Since 2018 when President Ramaphosa replaced a traitor wedded to eight wives, no fewer than 700 political assassinations have been recorded. Mostly, they involved competition within the ruling party, the African National Congress. The country has a murder rate on a par with gang-dominated Ecuador, but your chance of being gunned down is many times greater if you are the party’s candidate in a municipal election.
At bottom, the Ramaphosa ‘regime’ — a grimy relic from the golden Mandela era — amounts to allocating patronage. In a country where fully half the black population has no job and murder goes unheeded, killing for one is a lucrative venture — even before factoring in the power to award tenders to cronies that comes with a government job.
Gangster State, the title of a book on these ugly shenanigans, is not hyperbole.
“People join the ANC not because they want to help people, but to pursue business opportunities,” admits a party official. The Pretoria High Court, summing up a rare judgment against a tender-rigger, could easily have had Ramaphosa’s cabinet in mind: “What is most disturbing is the total lack of dignity and shame by people in leadership positions who abuse public funds with naked greed for their own benefit without a moment’s consideration of the circumstances of fellow citizens who live in absolute squalor throughout the country with no basic services.”
Ramaphosa’s Special Envoy Mcebisi Jonas Is a Problem
Enter the special envoy, hand-picked by the President to repair rock-bottom relations between Pretoria and Washington. “Mr. Mcebisi Jonas,” he announced grandly, “is entrusted with the responsibility to advance South Africa’s diplomatic, trade, and bilateral priorities. He will lead negotiations, foster strategic partnerships, and engage with U.S. government special officials and private-sector leaders to promote our nation’s interests.”
“Entrusted” — given the man’s modest accomplishments, that’s a bold gambit. In a country where no fewer than 142 laws make white skin a detriment and black skin the real deal, Mr. Jonas is a product of the legal framework’s anti-white cacophony. The labor law dresses up tight quotas for non-blacks as “employment equity,” while the noble term, “transformation,” makes a crime of recruiting too many workers of the wrong color.
For going up the pecking order in Ramaphosa’s helter-skelter governance by clueless cadres, there are two hard and fast qualifications: black skin and loyalty. His special envoy to Washington is a cadre deluxe.
Mcebisi Jonas holds a BA in history and sociology (from a private university) and a higher diploma in education. Before his “loyal” political career, he was an “educator.” You can bet the résumé is not framed on the wall in his office when you are ushered through a grand door marked, “Chairman.” That is correct: Ramaphosa’s envoy is a cadre installed at the top of MTN, a multi-national telecom giant (assets: R435 billion ($24 billion). Not omitting an operating division in the global terror state of Iran, a staunch ally of and money lender to the Ramaphosa party of disrepute. How did that come to be?
Here are the dissolute details.
In 2003, Tehran invited a $30 billion tender for providing telecom services for 30 years.
Two bidders tendered, one was Turkcell (Turkish), the other was MTN (South African). Turkcell won the bid, provisionally.
Then, a twist — Iran handed the contract to MTN.
Turkcell contends that MTN bribed Iran’s deputy foreign minister with $2 million in cash.
It contends that MTN paid for a house for South Africa’s ambassador to Iran.
It contends that MTN used its political connections to secure weapons for Iran.
The case is being fought in a South African court.
MTN, meanwhile, was involved in internet shutdowns in Iran, assisting the Mullah regime to crush civilian rebellion, enabling atrocities against the people of Iran.
President Trump should keep the profile of South African presidents, past and present, for when Ramaphosa and his envoy pitch up in Washington to “lead negotiations, foster strategic partnerships and engage with U.S. government special officials and private-sector leaders.”
“There is a great deal of ruin in a nation,” said Adam Smith, the immortal founder of economics. It was as if he had forewarned us that Ramaphosa’s artifices would reduce South Africa to penury in the course of making loyal comrades quick billionaires. Deconstructing this patronage, the Institute of Race Relations described the centerpiece, cynically named, “Black Economic Empowerment.”
