AGE OF ACCOUNTABILITY
Zuma’s Zombies – the sycophants who paid a high price for their blind political loyalty to Msholozi
Western Cape Division of the High Court Judge President John Hlophe has been removed from office, the latest casualty in a long line of people who chose to sacrifice their careers, reputations and livelihoods in devotion to the politically venal in their greedy quest for power and money.
The shattered careers, lives and reputations that have come to rest in the global political junkyard form a heap as high as it is wide and it reeks of the consequences of blind loyalty.
The latest casualty in former president Jacob Zuma’s long rampage to kleptocracy is John Hlophe, who now faces old age without the substantial lifelong salary, medical aid and state vehicle that judges usually get.
Hlophe (65) will be the first Judge President in democratic South Africa to be impeached after he was found guilty of gross misconduct in April 2021 by a Judicial Conduct Tribunal.
And all this because he tried to influence two Constitutional Court justices in 2008 in a corruption and fraud case related to Zuma.
As countries go, South Africa ranks up there with some of the worst examples – alongside the US, Russia, Mexico, Brazil, the Philippines and Argentina – when it comes to the attack on freedom and accountability. The slide towards “electoral autocracy” is a growing trend. Behold India.
Similar to the continuing shitshow that Donald Trump has dragged steaming into US politics, Zuma has chewed up, spat out and abandoned graveyards of kamikaze friends, loyalists and protectors.
The careers of many of the bottom feeders in this Darwinian hierarchical pyramid scheme can never be salvaged. Sure, some have recycled themselves, some have repented and others have been forced to seek work elsewhere in the world, but many are decomposing in the dustbin of history.
As for the good guys, the whistle-blowers who were targeted by Zuma’s minions, some had their lives abruptly and brutally terminated, others remain in hiding, though a few have slowly begun to rebuild their lives.
Brave red flag raisers in the private sector, where global accounting, auditing and consulting firms were too busy admiring the emperor’s new clothes while benefiting handsomely from fortunes diverted from the poor, also found their reputations trashed.
How deep is your love
At present, several ANC members implicated in State Capture remain vocally active in the party and continue to receive salaries with benefits. The ANC’s integrity commission has been grappling with what to do with “heavyweights” who continue to represent the face of government in public.
The most odious of them include former minister of State Security David Mahlobo; as well as former Gauteng premier and minister of water affairs and sanitation Nomvula Mokonyane; former minister of finance, home affairs, etc, Malusi Gigaba; Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy Gwede Mantashe; and at least 87 others.
Former suave minister of health and frontrunner for deputy president Zweli Mkhize, a Zuma ally, resigned in August 2021 and is facing criminal prosecution for Covid procurement corruption related to the Digital Vibes scandal.
The ANC Integrity Commission has recommended that 100 members implicated in wrongdoing be removed from the ANC’s electoral list.
Mpumalanga strongman and former deputy president David Mabuza, who switched sides from supporting Zuma to batting for victor Cyril Ramaphosa in 2017, resigned in 2023. “The Cat”, as he called himself for his ability to survive attacks by his opponents, is known as an agile manipulator of the law.
Mabuza now faces a life-and-death battle in a long-running civil trial, brought by conservationist Fred Daniel, that is related to serial assassinations, shocking endemic corruption and land reform theft.
Human shields
Like Hlophe, former State Security Agency (SSA) official and Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane displayed remarkable resolve in protecting Zuma’s shadow state as well as the regional empires of his allies, former Free State premier Ace Magashule and MEC for agriculture Mosebenzi Zwane.
Mkhwebane was removed from office after a costly and lengthy Section 194 parliamentary inquiry, whose findings were voted on in Parliament. Weaponising the Office of the Public Protector, Mkhwebane targeted Zuma’s political opponents, ringing up huge legal bills while suffering defeat after defeat in the courts as the rule of law was tested.
Now an EFF MP, she has since been informed she has forfeited her R10-million gratuity that comes with serving out a contract without blemish.
