If you’ve long had a sneaky feeling that there’s more to the glaring absence of orange-overall-wearing avaricious/corrupt politicians and their tax-thieving conspirators than a mere Zuptoid-gutted NPA, read on. Just a few drops of this long-brewed, toxic distillation of criminality and arrogance would cause instant spiritual death for any decent, morally upstanding human being. But instead of isolating these elements who, when put together create such toxicity, the ruling party allowed free dissipation and dilution across our nation. Were it not for the slew of commissions, leaked e-mails and assiduous burrowing by determined journalists, plus a few hardy men and women in public life, we’d probably only vaguely and instinctively suspect that something has been wrong for a very long time. Here veteran journalist Ed Herbst, who lived and worked in the belly of the SABC beast with a bunch of like-minded, ethical colleagues, for most of his career, walks us through some of the weird and wonderful happenings that scream of political string-pulling. Not much different to Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane, these manipulators turn a blind eye to miscreants and go after the reformers. Here’s more evidence for us all to see. – Chris Bateman

Smoke, mirrors and an ethos of non-prosecution

By Ed Herbst*

“All the above findings are symptomatic of pathological corporate governance deficiencies at the SABC, including failure by the SABC board to provide strategic oversight to the national broadcaster. The board was dysfunctional and on its watch, allowed (Dr Ben) Ngubane to effectively perform the function of an executive chairperson by authorising numerous salary increments for Motsoeneng… Mr Motsoeneng has been allowed by successive boards to operate above the law, undermining the GCEO among others, and causing the staff, particularly in the human resources and financial departments to engage in unlawful conduct.” – Thuli Madonsela, When Governance and Ethics Fail 17/2/2014.

Former 2017 interim board members have been referred by the Special Investigating Unit for prosecution – over a security tender they asked the unit to look into. None of the other 16 cases of possible corruption referred to the unit has been followed up. – John Matisonn Daily Maverick 22/8/2019

There’s a paragraph in John Matisonn’s stellar book, God, Spies and Lies, which resonated with me because it trenchantly illustrates how the ANC’s illegally-deployed cadres have infiltrated every level of our society, how they have come to make up the warp and woof of our societal fabric.

It relates to Matisonn’s appointment to the first council of the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) in 1994. Its task was to democratise broadcasting in this country.

Matisonn had started his career as a reporter with the Rand Daily Mail in 1974. He was detained as a student activist against apartheid and interrogated on the tenth floor of John Vorster Square. He was barred from reporting in parliament because he was deemed by the National Party to be a security risk. 

Writing of his IBA appointment he says:

My usefulness arose from being a journalist on respected papers, six years broadcasting on the National Public Radio Network in the US, several documentaries for the TV equivalent, some decent training in Canada and elsewhere and a few awards.

It quickly became obvious that some of his fellow-councillors were on the take and, after he exposed this corruption in parliament, he was pressured by then communications minister Jay Naidoo to resign – but refused.

The following paragraphs relate to an experience he had towards the end of his contract as an IBA councillor:

I arrived back in my office in Parktown, Johannesburg to see my secretary, Emananuelita Ratselli-Webb’s possessions were still there. She was working late but was not in her office. I found her in the kitchen, painting I-B-A in red nail polish on the bottom of the China. Nail polish, she informed me, never comes off.

She had seen orders placed for Japanese Noritake china of the highest quality. That was bad enough. It appeared that it was being chosen because someone wanted it for themselves. Emmanuelita faced a vendetta, but thankfully survived long after I left.

How banal but how typical. Multiply that by the same process playing out every hour of the year for a quarter of a century, couple it with a de facto ethos of non-prosecution of the ANC’s criminals and the absence of a work ethic and you begin to understand why we are facing a debt crisis and why the intelligentsia is fleeing the country in advance of what RW Johnson has been predicting in his last two books.

Matisonn has now been targeted by the Special Investigation Unit which has produced no evidence of how he is supposed to have profited from the corruption of which he is accused.

This is relevant because we saw how the Lamborghinis and riverside mansions were bought in the ANC-linked Eastern Cape township toilet scandal a few years back and how the VBS conspirators splurged on properties, cars and boats the moment the money-siphoning started.

A year ago the Zuma–appointed head of the SIU, advocate Andy Mothibi, started accusing the NPA of a dilatory approach to prosecution.

No action

In an article on Biznews, I asked why no action was being taken against the politically-connected Matilda Gaboo given the abundant evidence which would justify her prosecution.

Instead, we find the names of the interim SABC board which served from April to September 2017 – Khanyisile Kweyama as chair, Mathatha Tsedu as deputy chair, Febe Potgieter-Gqubule, Krish Naidoo and John Matisonn – sullied by the Special Investigations Unit.

Look at the context here – it is almost six years since Thuli Madonsela produced her When Governance and Ethics Fail report. Hundreds of millions of rands have been looted leaving yet another of the ANC’s perennially corrupt SOEs technically insolvent, the very pretence of preventative maintenance has been abandoned, the poorest of the poor cannot even get the soccer results on radio, Suna Venter is dead, the enforcers she mentioned in her report to parliament are still diligently and without sanction pumping out their pro-ANC propaganda, and only one Hlaudi Motsoeneng acolyte has appeared in court.

