.

Furthermore, it shows that diligence and commitment in learning how to work the ANC system provides very satisfying multi-billion rand dividends.

We the obese – ask Khulubuse Zuma he’ll tell you – inner circle of the ANC Super Snouters pay homage to the foresight of our intellectual leaders, in particular Joel Netshitenzhe. Writing in Umrabulo in 1997 he defined transformation as:

‘… extending the power of the National Liberation Movement over all levers of power: the army, the police, the bureaucracy, intelligence structures, the judiciary, parastatal, and agencies such as regulatory bodies, the public broadcaster, the central bank and so on.’

African National Congress (ANC)

With the wisdom of hindsight and the passage of time we now proudly call this process ‘State Capture’.

Nevertheless, Comrades, humility is called for because our revolutionary heroes like Fidel Castro have set the bar high. In becoming enormously wealthy while his people got by with the bare minimum, he heroically commandeered an island for his personal pleasure and today his offspring benefit from his visionary leadership as they gambol and cavort in the fleshiest of Mediterranean fleshpots. The grateful populace note that more people died trying to escape Cuba than died trying to escape Eastern Germany.

Using that as a yardstick, one has to acknowledge that a miserable little pad in Dubai hardly cuts it – we have a long way to go but will bravely tackle our revolutionary obligations.

If you want to join the literary Hero’s Acre of ANC peculation, if you want to be mentioned in The Domesday Book of Snouting, if you want to do your bit until there is Nothing Left to Steal  – and that includes a city –  then you need to understand the founding principles of the Tsunami of Sleaze.  A useful starting point is this 2013 timeline from Corruption Watch and the recent books by Jacques Pauw and Crispian Olver.

Herewith some useful guidelines:

  • Stealing from the fiscus is what it is all about. Stealing from the ANC is an unspeakable evil in the eyes of Loot-freely House as Cynthia Maropeng discovered when she snouted ANC constituency funds. It is accepted with a resigned shrug or with outright condescension, that the majority of victims of this modus operandi will be poor. But, for the greater good – defined as the Glorious National Democratic Revolution – sacrifices have to be made.  As Smuts Ngonyama patiently pointed out on behalf of the African National Congress in November 2004, he didn’t join the Struggle to remain poor and he thus became an overnight multi-millionaire for ‘facilitating a meeting’.
  • Every effort will be made to keep you out of jail and, to this end, the police and justice systems have been suborned and the Scorpions disbanded. Nothing is easier than making your docket disappear or your name magically vanish from the court rolls or the system gerrymandered so that your case drags on for years – ask the Madiba funeral taxi scam operatives – they’ll tell you.
  • Furthermore, millions of rands – contributed by taxpayers – will be spent to keep you out of jail by appointing the right officials and hiring lawyers renowned for their ethical probity. You must understand though that legal costs are a small part of the total bill to enhance your Grosse Legume existence and status.
  • You will be looked after by Tom Moyane’s SARS – ask Jacques Pauw – he’ll tell you and, if you need a second opinion, Jonas Makwakwa will gladly provide it.
  • Should you be caught in flagrante with only your shoes visible above the rim of the cookie jar, relax. You will be suspended on full pay for years on end. Consider it as a paid holiday until, as a deployed parasite with a proven criminal record, the ANC decides where to deploy you next and how to officially write off what you have stolen. Disciplinary hearings will be, farcical, deliberately protracted and then called off. Your input, having passed the ANC’s due diligence test, will help Loot-fully House to choose an even more lucrative and hopefully less-stressful sinecure for you. For a classic case study on how the ANC’s due diligence approach functions when it comes to deploying loyal cadres, read the following passages from Glynnis Breytenbach’s recently-published book Rule of Law – A Memoir. They relate to an attorney Booker Nhantsi who was jailed for stealing trust funds. He was pardoned by President Jacob Zuma and now, thanks to the ANC’s due diligence/deployed cadre system, you and I pay his salary. Just by the by, he is married to Nomgcobo Jiba who Gerrie Nel remembers well as does Breytenbach:
Watchdogs. More of Zapiro’s brilliant work available at www.zapiro.com.