Both Hlophe and Mkhwebane, and their tragic legacies, are now for the history books on how a middle-aged democracy was almost collapsed through their collusion.
Their version of what happened differs markedly. The main thrust of it is that a conspiracy had led to a political “witch-hunt” and that they are the heroes while the rest are traitors to the “revolution”.
This, 30 years into ANC governance. It’s the kind of paranoia and delusion that also drives men like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump.
As noted in 2023, John Mandlakayise Hlophe had carried high hopes from KwaDukuza via Cambridge to head the Western Cape Division of the High Court.
But almost from the get-go, Hlophe brought emotionally driven political theatre to his leadership and became embroiled in myriad legal challenges. He has been accused of assault, both verbal and physical, of colleagues in the key division he headed.
Beside Hlophe was his legal representative, Barnabas Xulu, the man who established the Friends of Jacob Zuma Trust, which helped to fund Zuma’s defence during his rape trial in 2006.
In that instance his accuser, Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo, was subjected to vitriolic public abuse after her revelations and before her untimely death in 2016 at the age of 41.
Xulu has since lost his luxury home in KwaZulu-Natal and his Porsche, never mind his reputation as the Legal Practice Council investigates him for misconduct. Xulu is in a deep pit of debt, owing the state R20-million in fees he should not have been paid.
Advocate Dali Mpofu has played a key role in representing Zuma and Mkhwebane, and has driven the judiciary to issue a directive that waffling, gaslighting as well as improvised riffing, in future, would not be allowed in court. Mpofu also complained that his R13-million legal bill to the Public Protector was “peanuts” considering his weight and expertise, mostly in the Stalingrad defence method.
The wheels on the bus
Key institutions and departments targeted in the Zumification of the state included the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), the South African Revenue Service (SARS), the South African Police Service (SAPS), the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation, the Office of the Public Protector, the Office of the Inspector-General of Intelligence, the SSA, crime and military intelligence, Correctional Services, Home Affairs, Health, Education, Water and Sanitation, Public Works, the National Treasury, the judiciary and Parliament itself.
Added extras were those institutions at devolved levels, including provincial and municipal, with the contagion gradually seeping into almost all layers of life, from corporate boardrooms to taxi ranks and construction sites.
A series of directors of public prosecutions (DPPs), including Advocate Mokotedi Mpshe, who dropped Zuma’s corruption charges in 2009 in the swirl of the weaponisation of the “spy tapes” (secret recordings of conversations between the then head of the Scorpions, Leonard McCarthy, and NPA head Bulelani Ngcuka), stood tall for Zuma.
As late as 2018, Mpshe still insisted he did not err in dropping the charges when the courts overturned his argument, finding he was wrong in law to stop the prosecution.
Prosecutors Menzi Simelane, Nomgcobo Jiba, Lawrence Mrwebi, Ron Mncwabe, Raymond Mathenjwa, Sello Maema (NPA North West deputy head), Marshall Mokgatle (Pretoria head of the Specialised Commercial Crime Unit), Anthony Mosing (senior deputy director of public prosecutions), Mahlubi Ntlakaza (former acting Johannesburg DPP), Moipone Noko (former North West DPP) and Shaun Abrahams (former deputy national DPP) all took a fall.
In April 2019, a commission of inquiry into their fitness to hold office chaired by retired Constitutional Court Judge Yvonne Mokgoro found that decisions by Jiba and Mwrebi brought the NPA into disrepute.
Noko, who was found to have manipulated charges while she served in KwaZulu-Natal, was transferred to North West before resigning when informed she faced an inquiry.
Mncwabe and Mathenjwa were appointed as DPPs in North West and Mpumalanga by Zuma a week before he left office in 2018, but lost their jobs when Ramaphosa revoked this.
Abrahams, another Zuma peak State Capture appointee to head the NPA, recently found himself appearing in Lesotho in a high-profile case, but the country’s Chief Justice Sakoane Sakoane has barred him from further participation because of his courtroom behaviour.