“BEE punishes businesses that don’t hire ‘enough’ black people.” But instead of helping those who are out of work, the policy has “lined the pockets of fat cats … Let’s call BEE for what it is — Blatant Elite Enrichment.”
Astoundingly, big business did not have to be punished. Every sector, from banking to retail to law to health services, with gratitude and glee, took up the ideology of discrimination through racial profiling. Appropriately, corporate HR departments are uniformly black. Qualifications for a job are mere icing on top of the racial or DEI profile. You’ll not meet an executive who diagnoses “no meritocracy” as the terminal sickness of an economy heading to hell in a basket.
During talks in the Oval Office, Ramaphosa is likely to assure Trump’s inner circle that South Africa is not a rogue state. He may boast about the constitution. Or that the country is governed by the rule of law. So it is — now and then.
The rule of law bit its proverbial tongue when Ramaphosa dislodged Zuma as head of state. For years, the former, as deputy president, observed Zuma auction off public assets, even functions of government, to Indian brothers, illegal immigrants. Keeping quiet, Ramaphosa was complicit in the capital crime of State Capture. And the rule of law sat on its bum, and the chief justice swore him in at the inauguration.
Even a former president has conceded that “people involved in treason are in the government.” As for Zuma, far from receiving a life sentence for treason, he was given a “get out of jail free” card and went on to head the majority party in the province of KwaZulu-Natal after instigating a violent sabotage of infrastructure and business in the province.
To Racism and Corruption, Add Antisemitism
The rule of law is spasmodic and, like everything, biased according to skin pigment … and against Jews. The Equality Court decided that the popular black chant, “Kill the Boer, kill the farmer,” was permitted speech. A panel openly declined a Jew nominated for the Supreme Court.
Rule of law? It would be a simpler matter to cultivate orchids on a dumpsite than to retain the rule of law in a country run by criminals for criminals.
U.S. Congressman Ronny Jackson tore into this excuse for a government in supporting the U.S.–South Africa Bilateral Relations Review Act. If passed, it would review the bilateral ties between the U.S. and South Africa. Jackson’s office explained that the bill, “Will help advance U.S. President Trump’s foreign policy agenda by giving him the tools necessary to impose sanctions on South African officials who support America’s adversaries.”
The bill also honed in on Ramaphosa’s derelict and criminal government. The ANC-led Government’s history of substantially mismanaging a range of state resources and often being “proven incapable of effectively delivering public services, threatening the South African people and the economy.”
By any definition, South Africa is a failed state with a “governing capacity unable to fulfill the administrative and organizational tasks required to control people and resources and can provide only minimal services.”
The special envoy is symptomatic of the rot. Anti-white to his bones, Jonas once called President Trump “a racist homophobe” and a “narcissistic right-winger.” One could logically add that, as an acolyte of antisemitic Ramaphosa, and as pro-Iran Chairman of MTN, Jonas is a Jew-hater and Hamas supporter. The company happens to be in the line of fire of complainants in a U.S. case. The company, it has been alleged, violated the U.S. Anti-Terrorism Act by providing material support to known terrorist organizations. Parties are seeking damages on behalf of American soldiers and civilians killed or wounded in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2017. This is on top of Jonas being enmeshed in the bribery and corruption case brought by Turkcell.
Israel-hating nations that have gone to the bad could be the subject of a book. But exactly how does that work? Walter Russell Mead, testifying to Congress about Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, illuminated the mystery. Referring to the Iranian Mullahs, he said: “Quite sane leaders when it comes to Israel lose their minds. Nations and political establishments warped by Israel-hatred tend to make one dumb decision after another.”
Genesis in the bible discloses why: “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse.”
Now we know. Ramaphosa and his cronies got in with the wrong crowd — the pro-terrorist crowd. The same curse that came upon self-destructive Philistine and Nazi Germany has caught up with Israel-prosecuting comrades in bed with the scum of the world.
Steve Apfel has written extensively about the fate of South African Jewry under the ANC government.
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