[CITY PRESS]
14 December 2015
Spotting and identifying visitors to the Gupta home has become a pastime for residents of the posh Joburg suburb of Saxonwold.
Residents often drive up the road or reroute their regular walks and jogs so they can spot which influential individual is popping by for a meal and to receive instructions from South Africa's most influential family.
And the chances of striking it lucky and catching a glimpse of powerful visitors are very high. After doing this, they have a tasty morsel of information to share at the next braai or pool party.
Two weekends ago was a good time for collectors and peddlers of neighbourhood gossip. The street on which the Guptas live was closed off for five minutes because a large convoy of black cars was driving through.
Although nobody could see through the tinted windows that Saturday evening, those familiar with visits to the
house by higher-ups claimed that the convoy belonged to Number 1.
And, some observed, the convoy was arriving immediately after a meeting of the ANC's national executive committee, so there was perhaps some important feedback that was being given.
Fact or not, the influence of the Guptas on the functioning of the state and of the party that runs the nation is legendary. Dodgy and mysterious decisions that betray logic can often be traced back to the Gupta dinner table.
It was no surprise, then, that the Gupta name was on everyone's lips after the axing of Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene. With speculation running wild about why President Jacob Zuma had replaced Nene with a guy primarily known in ANC ranks for his ability to get down to kwaito beats, many fingers pointed in the direction of the Guptas. It was the same when Zuma inexplicably replaced former mining minister Ngoako Ramatlhodi with a virtual phantom a few months ago.
It could be argued that it is unfair on the Guptas to have all the nation's woes piled on their shoulders. But the thing is, they are taking the bullet for many others who are involved in the project of state capture by business interests during the Zuma presidency. The Guptas are emblematic of that phenomenon, which has seen senior appointments and big decisions being based on which business interest has the ear of the president and his inner circle. Tales abound of decisions being taken at dinner tables of powerful business interests and then relayed to relevant government departments for rubber-stamping.
Despite the presidency scrambling to present the decision as a reasoned one, which was prompted by the need to inform South Africa that Nene was deployed to the Brics Bank, common sense tells us otherwise. The position of finance minister of any country is highly sensitive. Together with the presidency and the foreign ministry it is the heartbeat of government. When newly sworn-in presidents announce their Cabinets it is this ministry that is most closely watched by markets, investors and citizens. Nelson Mandela was mindful of this when he appointed respected business captains to the ministry while Trevor Manuel was being groomed for the post.
Even grooming and preparing the markets for the inevitable change was not enough to forestall panic in 1996 when Manuel took over. But these were the early years of democratic South Africa and the reaction could be put down to racism and suspicion of the ANC's past socialist leanings.
After Manuel was accepted as a safe steward of the nation's finances, the challenge was always going to be to prepare the local and international markets for a post-Manuel world.
Fortunately for the ANC, there was no shortage of talent in its ranks. From Jabu Moleketi to Nhlanhla Nene to Pravin Gordhan to Tito Mboweni to Enoch Godongwana to Zweli Mkhize to Mcebisi Jonas to Paul Mashatile and a host of others, the party had its pick of fine individuals to step into Manuel's shoes. This certainty of succession and policy continuity was telegraphed to the markets ahead of Manuel's 2009 departure and Gordhan's 2014 exit. The management of these changes was impeccable and there was a hardly a ripple in the markets.
This week was something else. Zuma fired Nene as if he was getting rid of one of his herdboys at the Nkandla homestead and finding another unemployed youth at the neighbouring village in his place.
The fact that his entire Cabinet was in the dark about the move and that his party's top six were taken by surprise gives a lie to the fact that this was a considered decision about a key portfolio.
What happened on Wednesday was informed by discussions that took place far away from the formal centres of power. It was a product of state capture.
The great irony of this creeping state capture by private interests is that it was one of the key reasons advanced by the Left for the removal of former President Thabo Mbeki.
It was alleged then that big capital was wielding undue influence over the policy direction of the ANC and the government. Mbeki and his trusted ministers and advisers were accused of being the architects of the 1996 class project, a term for the conservative economic policies that his administration adopted from that year to stabilise an economy that was threatened by apartheid-era indebtedness.
Opponents of the policy claimed this shift was due to Mbeki listening too closely to blue-shirted white men in Joburg, Stellenbosch, London and New York.
The 2007 Polokwane revolution, as the removal of Mbeki was dubbed, entailed restoring this power to the tripartite alliance, comprising the ANC, Cosatu and the SA Communist Party. After Polokwane, the alliance was going to be the centre of decision-making power and the government would dance to its tune.
But these dreams had obviously missed a letter that the Scorpions found in a raid on one of fraudster Schabir Shaik's properties. In the letter, written to him by his businessman father-in-law, there was a line that revealed the investment the family was making in the KwaZulu-Natal economic affairs MEC. "When your man becomes deputy president, we will be in the pound seats," he wrote.
Zuma did go on to become deputy president. He did do favours for Shaik and others who had invested in him. But mistakes and circumstances saw law enforcement agencies raining on their parade early into Zuma's term. It is now common cause that once Shaik was convicted and sentenced, others moved into the space and invested in Zuma.
And once he became president of the republic, he made the multiple investments in him a more important debt to repay than his debt to the country.
So was born the state capture that is the defining feature of the Zuma years. Instead of big capital doing the state capture, it is disparate interests – some decidedly dodgy – getting their grips on the running of the government.
This week marked an important phase in this state capture. With the capture of Treasury by these interests, power has now well and truly left the supposed centre. An institution that was once the nerve centre of policy certainty will now become the playground of those wanting to harvest the South African fiscus.
Critical decisions requiring big expenditure will be taken at dinner tables and dachas in distant lands instead of the Cabinet room and Luthuli House boardroom.
It is not alarmist to fear that the process of setting monetary policy, which has been done by wise individuals who run one of the finest central banks in the world, will be vulnerable to selfish private interests.
The 24 months leading up the ANC's next electoral conference will be the most important in the nation's history, perhaps as important as the period leading up to the establishment of the democracy.
This will be a period in which the governing party decides whether to reclaim its soul and the soul of the republic or to allow the capture to be complete.