Former SARS commissioner Tom Moyane, a key Zuma enabler, was suspended in 2018 after he refused to step down. He was fired by Ramaphosa that year, a dismissal upheld by the Constitutional Court.
The Zondo Commission of Inquiry recommended that Moyane be charged with perjury and providing false information to Parliament in relation to his activities at SARS with consultancy Bain & Co, which hollowed out the service. Moyane’s sidekick, Jonas Makwakwa, has washed up in Botswana, where his involvement with the country’s revenue service has caused alarm.
Another Zuma appointee, former SAPS national commissioner General Khehla Sitole, who resigned in March 2022, was found by the courts to have put the interests of the ANC above those of the country in refusing to cooperate with an Independent Police Investigative Directorate investigation into the R45-million grabber scandal at the ANC Nasrec elective conference in 2017.
Former South African Airways director and Zuma enabler Dudu Myeni has been declared a delinquent director and was fined R120,000 for disclosing the identity of a witness at the Zondo Commission.
She was also arrested alongside former Bosasa-linked Trevor Mathenjwa on charges of fraud and corruption. Over and above this, she still has to pay about R6-million in cost orders.
Former Eskom and Transnet head and ANC MP Brian Molefe has been ordered to repay the R30-million he received as an illicit pension payout. Once destined for bigger things, Molefe had his reputation shredded when former Public Protector Thuli Madonsela exposed just how close Molefe was to the Gupta family.
Unmerry wives of Nkandla
As Zuma’s political fortunes waned and costs, legal and otherwise, began to mount, his domestic life began to prove as turbulent. As costs ate into his nest egg and his paranoia and suspicion coloured his world, Zuma began to shed some of the wives and lovers who had dedicated their lives to his project and produced about 21 children in the process.
Apart from the tragic death by suicide in 2000 of Zuma’s second wife, Kate Mantsho, mother of five of his children, including twins Duduzane and Duduzile, after 24 years of marriage, Nompumelelo Ntuli, or MaNtuli, was banished from fortress Nxamalala at Nkandla in 2015.
The country’s former fourth first lady, who married Msholozi in 2008, was accused of poisoning her husband, an accusation dismissed by the NPA, which declined to prosecute her because of a lack of evidence.
In a surprising turn of events, in January 2020, one of Zuma’s most loyal wives, sixth first lady Thobeka Madiba, was also barred from visiting Nxamalala. This after she was reportedly accused by her husband of removing SIM cards without his permission.
Madiba-Zuma, who married Zuma in 2010 at the height of his popularity, sued him for divorce and maintenance.
The former president’s ingoduso (fiancée), Nonkanyiso Conco, also known as “LaConco”, who was 24 when she gave birth to Zuma’s umpteenth son on his 76th birthday on 3 April 2018, was frozen out of La Famiglia when she posted on social media that she was essentially a single mother.
She now enjoys a career as a star on The Real Housewives of Durban and styles herself on X as “a woman of Purpose and Vision”, a “Social Entrepreneur”, as well as “Founder and CEO” of a cosmetic and clothing range.
Scoundrels seeking refuge
Refusing to accept election results in a country with a free press, opposition parties, legislation to protect the integrity of voting and a vocal civil society is the first refuge of the scoundrel.
Putin, who is a frontrunner (of course) in his country’s imminent “national election”, is less subtle, the world has come to learn, in dealing with opposition. Planes inexplicably exploding in mid-air or an agonising death by poison is more his style.
When he wins the next one (it is preordained), Putin will remain on his throne until 2036 and his grip, as The Guardian Moscow correspondent Andrew Roth has noted, “will surpass even that of Joseph Stalin” and make him “the longest-serving Moscow leader since the Russian empire”.
For instinctively anti-democratic and venal men like Trump and Zuma and their growing ilk, Putin’s occasionally bare-chested fabulous life is a political wet dream.
The poverty and misery that surrounds them are just the spoils of war, the casualties in the race to the top of the cash pile.
