The Top seven leadership have their work cut out for them Photo Nasreen Naidoo
South Africa – The 55th ANC National Elective Conference is over and the dust has settled at Nasrec. The top seven has now been announced and include three women, all well-respected and experienced leaders. The ANC is expecting their new leadership to hit the ground running. In the hope of restoring confidence in the party.
One of the party’s biggest worries is their financial issues. The ANC have had financial troubles for quite some time and it was reported that they were unable to pay their staff. Gwen Ramokgopa, Treasurer-General, has set up meetings with various businesspeople in order to gather funds for the ANC. Prof. Patrick Bond, professor at the University of Johannesburg Department of Sociology, believes it will be a struggle to get the funds required to run the ANC. In 2017 Cyril Ramaphosa moved those who aligned with former president Jacob Zuma into Luthuli House which came at a big expense.
“That was one of the major problems behind his finances. Then of course the question was who’s going to pay. The ANC as a party has relied upon major contributors, both from white and the black diamond businesses. We suddenly found all sorts of people including Nikki Oppenheimer or Johnny Copeland or sort of white businesses chipping in with millions and millions of rands. They’ve really grown I think quite tired of Ramaphosa not delivering the knockout punches on their behalf as much as they would have liked. I think they are struggling. They had a big business meeting on Friday night and Paul Mashatile, the treasurer and now deputy president said, ‘without you business people we wouldn’t be here. We would just be a little pathetic NGO’.”
The country can only be helped by big business, not the ANC
The notion that big businesses can drag South Africa out of this hole it is in is quickly gaining momentum. Many have lost faith in the ANC and believe only through private businesses taking the reins will the country be saved. However, Bond firmly believes this is a naive way of thinking.
“It’s naive to first of all say there’s a big business because really there are two. There’s one kind of big business that’s unpatriotic and engaged in some of the world’s worst capital flights. They’re taking money out of the country. We have a treasury and a Reserve Bank that do a terrible job of regulating this … The dilemma is that the patriotic business class, which you would typically find to be the wealthiest black business people, they’re not doing particularly well at reinvestment. Unfortunately, they’ve gotten a so-called pass the trash accumulation strategy.”
Black business people have now invested in coal mines. Pass the trash strategy is in reference to coal mines being passed from white owners to black owners. The reason for this being a pass the trash strategy is because coal mines are a huge liability, said Bond. On the other hand white owned businesses are normally known as the most corrupt businesses in the world according to research done by PriceWaterhouseCoopers. These places include Sandton, Umhlanga, Midrand, Stellenbosch, central Cape Town and Rosebank.
Bond worked with Ramaphosa back in the 90’s when he was fighting for affordable electricity for Soweto. When he lost the struggle with Thabo Mbeki and went into bankruptcy, he made some very dirty deals, said Bond.
“That led to the Marikana Massacre when Ramaphosa wrote emails to the police saying it’s not labour it’s dastardly criminal. Then his own company Shanduka was unveiled in the Paradise Papers as using offshore financial tax havens like Mauritius. I think these are the kind of bad habits that president Ramaphosa would have picked up by being in the Johannesburg business elite … We’ve really seen an unpatriotic white bourgeoisie and that means the white capital really are the last people I think to secure the future of South Africa. They want to take the money out and run as fast as they can.”
For these reasons, big business is not the ones who can drag the country out of the hole. Bond said he would be nervous if Ramaphosa came out of the conference feeling weak while big business felt stronger and in a better position. This could lead to the ANC losing a lot more power before 2024 comes around.
SMread: Top stories from 2022
Western Multinational Corporates are to blame
There are those who blame Andre de Ruyter and White Monopoly Capitalist for the failings of Eskom. However it is not White Monopoly Capitalists to blame but Western Multinational Corporations (WMC). Most companies like South African Brewery Services, Old Mutual, Anglo and De Beers moved away to western countries after 1999.
“The Eskom factor, definitely I would blame on WMCs like the single largest consumer of our electricity which is BHP Billiton. They did a deal in 1992 which unfortunately, Valli Musa the chair of Eskom renewed during his time in the mid-2000s, for the cheapest electricity at about 12 cents a kilowatt per hour. They consume more than 7% of the grid.”
Another WMC that is harming South Africa is Sasol. They were once a white Apartheid parastatal company to New York and moved a huge amount of their money in the form of a huge chemical petrochemical complex in Louisiana. Companies like Sasol and BHP Billiton are using the country for their own benefit.
“Sasol which at Secunda squeezes coal with our electricity to create some drops of petrol … creates a single highest point source of emissions in the world which gives us 500 megatons of emissions a year. That in turn means we’re going to have sanctions against all South African exports from the European Union that’ll be starting in October and it’ll kick in in January 2027 with a carbon tax. Climate sanctions against exports. Now I would definitely blame the mineral energy complex Western Multinational Corporates that used to be White Monopoly Capital.”
Now even the black businesses who own coal mines are part of the problem. This is the heart of the problem, said Bond. Gwede Mantashe is their greatest champion but so is de Ruyter, said Bond.
“Even though he was pushing hard for renewables, 44% of what de Ruyter was pushing for was gas. Methane gas and that’s Total, Shell, Johnny Copeland’s HCI, and Petra Energy SA. Those four especially have been doing the seismic blasting.”
Bond agrees it was a good call for de Ruyter to leave Eskom although it is disparaging. It was because of calls from Mantashe who called him a traitor. De Ruyter was not the right man to lead Eskom into the renewable cycle given his previous track record. Now we must look forward to how we can better help future generations.
“The main thing is let’s look at the structure of the economy and ask whether this economy is going to suit our generation but especially future generations’ needs given that we’re the third highest emitter of CO2 per person per unit of output in the world. Only Kazakhstan and the Czech Republic, countries of more than 10 million people, are worse than South Africa. That’s what I would rather look at as a sort of way to say we’re really on the wrong track. I think we’ll be even on a worse footing now with Mantashe having so much power in the ANC.”
SMread: A closer look at the ANC’s Top 7
Clean energy is the way of the future
South Africa is a rich coal country. There is an abundance of coal, with experts estimating the country has around 400 years worth of coal. The notion that coal is useful has been disproven by the fact that we have two new coal power stations that keep on breaking down, Bond pointed out.
Clean energy is the way forward and it can also create jobs for the youth. South Africa is sitting at 66% youth unemployment. These two issues, creating a cleaner future for South Africa and providing jobs for the youth, can be linked together, explained Bond.
“The biggest threat to our youth is not merely the immediate unemployment and poverty but it’s that their lives will be destroyed by climate catastrophe. There’s no question of that really and it’s their anger, the generational rage, that we haven’t really seen come up in a coherent way.”
The catastrophe that we saw in Durban during April, the flood that left more than 300 dead, these events will only continue and get worse. As climate change gets worse, South Africa will experience more of these deadly disasters. This is why climate change is the biggest threat to the youth. This is just “a foretaste” of what we can expect, said Bond.
“The youth need a future that means immediate move to renewable, a just transition with jobs for the youth. We need climate adaptation. We need storm water drainage and we need to clean up the sewage system in Durban. So there’s plenty of public sector work to be done across the country. It’s time for the youth to be given those jobs and to make those links between their climate catastrophic future and the urgency of getting them to work for a genuine green new Eskom and to make our municipalities climate proofed in the immediate period ahead.”
If South Africa continues to go this way, Bond can see the youth taking control into their own hands.A fresh “democratic youthful wave to throw out the old guard”.
“I think we’ll all be debating that and hoping for a renewal of a sort of democratic liberatory spirit in this country that’s been so oppressed by economic Apartheid.”