She was autocratic, and behaved with impunity. While her husband was in prison, and after, she was close with justice minister Jeff Radebe, Richard Mdluli and Jacob Zuma. It was common knowledge that Jiba used to brag about having a direct line to the president. To the extent that, at the end of 2010, Zuma issued a presidential pardon for Jiba’s husband, Nhantsi, expunging his criminal record.

The appointment of Jiba was when, for the first time, I think we really knew that there was no NPA left. The Scorpions were gone too, dismantled because they were independent. There was a subtle, pervasive stench spreading through the NPA, and it was happening because of the appointments in the NPA and in the police.

  • Tammany Hall-type insider trading is highly regarded, especially if it generates mind-boggling returns for the ANC. Ask Comrade Valli Moosa – he’ll tell you.
  • Nepotism is a must – ask SABC employees and former board members about the role played by Nomvuyo Mhlakaza, wife of ANC MP Buti Manamela and a member of the national task team of the ANC Youth League who was nominated for the SABC board by Luthuli House despite having no broadcasting experience or related expertise  She was on the ANCYL when it organised the chaotic fornication fest in December 2010 known as the 17th World Festival of Youth and Students which cost you and I the paltry sum of R100 million. We are comforted, comrades, by the thought that, without this magnificent tribute to the organisational ability of our ‘Roar, Young Lions Roar!’ the Arab Spring would never have occurred.
  • Rubbing shoulders with Rap divas and domestic violence protagonists will propel you swiftly up the rankings on the ANC slate – ask Razzmatazz, he’ll tell you. Organising multi-million rand taxpayer-funded  pay-outs for such divas without them having to sing a note will be favourably regarded by A-loota Continua House.
  • You are, of course, as an illegally deployed cadre, guaranteed a golden handshake – no matter how much you have stuffed up. Ask Dali Mofu and Joseph Maroga – they’ll tell you. A word of caution, however. Don’t try and rip the arse out of it by making outrageous demands – like a million a year for your chauffer as part of an R85 million exit package claim – or you’ll come short and harm the future prospects of your fellow ANC snouters.
  • Having family in the upper echelons of the ANC guarantees you the most succulent of tenders. For example, in exchange for a few supine toilets you get to purchase riverside mansions and the latest Lamborghinis. Having relatives by marriage who have tenderpreneurial tendencies could also see a dramatic increase in your bank balance.
  • The same good fortune will accrue if you choose your romantic liaisons carefully – ask Dr Ingrid Tufvesson or Lorraine Masipa or Matilda Gaboo – they’ll tell you. Or, for that matter, you could ask Dudu Myeni and Ellen Tshabalala because, for some unfathomable reason, their sons and heirs allegedly try to jump the queue by claiming to be the fruit of the frenetically fecund loins of JZ783. As I pointed out, in a previous article, we have a strange political world – courtesy of the ANC and its ‘good story to tell’. It was best defined by Nic Boraine four years ago:

Today it’s wall-to-wall pussy (nothing new there) and bowing and scraping and frigates and flybys and the cash is flooding in to a degree that he can start being choosy about where it comes from.

South Africans are drowning in inefficiency. The Times reports today how only 8% of rape cases brought to court result in convictions and how our police failed to send evidence kits from more than half of reported child-rape cases to forensic laboratories.

