The ANC does not Believe in the Constitution

Reports have it that the ANC NEC has called on Jacob Zuma to appeal the Court Order to disclose the reasons and documentation behind his firing of the Finance Minister.

There can be no clearer evidence than this, of the fact that the ANC considers itself to be above the Constitution. The have shown that when they failed to recall Zuma when he was found by the Public Protector, a body enshrined in the Constitution to protect the public against the predation routinely exercised by the Executive, to be guilty of unjust enrichment in the using of public funds to build his homestead. They enhanced that disregard of the Constitution by embarking on a vicious campaign to bring the Public Protector into disrepute. They failed the test of respect for the Constitution again, when they failed to reprimand Zuma for his breach of the Constitution and of his Oath of Office, and again when they meekly accepted his insult to the public by ‘apologising’ to the public for their confusion in failing to understand that he had accepted all along that he would repay the money. They have shown disrespect for the Constitution, the highest law in the land, by supporting him against motions to impeach him for his numerous acts of wrongdoing, for failing for several years to comply with a Court Order to hand over the spy tapes, for inducing the Minister of Police to lie to Parliament in order to protect Zuma from any requirement to pay back the money, for failing to respect a Court Order compelling him to arrest a renegade President, Omar al Bashir, who was subject to a Warrant of Arrest issued by the International Criminal Court for genocide (300 000 of his citizens were killed by his regime, yet Zuma did not consider him to be subject to the law, as he does not consider himself to be subject to the law), they have supported him in his lying about the status of the Waterkloof Air Force Base as a national security point when he permitted his friends, the Guptas, to use the Base to land several hundred guests for the Gupta wedding (permitting him to shunt the blame to fall guys who were then given plush sinecures as Ambassadors as a reward for taking the fall), and they have failed to reprimand or even criticize him for the multiple failings of his dozens of Ministers in their failings, such as Bathabile Dlamini, who disregarded an Order of the Constitutional Court and so precipitated a near crisis in the payment of social grants, the Minister of Communications in her reappointment of a man ordered by the Public Protector and the Court to be dismissed for lying about his qualifications, for his continued support of the Chairperson of SAA, who has brought a profitable business to its knees, at a cost of over R20 billion to the public, by an amazing lack of business capability and implementation of lunatic decisions aimed to enrich the ANC cadres, by his lack of action in correcting Eskom’s failings, which contributed to a decline in South Africa’s GDP b at least 2% p.a. by failing to run a previously world class utility in a responsible manner (even disregarding the ‘finder’s fees and share participations by the ANC in the contracts handed out by that body).

Now the ANC NEC has taken the ultimate step. It has encouraged Zuma to appeal an Order of Court compelling him to disclose the reasons for firing a Minister of Finance, in the aftermath of a blatant lie by Zuma to the people, claiming that he fired Gordhan on the basis of a security report on his conduct, which has now been shown for the childish excuse that it is. This Court Order is an affirmation of Zuma’s duty to account to Parliament for his actions as President, enshrined in the Constitution. It is also, in effect, a mandate to Parliament to hold the President to account for his actions. Parliament is the body in which the authority and obligation is vested to manage and control the actions of the Executive. By calling on the President to appeal an Order of Court compelling him to perform his function in the appointment and discharging of a senior Minister, the ANC NEC is effectively instructing the President, who is ultimately the President of the people, not only of the ANC, to ignore the Constitution, which is the ultimate law.

This does not come as a surprise. The ANC has demonstrated for many years that it considers itself to be the primary arbiter in the country of what is just and what is not, of what the Government does for and to the country, and, frequently, against the country, disregarding the prime intention of the Constitution, to ensure the best benefit for the citizens. The ANC and its associated ‘revolutionary movements’ saw nothing wrong with killing their own people to ensure that they toed the ANC line during the days before the peaceful handover of power to the majority and subsequent to that time. The political killings always reach a peak before the ‘election’ of candidates to feed at the trough of ANC-induced corruption. The ANC has tolerated a massacre of the farmers who, it assumes, represent a nest of opposition to their policies. The ANC has managed the Police Services, the Hawks, the National Prosecuting Authority, the State Owned Entities, the educational system, the Energy Authority and almost every aspect of the country’s institutions to a new low of performance and capability. It has succeeded in that aim also in replacing the Public Protector with a toothless stooge, after the high point in that body’s performance under the previous incumbent, and it is now working on the Courts and the justice system, the only remaining element of honesty and justice in the infrastructure of the country.