Political patrons like Zuma and Trump need the political Viagra so favoured by despots, populists and autocrats: sycophants, cronies and enablers who are willingly co-opted into the hollowing-out and weakening of institutions of state accountability.
There is no ideology here, and what passes for it carries the aroma of carrion that perfumes the history of national socialist movements.
This is an extraordinary year globally for democracy, as more than 64 countries head to the polls. It is a moment in history when we will either succumb to the toxic charms of the venal or self-serving, or begin to rediscover common humanity and cooperation. DM
This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R29.
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Lovely piece, it’s time we start having our own democracy framework, recycling incompetent leaders and parties is the plague that is befalling all the modern democracies we modelled on.
South Africa is worse with one man initiated parties where the elective conferences of the parties by design always align with the founder as commander in chief, MK party the next to join the fray.
Should they succeed in registering and gaining a significant number of votes it will be the beginning of the end to our already frail democracy.
Dictatorship is always a possibility and once ingrained requires barrels of blood and sweat to remove.
The habit for opponents to fall out of tall buildings become a norm.
2024 is an anxiety filled election year where calm and turbulence share the same face.
Great comment!
What a brilliant article that traces the cancer that has cursed our country and its slow poison that is killing and laying waste to it as well. It’s good to know that this anc cabal of wicked thieves, criminals, predators and parasites are starting to face the consequences of their vile deeds, although there are many still free and enjoying their ill-gotten wealth. I wish them much pain, suffering and the very worst of luck for the destruction and misery that they have caused, including aiding and abetting the kingpins.
Me too
Just to prove that this is not another ANC “yes we made mistakes, but that was the previous administration’s* fault” story,
[*ie ANC administration, as though it was a different party]
perhaps Ms Thamm could list those on the ANC candidates list who were MPs for the eight Motions of No Confidence against JZ783 and say who supported them or didn’t. As the current Secretary General recently admitted, the ANC “lied for Zuma”. Ditto, those who supported the “Secure in Comfort” report and those who supported the “firepool” story. I am sure that she has enough familiarity with PRECCA to know what it says about corruption in the National Assembly.
While she is at it, since she has delved into our NPA Directors, can she produce any evidence that Shamila Batohi is alive and has not become yet another ghost worker?
Personally, much as I despise JZ783 for selling the country out to the Guptas and concede that he lacks the suavity of his acquiescing deputy for the worst “wasted years”, at least JZ783 was unpretentiously and openly crooked. His successor, while having the same respect for the truth as Donald Trump, has sold the country out to Putin and to Iran and its proxies. Viewed objectively, unemployment, loadshedding, crime, illiteracy and other state failings are worse now than during JZ783’s time.
I’ve always said, every vote to protect Zuma by the MPs at the time was an act of treason!
Absolutely! And SA should’ve had to spend a cent on their defence. They should return the stolen money and pay for their defence whilst in jail!
You steal 1k you go to jail. You steal a million you get to go home, feign grounds for a get out of jail sick note, cause a riot, risk civil war. All whilst living in your mansion, your kids in private schools and lapping it up in Dubai. And then have the audacity to want to return to parliament!
If I were one of these I’d be pretty pissed.
Their move.
Or not.
Great article, Marianne. Thank you for giving context to the lived realities of the average South African. Maybe (just maybe), we can, somehow, crawl out of the mess created by the ‘liberators’.
Powerful piece. Thank you, Marianne.
What a waste of education in these men women who chose this path. What a way to choose to be remembered. What a way to destroy the legacy of those who fought and died for freedom in the ANC. Country left orphaned by rogue infantile parents. What a waste.
But thank goodness for an alert and free press, the Madonselas and Zondos
One wonders, from the start even, that the chief corrupter was our current President. The chief beneficiary too.
Thank you for an excellent summation of the range of the cabal that supported the destruction of the key institutions in SA’s governance infrastructure. Added to this should be all of the ANC members of Parliament who abdicated Parliament’s responsibility and protected the former President and administration (and continue to fail to execute this responsibility in relation to the current Executive), and were critical in enabling the state capture process and allowing its current continuation.