    • Merit, of course, is also anathema and the only card worth playing is the race card. In this regard heed your leaders like JZ783 who, evoking the Rwandan genocide, described whites as snakes and Blade Nzimande who described the Nkandla snouting as ‘white people’s lies’. You can do this with impunity knowing that the South African Human Rights Commission – an ANC sinecure of note – will crack down savagely on whites while doing its best to protect those who are not with the gentlest slap on the wrist. Jimmy Manyi’s cunning Indians must also be targeted  – ask Mbongeni Ngema, he’ll tell you.
    • Keep in mind, though, that the Broad Church turned Whited Sepulchre is generous to its nearest and dearest – ask Faith Muthambi, she’ll tell you.
    • Should, through a failure of the ANC’s normally fail-safe systems, you actually get sentenced to a jail term, you will not be ostracised as the Nats did with their convicted criminals. No, you will be borne aloft on your journey to prison by the upper echelons of the party – people like Baleke Mbete, Ebrahim Rasool, Max Ozinsky and Chris Nissen. Ask Tony Yengeni and Alan Boesak – they’ll tell you. The ANC, unlike the National Party, reveres criminality and does its best to protect its deployed criminals – ask Vusi Pikoli, he’ll tell you.
    • Should you actually go to jail you will be cosseted to the highest Department of Correctional Services standards – ask Schabir Shaik, he’ll tell you. Your period in prison will be kept mercifully brief by the ANC  and you will be comforted by a personal visit from the Minister of Correctional Services or even a Zuptoid patriarch.
    • Furthermore, upon your release from prison you will be given an ecstatic reception by a welcoming party of ANC luminaries such as Mcebisi Skwatsha – ask Tony Yengeni, he’ll tell you.
  • You will be comforted by the knowledge that the Domesday Book of Snouting has a chapter entitled – No effort will be made to recover the money stolen by deployed cadres. The chapter includes some heart-warming examples in this regard: Two billion rand snouted at the Land Bank after Helena Dolny was persuaded to leave with a shot fired into her house. The snouted billions were used to buy everything from gated housing complexes to soccer teams leaving aspirant black farmers in the lurch. And then there was the two billion rand extracted from Cape Town municipality coffers between 2003 and 2006 through a variety of ANC tender scams such as Big Bay 1 and 2, Thubelisha Homes and Jewellery City. And, with deliberate intent, no attempt is ever made to recover such stolen monies. Ask Dina Pule’s married lover, Phosane Mngqibisa, he’ll tell you. (Pule was once described as combining incompetence and corruption by an article writer who clearly did not grasp the fact that those are regarded as desirable attributes by the ANC.)
BEE should benefit more people. More magic available at www.zapiro.com.
  • And, when it comes to multi-million rand pension pay-outs, every effort will be made by the ANC elite to honour you with tens of millions of rands to which you are not entitled. Ask Lynne Brown and Ben Ngubane – they’ll tell you. You might even, if you play your cards right, get one of those sought-after invitations to the Saxonwold Shebeen – along with the prized GPS co-ordinates.
  • Pension funds, of course, are fair game – ask Enoch Godongwana, he’ll tell you. Godongwana was, as result of his efforts and this acquired expertise, appointed as chairman of the ANC’s subcommittee on economic transformation – something which beggars belief – but this is how the ANC rolls.
  • Keep in mind that if you make it through the murderous hail of ANC gunfire, you might even get to rub shoulders with the ANC’s most revered glorious National Democratic Revolution heroes – people like Omar al Bashir, for example.
  • As part of your apprenticeship you will need to know the right buzzwords like ‘Western paradigm’ and, of course, ‘White monopoly capital’. Extensive and expensive tutelage by exponents of Black Monopoly Capital like Oros  and Brian Molefe  and Andile Mngxitama is strongly recommended.
  • What you don’t need to know and must, where possible, avoid are colonial practices and ideologies like preventative maintenance because they are unnecessary distractions from your primary focus which can be summed up by paraphrasing Shakespeare: I came, I saw, I snouted. Remember that every cent that is spent on preventative maintenance is money that does not go into your pocket as a deployed cadre. Leave that sort of thing to Afriforum. Furthermore, do not place any credence in Newton’s law of universal gravitation and, above all, do not mention it in polite company.
  • During the 1960s some of our country’s finest talents – people like Archibald Campbell Jordan, Pallo Jordan’s father, were forced to go abroad. This, during the National Party era, could be described as the First Diaspora. The second took place after the 1976 riots in Soweto and elsewhere. It is incumbent upon you as a deployed cadre to work hard on the third which is progressing according to ANC plan – particularly in the agricultural sector – and be encouraged by this passage in Brian Pottinger’s magisterial book, The Mbeki Legacy.