One can only hope that the impending implosion of this corrupt and inept Party will happen before it has the chance to bring about the final destruction of the Rainbow Nation that Nelson and so many of his fellows suffered to bring into existence.

SA and the AU

The announcement that South Africa will fund the operations of the African Union to the tune of R700 million per annum comes at an interesting time. 

The AU leaders have shown great annoyance at the fact that the leader of Sudan, the subject of an international Warrant of Arrest issued by the International Criminal Court on a charge of genocide, should be arrested by South Africa, a signatory to an international agreement binding it to give effect to that warrant.  They have proclaimed that the ICC is intent on bringing African leaders to trial, ignoring all other nations.  They appear to ignore the fact that Angela Merkel and David Cameron are not known to have committed genocide, or to have killed 300 000 of their own people, or to have spent R246 000 000 of public money on their own properties in contravention of their obligations under the Constitution.  They seem to be oblivious to the lack of a civil war in Europe or the United States, in which tens of thousands of citizens are displaced, forcing them to flee to other countries.  They do not seem to understand that criminal charges are brought only in regard to large-scale criminal conduct.

At the same time, Zimbabwe has announced that it is redeeming Zimbabwe dollars at the rate of 175 000 million Zimbabwe dollars for US$5.  The AU is acting at the direction of its President, Robert Mugabe, a dictator who was responsible for the killing of about 45 000 Zimbabwe citizens, and the man who managed to bring the economically powerful nation of Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia, named after the man who set the basis for the economic growth of that country, but who has now become an object of hatred and mirth by Mugabe and his sidekicks, Zuma and Malema), to its knees.  A noteworthy achievement of the man who is now the President of the African Union, is the achievement of an inflation rate of five hundred billion per cent!  Is it possible that the people who claim to be the leaders of Africa can look up to this man?  Can they be so blind, so brainwashed, that they cannot see that what he did to his own country will inevitably be the result of following his insane propaganda?  The answer, apparently, is that they do not understand the linkage between the causes and the results that are there for all to see, that they are intent on following the Mugabe route to destruction.

There might appear to be some foundation for the desire of the AU to renege on the obligations of the treaty under which the African, and other, nations agree to hand over those suspected of criminal behavior to an unbiased and just Court for trial for their crimes!

Africa has long been known as a homeland of criminal leaders of nations.  It is almost not possible to list the names of five leaders of African nations without including at least one who is guilty of serious crimes against humanity or against the Constitution of their own countries – Mugabe, Gaddafi, Amin, Bhokassa, Zuma, Mobutu, the list is endless.  The announcement by the AU that the places occupied by the leaders of its constituent nations are subject to diplomatic immunity, effectively removing any meeting of the AU on South African soil from the jurisdiction of the South African Courts and the operation of South African law, is surely unconstitutional, and sets an extremely dangerous precedent.  It will, if applied as seems to be likely also to the South African President, put him above the law, as he already seems to view himself.  It will place all of those parasites out of the reach of international laws that were put in place to protect the citizens of their respective countries, and of their neighbor countries from the consequences of the unbridled power that they arrange for themselves.  It has long been apparent that any leader of a movement who comes to power as a result of violence, whether by military coup or terrorist action, is not capable of abiding by the laws of a civilized nation.  Such people have accepted that might is right, and they have difficulty in transforming their beliefs and understanding of how the world works in a civilized society, in which even the leaders, and most importantly the leaders, are subject to a set of laws which should control their excesses.  It can be no surprise that, even now after more than twenty years of ‘democracy’ in South Africa, members of the ANC, of Cosatu and its affiliated Trade Unions, and of several other ‘struggle-derived’ Parties settle their disagreements by murder and violence, that Jacob Zuma can feel free to rig a series of investigative bodies to come to the conclusion that he does not have to ‘pay back the money’ spent by the taxpayer on his home at Nkandla, that Thabo Mbeki can sit in a Commission of Enquiry into the Arms Deal, in which he and the Speaker of the House of Parliament colluded to prevent any discussion or investigation by the body set up to prevent an abuse of power by the Executive, and deny that any wrongdoing took place, when the Police hold over five million pages of evidence, and the German Police investigation was stopped by a steadfast refusal by Mbeki’s Government to cooperate..  A declaration by the African Union Heads of State that any of their number is immune to prosecution will, after all, only be a recognition of the de facto state of affairs, and make it unnecessary for the individuals concerned to go through the wearisome process of denial of charges and the rigging of investigations into their conduct.

