State Capture and xenophobia — ‘abahambe’ mob lacks gumption to tackle SA’s real problems.

Let’s imagine for a moment that every foreigner in South Africa, documented or otherwise, heeds the abahambe (let them go) call and returns to their countries of origin.

We would see an outflow of about three million people, leaving roughly 63 million South African citizens to merrily capitalise on and benefit from the boundless job opportunities, government housing allocations and public healthcare services that our foreign guests so selfishly hogged.

The above scenario, of course, is utter fantasy. It is sheer folly steeped in the fallacious belief that foreign nationals engender or exacerbate this country’s most pressing socioeconomic obstacles.

With the anti-immigrant movements’ 30 June deadline fast approaching, it seems apt to juxtapose the immigration quandary with a compendium of past and contemporary government and private-sector failures. They are scandals that caused intractable harm and squandered immeasurable sums of public funds — money that would have gone a great distance in addressing the very concerns the “abahambe” crowd imprudently lay at the feet of hapless foreigners. Critics will accuse me of “whataboutism”, but I strongly believe there is a point to be made.

Consider Collen Mashawana and the IDT’s Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) fiasco. Think of the R836-million oxygen plants debacle. Then there is the late Markus Jooste’s jaw-dropping Steinhoff avarice. There’s VBS. The Bosasa gang. The Tembisa Hospital mob. Endless abuses in low-cost housing delivery. Life Esidimeni. Tshwane’s Rooiwal scandal. Dodgy PIC and IDC investments. A SAPS in shambles. Local gangsters hobnobbing with top politicians. Deadly pit toilets. Joburg’s service delivery implosion. Extortion mafias. Illicit tobacco cartels. Corrupt municipal officials. Digital Vibes and the other Covid criminals. The Prasa, Eskom and Transnet looters. BEE fronting. Cat Matlala, Hamilton Ndlovu and Edwin Sodi. The Guptas. Ace Magashule and his Free State extraction networks.

While full exposure of the Gupta/Zuma nexus did inspire widespread dissent, one wonders to what degree that critical moment in our history took its kerosene from political expedience as opposed to sincere disapproval of State Capture’s ravages. After all, the opposition party that most forcefully decried the “Zupta” crimes carried its own bag of corruption scandals and seemingly latched onto State Capture only as a means to score political points.

But the Guptas were never the sole practitioners of high-level corruption and costly rent-seeking.

Over the years, a ceaseless stream of other graft scandals and corporate scams seeped into the public domain, many of which were exposed by an alarmingly small band of investigative journalists and the outlets that support their work.

Nary an outcry

Just last year, Daily Maverick exposed businessman Collen Mashawana for his charitable foundation’s role in an allegedly corrupt EPWP scheme. Mashawana’s foundation literally stole job opportunities from some of the poorest and most vulnerable South Africans. There was nary an outcry, at least not from the “abahambe” bloc.

In 2019, I detailed in the book Gangster State how then Free State Premier Ace Magashule’s daughter had benefited from a dubious property deal involving the Free State Development Corporation (FDC), a public body that is meant to foster economic opportunities in that province. As soon as Magashule’s daughter took control of the property, a once-thriving fuel station was forced to abandon the site, decimating more than 30 jobs in a pocket of the province where unemployment is at its worst. Nobody aligned with the anti-foreigner movements has to date said anything about this.

The individuals behind movements like March and March and Operation Dudula have been equally reticent when it comes to other major government and corporate scandals that affect the lives and livelihoods of poor South Africans.

When a government bank is plundered into bankruptcy, depriving ordinary South Africans of their hard-earned savings? Silence.

When a toxic cocktail of shady procurement decisions and atrocious governance brings South Africa’s largest city to the brink of infrastructure collapse? Crickets.

When politically connected syndicates syphon billions of rands from public hospitals through dodgy tenders? Nada.

When RDP projects are captured for private gain, robbing poor South Africans of the dignity of owning their own homes? Not a word.

Those forces who tout the expulsion of foreign nationals as a silver bullet for the hardships faced by poor South Africans are dangerous charlatans.

Some of them are probably driven by motives we don’t yet fully grasp.

At the very least, they all lack the courage and conviction to mobilise against those individuals and entities that are truly to blame for South Africa’s most pressing problems. DM