Publication: Business Day Issued: Date: 2006-07-31 Reporter: Vukani Mde Reporter: Karima Brown Reporter: Amy Musgrave Reporter: Edward West

Fight Corruption, Zuma Urges Alliance Partners

 

Publication 

Business Day
Date 2006-07-31

Reporter

 Vukani Mde, Karima Brown,
Amy Musgrave, Edward West

Web Link

www.businessday.co.za

 

African National Congress (ANC) deputy president Jacob Zuma has urged followers of the tripartite alliance to “root out corruption” within their ranks on the eve of his own corruption trial in the Pietermaritzburg High Court today.

Zuma, who addressed a 10000-strong crowd at the South African Communist Party’s (SACP’s) 85th anniversary celebrations, was keen to use the occasion to re-establish himself as a front-runner in the ruling party’s succession race.

He told the crowd that the ANC-led alliance had to build a culture that ensured that public officials did not enrich themselves at the expense of the poor.

His new anti-graft stance comes as speculation mounts that powerful businessman Cyril Ramaphosa may be in the running to succeed President Thabo Mbeki as ANC leader next December.

Zuma warned against any jockeying for position in the ANC. “Fighting for positions is wrong and should not be influenced by sources within the media. Leaders should not allow themselves to be dictated to by the media on what they should do.”

Zuma is seeking R63m in damages from various media houses in defamation lawsuits arising from his rape trial earlier this year.

Zuma and Thint SA, the local subsidiary of French armaments company Thales, today face charges of corruption relating to the multibillion-rand arms deal concluded between SA and various international arms companies in the late 1990s.

Zuma’s legal team will go for broke and ask judge Qedusizi Msimang to have his two corruption charges struck from the court roll, citing the state’s repeated requests for postponement.

Msimang will today consider the National Prosecuting Authority’s (NPA’s) latest bid for an adjournment and Zuma’s counter affidavit asking for a dismissal of the charges.

However, Zuma’s aides and supporters are concerned that should the case be dismissed this will leave Zuma with the pall of corruption still hanging over him in the run-up to the ANC’s elective national conference next year.

Should this be the case, a call for the arms deal to be reinvestigated was on the cards, one senior aide said. This would be calculated to clear Zuma “politically”.

Key Zuma supporters yesterday called for a reopening of the corruption-riddled *1 arms deal.

Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said a new investigation was needed to determine “who really benefited” from the deal. “Some people have been put under the spotlight while the real culprits have been hidden.”

Young Communist League (YCL) national secretary Buti Manamela said it made no sense for Zuma to be prosecuted for corruption linked to the arms deal while government insisted that the multibillion-rand deal was above board *1.

Zuma yesterday paid tribute to the role played by communists in SA’s liberation. He said the SACP had played a critical role in the past for bringing some of the most “incisive minds” to the liberation movements. He said this kind of discourse was necessary so that a “culture of democratic participation can be rebuilt”.

Zuma used the opportunity to further cement the close relations between himself and the left of the tripartite alliance. “One of our challenges relates to the sustainability of the alliance. I know very well that one decision will be taken at your conferences. That decision will be to strengthen the alliance,” he said.

Both Cosatu and the SACP will soon hold their national congresses, where the future of the tripartite alliance will be under discussion.

Zuma’s conciliatory attitude is in stark contrast to Mbeki, who last week blasted the SACP for its “grave accusations” that the country faced a “general crisis” caused by the ruling party’s embrace of capitalism.

With acknowledgements to Vukani Mde, Karima Brown, Amy Musgrave, Edward West and Business Day.


*1       A fact.


*2      This is a combination of non-sequitur and post hoc fallacies. It is a fact that the arms deal was riddled with corruption (see *1 above), but the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) found this not to be so. But the reason the JIT found it not to be so was the Leader of Government Business in Parliament was bribed in order to provide his protection from investigation for one of the corrupt main equipment suppliers. One of the successes that this act of bribery brought about was that the Special Investigation Unit (SIU) was not included in the JIT. This is a court-proven fact. This left just three government stooges to produce one of the most pathetic wastes of taxpayers' money in the history of paying tax south of the Limpopo, i.e. the Joint Investigation Report.