And all the time, the South African economy, teetering on the edge of being downgraded to junk status, in which it will join the States headed by the enlightened Members of the august body of Leaders of African States attending a meeting of the African Union, people like Mugabe, will agree to fund to the tune of seven hundred million Rands per year that body of parasites, the meeting place of people like Mugabe, Gaddafi and Zuma, while eleven million children go to school each day without a decent meal, while thirteen million of its citizens live below the breadline, while ESKOM demands another fifty-six billion Rands of funding to correct the bungles it has made under ANC direction, and while the ANC continues to bleed the country dry.

As should be the case with ESKOM and with SAA, the ANC and the AU should be required to show that it is capable of using the funds paid to them by the taxpayer correctly, efficiently and honestly, before they become entitled to demand more.  They should show clearly and publicly that they use the money for the benefit of the citizens, in a manner that is approved by the taxpayers, before they ask for more.  They should realize that the taxpayer is not a public well with an inexhaustible supply, to be plundered and wasted to soothe the egos of the criminals and the incompetents who, unfortunately, seem to make up the bulk of the members of the spending elite.  If they do not do that, those taxpayers will be forced to follow the example of the Trades Unions and go on strike.  They must understand that the real power of a nation is I the hands of the people.

Proteas - some Lessons for the ANC

There are some lessons to be learned by the ANC and the ANC Government from the Proteas, the South African cricket team.

·         The Proteas are a team.  They have a Captain who does not impose his ego or his demands, but works together with the entire team to achieve their objectives.

·         They have a plan, carefully worked out in the light of the objectively considered facts.  Their plan is not based on ideology or other irrelevant factors, but on the Facts and on the objectives.  The ANC, in contrast, has a plethora of plans, based on inherited and untested, or, even worse, tested and failed, ideologies.  The plans are worked out, promoted, and then packed away, to be called on before the next elections.  In that way it is seldom possible for an opponent to claim that the plans have been a failure.  There are, of course, exceptions to this rule.  The alteration of the education system has been shown conclusively to be an abject failure, but successive revisions have been described as ‘improvements’, although repeated experience has revealed no benefit, with South African education amongst the worst in the world and the most expensive.  The Black Empowerment is another example of a plan that has failed, and continues to fail even after numerous iterations of ‘improvement’.  It is clear to any intelligent observer that the BEE policies have created a massive brain drain, not only amongst Whites, who are the target of this Apartheid system, but amongst all intelligent people, who can see the probable results of this suppression of enterprise, intelligence and capability.  The result has been the advancement of people with lower skills and abilities, some of them with lower morals, at higher cost to the employer in order to attract even the marginally capable talent, and at a huge cost to the competitive capability of the economy and the ability to develop entrepreneurial capability.  This is not an issue of race.  It is a well-accepted fact that the skills of senior management are developed and honed over a progression of talented individuals through the ranks over a period of decades.

·         The Proteas accept responsibility for their actions and their failures.  They cannot blame their failures on the ‘previous team’ for their actions twenty years ago, and the thought of that is totally foreign to the Captain of the team.  They know that they have a current situation, and they act to achieve their objectives in that situation.  Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the ANC, who have taken to blaming the acts of the Dutch settlers in 1652 for their failures today.  It is interesting that they have not yet blamed the actions of Shaka Zulu, a bloodthirsty tyrant who slaughtered thousands of ‘enemies’, friends and family on his way to becoming the hero of the Zulu nation.

·         The Proteas have clear objectives.  They do not delay the implementation of their plans while the Captain decides on how to maximise the payoff of their actions, and they do not spend time coming to agreement on who is to participate from that payoff.

·         The Proteas are a team.  Each accepts responsibility for the performance of themselves and of the whole team, and they own up to their failures.  The ANC consists of a group of self-seeking individuals, who are together mainly for what they can take from the fact that they are part of a Party in power.  They give no thought to the cost of their misconduct or dissimulation to the people they nominally serve, but, instead, put in a huge amount of effort to hide those actions from the electorate.  Examples are the Chair of the SABC, who hid her lack of degrees, and who reinstated the CEO when he was found to have lied about his qualification (ironically), the Chair of the Independent Electoral Commission, who handed a large profit to her boyfriend, the Commissioner of Police, who chose the route of corruption to enrich himself and bring the country into disrepute and disgrace, the State President, who hangs onto power in the face of a finding by an internationally respected Public Protector that he, in effect, took money from the State to which he was not entitled, a Revenue Service which conducts its business in a fraudulent and corrupt way, and many other.

·         Most significantly, the Proteas are a group of people who command and deserve respect, a claim that the ANC has forfeited many years ago.

South Africans are proud to have the Proteas as their representatives.  Few of them have the same pride in their Government