It is contained in a chapter called ‘Mbeki and Demodernisation’

One in five of the South African elite was preparing to bail in Mbeki’s ninth year in office one survey showed.

And so, somewhere between the earliest and headiest days of the Mbeki tenure and the point when he stood, greying and sombre, to deliver his State of the Nation address in 2008, something profound had happened.

That something, I would argue, was the beginning of the de-modernisation of South Africa and it’s recasting into what East Europeans used to wryly call ‘a newly under-developed state’.

Former South African President Thabo Mbeki

Choose the moment when that happened. It could have been when the Mbeki ascendancy refused to confront the arms scandal openly and went into defensive mode, with all its long consequential chain of dissimulation, deceit, crisis, dismissals and eventual schism. It could have been when the national capacity to fund and support the ambitious affirmative action objectives exhausted itself, but nobody really noticed or cared. Perhaps it was when the nation suddenly woke up to the fact that children from the poorest communities who were about to ‘matriculate’ were largely unable to read, write or add. Or might it have been when, at last, the country discovered it had only enough skilled people left to service a mid-sized US city?

Was it when the nation realised that one-third of its households were dependent on state handouts and that it had created the most expansive non-contributory welfare state in the developing world – without the long-term capacity to fund it? Or was it when most people decided that the small child killed by violent crime was one too many? Perhaps it was when the public learnt that some parliamentarians were defrauding the very chamber that was the repository of the nation’s values and democracy, or when they learnt that directors general and ministers were racing through revolving doors between public and private office, taking personal handfuls of cash for their own enrichment each time, often illegally.

Conceivably it was when the last ordinary South African rebelled against the last outstretched palm of a corrupt public official; when the last modern person was revolted by a president who retained a health minister who had allegedly once stolen from her patients; when the countless victims of crime rejected a president who had knowingly kept a police commissioner in office, despite the most damning evidence of corruption against him, collected by the country’s most senior prosecutorial arm. Maybe it was simply when the lights went out in the national electricity emergency of 2008 and everybody suspected the country had finally missed the boat for a modern destination.

The answer, of course, is that it was a little of all of the above.

Supporters of the ANC wave a party flag during the party’s 104th anniversary celebrations in Rustenburg, South Africa January 9, 2016. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko

Expect this emigration of skilled people to increase as a result of the ANC’s planned amendments to the schooling system which will effectively take control away from parents. This exodus will please the ANC because it will mean less and less competition for the illegally deployed cadres in an already-skewed marketplace and more access to the trough – until there is nothing left to steal.

  • Please rest assured that, once you have been officially deployed, indolence and incompetence will tick all the right boxes when the ANC does its due diligence research into your fitness for high office. Take a leaf out of the book of the Silent Spokespinners, the deployed parasites – from the Union Buildings to the smallest ANC-controlled municipality –  who are, in line with Bill of Rights in the Constitution, supposed to keep the public informed about matters which affect their lives but who immediately and automatically make themselves incommunicado whenever there is a crisis.
  • Take note as well – not that you need further incentives by this time –  that the ANC’s Gravy Train patronage package includes Gravy Plane travel. Glorious National Democratic Revolution examples include the occasion in September 2011 when the International Relations and Co-operation Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, a somnambulist of note, blew a quarter of a million rand – your money and mine – on hiring a private jet after angrily refusing to put her handbag through the X-ray scanner at Oslo Airport for reasons that are still in dispute.
Minister Lindiwe Sisulu

And don’t forget presidential hopeful Lindiwe Sisulu who knows how to indulge herself at taxpayers’ expense when it comes to Gravy Plane travel. Cassel Mathale is a worthwhile role model in this regard. He blew R61 000 in May 2013 alone to fly 161 kilometres on chartered helicopters. Way to go, Comrade! All this while our military aircraft gather dust – when they aren’t being used by ANC politicians for party political junkets. Between 2009 and 2012 the ANC blew R50 million on SAAF VIP helicopter flights for its Super Snouters but, not to worry Comrades – it is, after all, only taxpayers’ money.