The number of enablers who have encountered a real comeuppance as a result of their actions is miniscule in relation to the overall actual number and scope of enablers. They are still in Cabinet, on Party lists for the next elections, and forming and joining other political parties to try to retain power and continue their destructive activities.
There is not even any attempt anymore even to pretend to address corruption and maladministration, and a significant proportion of voters continue to believe the misinformation and lies that the corrupt cabal are peddling. That is the great tragedy, why people are believing and supporting those who are in fact impoverishing them and destroying their futures, and those of their children and grandchildren.
A day after the Brexit vote the most commonly asked ‘google’ questions in the UK were ‘what is Brexit’ and ‘what is the EU’. In other words, it was implied that a whole bunch of people cast their votes in a referendum on an issue they didn’t understand!
I absolutely love listening to Bruce Whitfield on 702’s ‘The Money Show’. I consider myself fairly astute in terms of my understanding of the economy – but even I find myself frequently ‘lost’ in some of the discussion. My question is, what percentage of our population (any population) understand how money and the economy works or is supposed to work? 5% maybe 10% – perhaps less than 2,5%?
Political parties (across the world) know that people don’t generally know – which is why they sell (and get away with selling) ‘promises’ that are often fantiscally unrealistic – but the reality is (and in the absence of a general level of understanding) populatiins are attracted to personalities who seemingly have ‘the answers’ – that is to people who say ‘they can fix everything easily’
I actually don’t know whether there is any one or good answer to the problem the World is currently facing – but I do know that Leaders such as Trump, Putin , Zuma and Malema are the natural and dangerous consequences of less than optimal societies and systems
Trump, Putin , Zuma and Malema are so vastly different in context and ideology that the only thing they have in common is that the so called Left like to put them in one category, but that is not the reailty.
Three would-be dictators, and one genuine dictator, who all subscribe to fascist ideology – they seem to fit into one category together quite comfortably, in my opinion…
But they all fall into the same pots as dangerous and despicable. No matter right or left.
Putin is deadly. The rest delusional but dangerous.
What an extraordinarily beautifully written article. The depth of research is impressive and it is a wonderfully comprehensive summary of the descent into the hell of autocracy. Thank you!
No one paid a higher price for their blind political loyalty to the ANC and it’s corrupt cadres than the SA population, especially the poor.
Great article. News today is of the level of support that Zuma is getting in KZN. Scary for any thinking person.
One question…. Why is the news (in DM as well as N24 and others) always about how bad things are and what political party is muffing it. Why is there no news on the positive stuff? Why is there nothing about how the DA is doing in The Cape? Surly it is up to the media to spread the positives as well as the negatives?
Give up on your favourite political hobby horse … and stand for ‘elections’ … without abusing DM reader/editorial support for your campaign . It is farcical and frankly tedious . Regrading KZN … it has always been a ‘renegade’ province which sang to another tune … even during the struggle for ‘democracy’. It has invariably been a basket case.
Am I reading correctly? Are you asking that others stop expressing their opinion if you don’t like it? Are you currently applying to a future censorship authority? Or do you work for Iqbal Survé?
Ahem! I thought I read some mention of democracy in your comment.
A large number of those named are from KZN, most often Zulu, and especially connected, one way or other with the Law.
No coincidence!
One of the best pieces I’ve read in a while. Thank you.
In response to the ‘bad news’ elucidated by Glyn Morgan; in general spreading good news does not call for action. Action is needed to counteract bad governance and the people indulging in it. Marianne’s spotlight overview of where we are right now should be translated into a few ethnic languages and distributed countrywide. If just 5% of the population were enlightened by it the road to recovery would be that much stronger. So, good news is nice to read and that’s about it. I prefer to know where the pitfalls lie.
The good news comes when you know where the pitfalls lie and then do something, anything to counter those.
Brave, articulate, passionate, brilliant: Marianne is one of this Country’s best journos and we have some damn good ones.