Read also: NPA’s Batohi soothes compatriots waiting to exhale

As Ramaphoria morphs into Ramanertia, the country desperately waits for a Zuptoid to face the full force of the law and the best that Andy Mothibi can come up with is a legally-flawed – if the interim SABC board of 2017 is correct – smoke and mirrors diversionary tactic without producing a scintilla of proof that Matisonn et al. have enriched themselves while in serving on the SABC board.

I have never met or spoken to Matisonn, but two years ago I visited an acquaintance who lives in one of the older suburbs of one of the towns near Cape Town. I would estimate the houses in this street were built in the 1950s and they ranged from dead-ordinary to dowdy. He told me that his neighbour was Matisonn. Of ostentation there was no sign.

Stark contrast

In stark contrast to the National Party, the African National Congress does what it can to keep its cadres out of jail, to ensconce them in maximum comfort if that is not possible, to pay them with your money and mine while they are in jail before appointing them in parliament, to shorten their sentences, to pardon them thereafter and to retain the services of those who have been openly accused of corruption.

In the history of post-apartheid South Africa, only one corrupt cadre, Cynthia Maropeng, has been swiftly arrested, charged and sentenced.

That was because, instead of going the prescribed route and stealing from the fiscus, she stole ANC constituency funds.

That was 18 years ago and it was a one-off because the cadres got the message.

With reluctance the ANC conceded to a parliamentary inquiry into the insolvent and dysfunctional state broadcaster in 2017 and, with horrified fascination, the nation watched the ensuing parade of compromised cadres.

So brazen were their lies that Vincent Smith, SABC inquiry ad hoc committee chairperson, melodramatically stated that someone must go to jail.

I was sceptical at the time because I had read in Andrew Feinstein’s book, After the Party, how Smith, Tony Yengeni and Essop Pahad had successfully stymied the parliamentary investigation into Arms Deal corruption.

My scepticism was vindicated when Angelo Agrizzi subsequently alleged that Smith had been on the take for years.

Smith is still there, still taking the taxpayers’ shilling having suffered nothing in consequence.

The subject of Smith’s ire in parliament, Ben Ngubane, has still faced no sanction despite a Carte Blanche programme and OUTA  accusing him two years ago of forging a mining licence.

Business as usual

It has been business as usual since the mid-1990s.

The findings of the 2008 Pillay Commission into the ‘pillage the village’ approach by the ANC’s deployed cadres in the Eastern Cape were never followed up and we began to discover the extent  and consequence of the ANC’s de facto no-prosecution policy in the province a decade later when Crispian Olver published his book How to Steal A City.

Emphasising the point was the way in which senior ANC councillors in East London exploited Nelson Mandela’s death to steal millions intended to ameliorate the travails of the poor.

That’s evil but none of those ANC comrades has gone to jail. In fact, five years later, the case has been withdrawn – does that sound familiar?

Then there was the 2012 Manase Commission investigation of municipal corruption in Durban. The ANC tried to prevent is damning findings from being made public. Nothing was done, leading ineluctably to the current mayor facing tender corruption charges but refusing to resign.

If the charges against her are withdrawn, would anyone be surprised?

The same process has played itself out throughout the country, most specifically in the Free State – as Pieter-Louis Myburgh outlined in his book Gangster State: Unravelling Ace Magashule’s Web of Capture.

Yet, as the former Free State economic development MEC Mxolisi Dukwana summed up the 2014 asbestos roof scam involving the pustular Blackhead Consulting company before the Zondo commission this week…

“To date, no eradication of asbestos roofs has been carried out in any townships in the Free State… and yet R255m had been advanced to the Blackhead Consulting joint venture and R77m of state funds is a subject of litigation in our courts, and our law enforcement agencies are doing nothing.” 

The Estina dairy project has also been extensively canvassed at the Zondo commission – same story.

Cadre corruption doomed the Kusile and Medupi power stations from the start and impacted on each and every one of us as well as the country as a whole but, while Matshela Koko and Anoj Singh and Brian Molefe and Ben Ngubane walk free, the SIU targets people like John Matisonn and his SABC board colleagues. 

When will someone be prosecuted over the Prasa locomotive debacle? 

If Mothibi is to be believed, Matisonn, a DA nominee, conspired with an ANC Struggle stalwart, Krish Naidoo – whose recently-published book had its foreword written by President Cyril Ramaphosa – to defraud the very institution they were trying to help

It is no secret that they resigned from the SABC board because of the ANC’s predictable interference  and attempts to control the broadcast message which has continued without respite for two decades.

Getting back to Andy Mothibi and his prosecution of people like Krish Naidoo and John Matisonn – both of whom have blemish-free Struggle records – I am reminded of a recent article by William Saunderson-Meyer headlined ANC’s political midgets tie down Ramaphosa.

I wonder who Saunderson-Meyer had in mind.

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