African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) president Fikile Mbalula was stung into action this week after the Mail & Guardian raised concerns that politics and big business make uneasy bedfellows.
What seemed to get under Mbalula’s skin was the M&G story entitled ”Young Lions at it again”, published on January 28, about the ANCYL being embroiled in another tainted deal.
The story detailed how two companies with strong links to the ANCYL and the ANC in the Western Cape have emerged as beneficiaries of a disputed deal involving prime beachfront land.
The City of Cape Town sold the properties at Big Bay, Bloubergstrand, at substantially discounted prices to a hand-picked group of 17 empowerment companies, at least two of them either directly owned by the youth league or by major donors to the provincial ANC, the report said. The city has since rescinded the deal.
Among the companies that stood to make huge profits by reselling the properties were Lembede Properties, Itsuseng Strategic Investment and Freidshelf 475.
Lembede, which is headed by ANCYL national executive member Songezo Mjongile, is majority-owned by Lembede Investment Holdings, the youth league’s investment arm. Itsuseng is partly owned by prominent youth league members Andile Nkuhlu and Lunga Ncwana. Freidshelf is headed by businessman Sharif Pandor, the husband of Minister of Education Naledi Pandor.
The report also noted that the M&G last year revealed how the youth league, using Lembede, had penetrated the world of business. Lembede controls or has major shareholdings in a range of ventures, spanning mining, financial services, forestry, property and telecommunications.
In a number of cases, these ventures have depended on state opportunities — tenders, privatisations, and operating licences — which have, in some instances, created conflicts of interest for state officials.
Mbalula said that, according to the M&G, ”comrades are … not entitled to participate in the country’s economy”.
”A notion is fast developing in our society, and is being peddled by the media establishment, that being black and successful is unacceptable — more so when you are a young person with the remotest links to the ANCYL,” said Mbalula.
”The youth represent the leaders of tomorrow, and we have an obligation to ensure that they are empowered and not deprived of opportunities to make them better leaders of tomorrow,” he said.
Business involvement
In March last year, an M&G editorial, titled ”One comrade, one company”, addressed the extent of the business involvement of the ANC Youth League.
The argument is, said the editorial, that ANC leaders are also citizens free to do business; that to query their shareholdings is to encroach on private space.
”This is nonsense, because they are also leaders and paid officials of the ruling party. Business leaders are not lining up to do business with them because of their acumen with a balance sheet, or knowledge of the oil industry, or ability to run a mine,” said the editorial.
”Their attraction lies in their tantalising proximity to power; in their perceived ability to swing a tender; in their knowledge of how the ANC works and thinks; in their ability to get a feisty policy softened.
”That a wily party like the ANC cannot see what is happening is equally gob-smacking; but quick profit often blinds people to principle. The ruling party needs to get right out of business; its officials must choose between business and politics — they cannot have them both.”
‘Hogwash’
In this week’s reply to these M&G reports, Mbalula said: ”South Africa has a Constitution that confers rights to all its citizens. An argument that by being associated with the ANCYL your rights should be diluted, as made by the M&G, is absolute hogwash.
”Why is it that the M&G raised the question ‘whether it is acceptable for the ruling party’s youth wing to have business interests in companies that benefit from government opportunities’? Such a question presupposes that civil servants and other bodies that decide on awarding of tenders are under strict orders to award contracts to ANC-aligned tenderers.”
In his letter, Mbalula said it is neither illegal nor immoral for the ANCYL to create investment units to ensure its sustainability.
”It is a fact that the Congress of South African Trade Unions and many others run successful investment wings based on exactly the same principle that Lembede is established. Why is it then that they are never placed under the kind of scrutiny the M&G has placed the ANCYL under?”
He also hit out at the M&G for ”parading the names of Songezo Mjongile, Andile Nkuhlu and Lunga Ncwana as faces of the ANCYL”.
”Indeed, Lembede may be an investment arm of the ANCYL, but to suggest that any and every business deal that involves a member of the ANCYL is necessarily a youth league deal and therefore cannot be above board is ludicrous,” he said.
Mbalula said the M&G‘s reporting is ”more of a desperate attempt to find fault where none exists and a despicable ploy to rubbish the ANCYL in the public arena by portraying it as a conglomeration of self-enriching individuals devoid of morals”.
He concluded: ”The hogwash the media continually feeds our nation must never be allowed to flourish and young people must close rank in defence of our democracy.”