Let's go on a war footing against the politically connected mafias

Annika Larsen’s interview with André de Ruyter has rocked South Africa. It is difficult to think of when last an interview had such a powerful effect on the national consciousness. 

It is devastating to hear that in a time of such severe national crisis politically connected mafias are looting up to R1bn from Eskom a month. This is, as De Ruyter says, treason. 

It is also devastating to hear that neither the police nor related agencies have made any effort to investigate the attempt on De Ruyter’s life.

And if De Ruyter is correct that a senior ANC leader is part of the mafia looting Eskom then we have to accept that Zuma and the Guptas were particular actors in a generalised crisis of state capture that has continued since their departure.

The electricity question is deeply polarised between those who see private ownership as the way forward and those who remain committed to public ownership, and between those who think we can quickly move away from coal and those who think it would probably take decades.

It is also polarised between those who represent the interest of labour in the coal/electricity complex and those for whom workers are dispensable. 

In this polarised situation there has been much mudslinging, a lot of it unfair.

For instance, people arguing that we will need coal for the immediate future or that workers cannot be sacrificed during the transition have been unfairly misrepresented as being in support of the political mafias destroying the country.

Inevitably opinions on all the main actors — De Ruyter, Pravin Gordhan and Gwede Mantashe — have been caught up in this polarisation. 

And then there is always the matter of race. Many South Africans winced when they heard Larsen mispronounce Gordhan’s name, and many would also have winced hearing De Rutyer do the same with Mantashe’s.

White people need to do better and it’s still distressing for black people when white arrogance careens on in supreme self-confidence. 

When  Larsen collapsed into conspiracy theory — the sort running amok in the US — by wondering if Russia and China were behind our electricity problems, we were back with the strident identification of many white South Africans with the West and its dangerous new Cold War against Russia and China, which has already generated a tragic proxy war in Ukraine.

And there is always politics too. South Africa does not have a single Left party in parliament, and the ANC is a mixture of neoliberals and corrupt and authoritarian nationalists, and yet people in the ANC still go around using the language of the Left. 

For many of us the offence is that the party has no right to this language given that,  like the EFF, it is now a pseudo-Left party. For De Ruyter the offence is that he thinks the ANC might harbour some Left ideas. This has infuriated leftists.

All of this muddies the waters. But if we can put it aside for a moment and look at the allegations made in the interview we have to take stock of where we are as a country.

If Ramaphosa cannot even deal with the corrupt forces in the ANC that will cost the party the next election it seems unlikely he will be able to stop the drive by those forces in the ANC to join the EFF and the PA so the looting can continue

If a national asset is being looted on a huge scale, the police do not act, at least one senior ANC person is complicit and there is an attempt on the life of a CEO trying to shut down corruption, we are in serious trouble.

Eskom sounds like Fort Hare. The lack of interest by the police in dealing with the assassination attempt on De Ruyter sounds like the lack of interest in dealing with the assassinations of grassroots activists in Durban. 

The problems we face are systemic and our existing institutions — the ruling party, the police, the intelligence services, and so on — have limited capacity to resolve the crisis.

Ramaphosa does not have the will, ability or capacity to fix the problem at Eskom, or anywhere else.

Along with pulverising our economy and driving a flood of skilled emigration, the crisis at Eskom, which seems certain to worsen in the short-term, is going to cost the ANC the next election.

There is some irony here. The ANC is unwilling or unable to act against the politically connected mafias that are destroying Eskom and other parts of our economy because its own people profit. Yet at the same time they will cost the ANC its hold on power. 

Some analysts are predicting that the ANC won’t even win 40% of the vote. To rule, which it will aim to do at all costs, the ANC will have to make a choice. It will either have to align with the Right — the DA, ActionSA and/or the IFP  — or the kleptocratic pseudo-Left, the EFF and the Patriotic Alliance. 

If Ramaphosa cannot even deal with the corrupt forces in the ANC that will cost the party the next election it seems unlikely he will be able to stop the drive by those forces in the ANC to join the EFF and the PA so the looting can continue. A collation government between the ANC, the EFF and the PA would, naturally, be even worse than the status quo. 

With an election looming and the Left having no vehicle to mount a challenge, largely due to the failure of the SACP and Cosatu to break from the ANC, even those of us on the Left have to concede that the gravity of our situation is such that we need a broad front of patriotic people and forces from across the political spectrum that can step into the breech and offer a political alternative that is committed to end the looting and take on the vested interests that profit from it. We need to go on  something like a war footing.

But where could such a force come from? Songezo Zibi is widely recognised as a man of integrity and intelligence but his Rivonia Circle seems to have turned into a damp squib.

But what if he was in a room with people such as S’bu Zikode, Mark Heywood, Kumi Naidoo and others widely respected for their integrity, and they could draw in business, labour, academic and religious leaders — including only people of integrity — to try to build an electoral alternative for the next polls with the aim of moving quickly and decisively to break the control of the politically connected mafias that have infiltrated so much of our society — from Eskom to the construction business and universities? The key here would be insistence on integrity and courage.

Such a formation would have to be clear that it is an emergency response to an overwhelming crisis and that while we urgently need maximum unity against corruption, the necessity of real political contestation, especially between classes, cannot be permanently postponed. 

• Buccus is a political analyst