  • Remember, the international conference and trade show world is your oyster and you have ANC role models who visit the cities where these conferences and trade shows are being held, book into the most expensive hotels and then use them as a base for shopping trips.
  • If you join the ANC inner circle you can not only live like royalty you can drive – or rather be driven – like Big Vegetable royalty. There is great joy as an ANC Super Snouter in realising that the people you are supposed to serve fear your blue light convoys – and with good reason. Ask ANC MP Humphrey Mmemezi, he’ll tell you. There are lots of other examples of African Big Man Blue Light Bullies as personified by the ANC’s Big Vegetables – you can read the joyous timeline here and here. Obviously there are always those out to spoil your fun and it goes without saying that these killjoys reside in the Western Cape.
  • Make overseas education your priority and with every justification – and banish from your mind every thought of paying for this yourself – this is the new, transformed South Africa, after all. It is common cause that our education system is now worse than it was under apartheid and we have just learned that more black people graduated from university during the apartheid era than now, so work hard on those overseas study trips. Your role model here is Justice Ndaba whose overseas study trip was arranged during a massive SABC looting spree  and was characterised by the fact that, according to British authorities, prostitutes were patronised but not paid. The malevolent Ben Ngubane – a man to whom controversy sticks like a bed louse clings to a blanket – was alleged to have played a singular role in this regard.
  • Making it onto the ANC slate is a mortal imperative because you don’t want to be admitted to a hospital run by ANC apparatchiks. There is example after example after example  after example after example after example  after example after endless example that proves this to be life-threatening. Keywords to Google in this regard are Jack Bloom + Politicsweb.  As a successful snouter you will be able, like one of our revolutionary heroes, to seek medical help abroad.
  • Know your history and constantly espouse and extol the NDR paradise African countries – because they have never been colonised – Liberia provides a shining example.
  • At the same time you are expected to constantly denigrate countries elsewhere in the world which were, at some time in their history, colonised – like Singapore.
  • Should you, with the appropriate diligence and commitment, seek to emulate the bravery of the ANC’s Super Snouters you can live it up in the country’s finest hotels and be chauffeured in the finest automotive products of colonial WMC countries like Germany or England.
  • If you can make your way into the ANC’s inner circle you are guaranteed a fabulous life style but remember, little things count. It is important to be seen reading the right newspapers for example – that means the newspapers bought with civil servant pension money by Dr Iqbal Survé like the Sunday Independent which specialises in stillborn exclusives and the newspaper ostensibly owned by a man who emulated Louis Luyt in acquiring a newspaper using other people’s money.
  • Your standing as an ANC snouter will be evaluated by how many white collar criminals and ex-cons you can count among your friends with Brett Kebble scoring big points for you when it comes to scoring soft loans. Humble beginnings will not count against you though, as the life of Joe Modise illustrates.  He was notorious during the Quatro era and a skilful Arms Deal snouter and for these and other noble accomplishments President Thabo Mbeki conferred on him the Grand Cross (Gold) of the Order of the Star of South Africa, the country’s highest civilian honour.
  • Finally, a laissez faire attitude to the sexual harassment of women won’t do you any harm – ask Vytjie Mentor, she’ll tell you – or ask yourself how far the SAPS has got in investigating the Marius Fransman case.
“South Africa is captured by the Zuptas.” More magic available at jerm.co.za.

As the Zuptoids indicate daily, this is a golden era of snouting and we will resolutely defend the glorious NDR from the anti-revolutionary forces that seek to halt our unstoppable march to socialist nirvana. So, if you lack the necessary ambition and refuse to join the Gadarene rush to the trough while the rating agencies gallop in the opposite direction well, to hell with you. Your dirty vote will not be missed and your flea-infested body will not be defended in parliament or elsewhere by the ANC’s renowned adversarial buttocks.

  • Ed Herbst is a retired veteran journalist who writes in his own capacity.

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