 Concerning
passengers aboard the ANC train
Jacob Dlamini, Business Day, Johannesburg, 25 February 2010 I MET Sello Rasethaba a couple of years ago at Madiba’s, a South African restaurant in Brooklyn, New York. The restaurant is popular with expatriates and South Africans passing through the Big Apple. Rasethaba was part of a South African government delegation involving politicians, public servants and businesspeople. Their visit took in a number of city stops, including Washington . Madiba’s is about the only place in the US where you can order pap and boerewors or a plate of bobotie . It is also one of the few places in New York where you can order Castle and Windhoek lagers, one reason South African expatriates and those passing through New York love the place. As the evening wore on and more beer and wine bottles fell empty, a member of the delegation started taunting Rasethaba about his political past as a Zimzim, one of those who believed SA would only be truly free the day it was renamed Azania. Rasethaba was in fact once leader of the Azanian People’s Organisation (Azapo) in the then-Northern Province . He was a committed Azanian, or so many thought, until the gravy train stopped in the then-Pietersburg. He jumped onto the African National Congress (ANC) gravy train faster than the conductor could shout “Freedom Charter”. By the time I met Rasethaba at Madiba’s he was one of the biggest proponents and beneficiaries of black economic empowerment in SA. He was also a benefactor to the ANC. That is why he was being taunted by someone from the ANC who knew Rasethaba from his days as an anti-ANC firebrand. You would think Rasethaba would want to change the topic. Nah. He responded to the taunts by saying proudly that he was not stupid and that he joined the ANC gravy train because he could see that was where the money was. He was that frank. There is nothing wrong with people engaging in what Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi memorably called “crosstitution”. SA is a democracy and people are allowed to change their minds. Buthelezi was referring to elected politicians selling their seats in return for the spoils of office. But his coinage is just as apt for people such as Rasethaba, who boarded the ANC train because that is where the money was. Rasethaba’s mercenary crosstitution has given him more benefits and headlines than his entire career as a Zimzim. It has given him connections he could only dream of as Azapo chairman in Northern Province. He is the man whose house Brett Kebble was driving to or from when he was killed. Rasethaba is also, as we know from last week’s reports about ANC Youth League president Julius Malema’s tender piles, the man who sits at the apex of a tender triangle that has Malema at one corner and Limpopo Premier Cassel Mathale at the other. A network analysis of the men, not to mention lifestyle audits, would reveal that the Rasethaba-Malema-Mathale triangle is just one of many interlocking triangles based in Limpopo, cutting through municipal boundaries and across provincial borders. The analysis would also show that there is no distinction between money and politics when it comes to these tender triangles. The analysis has yet to be done but that is where reports of Malema’s pillage must go next if this outrage is not to suffer the fate of scandals that make it onto the pages of South African newspapers: here this week; gone the next. It is only by staying with the story that we can, for example, uncover the terms of Fikile Mbalula’s support for Malema’s bid for the presidency of the ANC Youth League. It is assumed that because Mbalula is politically senior to Malema, he calls the shots in that relationship. A closer look will reveal that money is at the root of this alliance and that Malema is the one with more money. The corruption of the youth league does not begin with Malema. The rot set in under Peter Mokaba, a confessed apartheid agent and a man as corrupt as they came. Mokaba drove a five-series BMW and owned at least one hair salon when many of his political contemporaries were still getting around by minibus taxi. Mokaba helped set up a National Tourism Forum through which he and some ANC Youth League comrades, one of whom is now a deputy minister, fleeced the Taiwanese of millions of rand. The Taiwanese funded the forum in hopes that Mokaba would somehow influence Nelson Mandela to maintain the apartheid policy of keeping diplomatic links with Taiwan instead of recognising communist China. Mokaba had no such influence but he was only too happy to let the Taiwanese think he did — much like Malema trying to convince his business partners and benefactors that he has the power to bring about the nationalisation of mines. Among those who would likely benefit from the nationalisation of mines is Rasethaba, whose interest in mining goes back to his association with Kebble. It is often taken for granted that the only political opportunists in the ANC today are former National Party apparatchiks and leaders such as Marthinus van Schalkwyk . That is largely because of the assumption that there is a “natural” fit between black folks and the ANC. So Rasethaba’s cancerous presence in the ANC does not raise eyebrows the way it would if he were white and Afrikaans. But people such as Rasethaba should be cause for concern. Rasethaba had no shame all those years ago at a restaurant in New York admitting he joined the ANC for the money. I bet he is still in it for the money. As are Malema, Mbalula and the many others Jacob Zuma has anointed as future leaders of the ANC.
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