Marianne’s Divine Comedy. I see, like Dante, you also started with the Inferno. May they all (and their enablers and sycophantic followers) choke in their ill-gotten gains.
Great piece, and tocthink that despite all the names mentioned, it’s only the tip of the rotten ANC iceberg, the 21st century’s largest ponzi scheme so far.
Shame, we need a home for them. As Pink Floyd said:
Take all your overgrown infants away somewhere
And build them a home, a little place of their own
The Fletcher Memorial Home for Incurable Tyrants and Crooks.
And they can appear to themselves every day on closed circuit T.V.
To make sure they’re still real
It’s the only connection they feel.
As Putin himself pointed out, he prefers Biden over Trump in his Tucker Carlson interview; Donald Trump, will win again. I myself, am a classical liberal myself however, liberals have destroyed the world with a crazy amount of insanity. We should be grateful we have more than one party to vote for!! The world is going to swing back to conservatists. I do not blame anyone. I have never voted ANC or any other populist party (Eff) South African need to show up vote. History always repeats itself, if you do not change it.
And when has Vlad ever said anything that is not directly tied to how it will improve a situation for him? It’s quite obvious that when everyone is saying Orange Donny sucks up to Putin, and cuts him all the slack he needs that Vlad is not going to come right out and say ‘yes, he’s the guy I want in the white house’ – he’s going to pretend he wants the other guy, so as not to make waves that might sink the Trump ship (especially as it’s already listing from all the adverse court judgements he’s had recently)…
A really interesting article. Thanks.
I concur with Rae Earl about the translation into ethnic languages, but also for the MPC (Multi Party Charter) to use as their ammunition targeting ANC voters as to why they should NOT be voting ANC as another 5 years of ANC rule, there will be very little left and the poor left with absolutely NOTHING.
Great job Marianne! it is so heartening to see some light at the end of the tunnel! With one swift scrawl of your pen, you set hearts and minds whirring , determined to secure the future of this country !
Who are powerful financial backers of this cabal spanning close to 20 yrs ? Still along way to go to see justice for the people wrecked in this mess! I pray that MK is not a wrecking ball, come the Elections round the corner.
I get the vague impression that there are more forces at play than is apparent . Politicians have advisors; so playing a dangerous game, dicing with careers and its consequences, is highly suggestive of powerful backers lurking in the shadows !
I am often left wondering where South Africa would have been in the present day had the ANC post-1994 (and still early in their takeover of power) made better decisions as to its cabinet representation and internal policies. Had there been a stronger focus on ethical and accountable leadership so much of what this sad article points out could have been avoided. Reading this made me queasy, but it had to be said I guess. Thank you.
Great article Marianne. looking around the world at the questionable leaders’ voters elect, one must question the workings of democracy. The principle of withholding the right to drive a motor vehicle until one has passed a competency test is almost universal, as not doing so would result in harm to society. Surely a similar principle should apply with voting? Incompetent voting results in even greater harm.
Many years ago, just after JZ was elevated into the highest office I read an article by Max du Preez. Mister du Preez was convinced JZ’s obvious flaws would be disastrous for South Africa.
get them out of the situation – its like the mafioso
Marianne taking names.
A succinct summary of the den of thieves.
I hope that the people who are implicated in this article read the DM and hang their heads in shame, but then thieves have no conscience.
Best article I’ve read in DM for a very long time. Thanks a lot, Marianne.
I wonder if the cost to the taxpayer could be calculated protecting these sychophants, then used to see what could have been funded. I see none of these posh big wheels are going anywhere near a prison. The ANC continues to bleat about ethics and integrity, clearly they have no clue what it means. I see the high flying Judges, lawyers and public protectors fall foul of misinterpreting the law ad nauseam .This doesn’t bode well for Joe Public who ends up fighting for he’s life in a court of law that is compromised by incompetants who just dont care. One takes a huge risk looking for relief in our courts if this is a measure of integrity and competance.
Great article!