Rotten in Mzantsi
To: Police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi
From: South African citizenry
CC: President Thabo Mbeki c/o Mukoni Ratshitanga
Subject: Trust me!
Dear Sir
In the past year, the press has been awash with news of your many Âquestionable friendships. These include:
- Glenn Agliotti, an alleged Mafia kingpin involved in contraband smuggling who is accused of murdering mining magnate Brett Kebble;
- Imran Ismail, the grey goods trader whom noseweek alleged paid you bribes;
- Steven Ferrer, the jeweller and fugitive from justice who made the payments on behalf of Ismail’s syndicate.
- Paul Stemmet, thuggish security operative and Agliotti associate, who freelanced for police on Selebi’s orders and has been implicated in a range of crimes.
This week, the Mail & Guardian has published details of yet another unsavoury friendship — with Gavin Varejes, a controversial businessman who, among other things, was implicated in the Tigon scandal, is an associate of brothel-owner Andrew Phillips, and benefits from a high-tech contract with the police.
Varejes has extended favours to you — a holiday or holidays at his luxury resort and a Mauritian resort. Though he presented evidence that you refunded him, these favours were extended to you at the height of the Tigon scandal. Gary Porritt and Sue Bennett, alleged masterminds of the Tigon scam, say that their counter-accusations against Varejes (for tax diddling among other misdeeds) were given the soft treatment because Varejes is your friend.
A year ago, you defiantly told the nation that Agliotti is your friend “finish and klaar”. You have not engaged with Ferrer’s allegations in noseweek that he made regular payments to you on behalf of Ismail, who now seems to have fled the country; neither have you commented on your friendship with Ismail. Your friendship with Varejes has been confirmed.
May we ask:
- whether you used your influence to stall the investigation of Varejes’s role in the Tigon affair?
- whether it is appropriate for our police commissioner to accept holiday arrangements from a man against whom serious allegations have been made?
- whether it is not time, as our top law enforcement official, for you to take us into your confidence on these incidents, which together have the potential to undermine the stability of South Africa and its fight against crime, instead of resorting to ritual denials and bluster?
- whether it is not time for you to step down pending a full investigation of all the allegations against you, given the Scorpions’ confirmation in court action against the M&G last year that they are investigating you?
Also published in the M&G this week are claims that, in the ongoing Scorpions investigation dubbed Operation Bad Guys, President Thabo Mbeki may have intervened to downgrade a raid against you.
We have been kept in the dark about all these developments, which do nothing to dispel the reek of rottenness in Mzantsi.
For heaven’s sake, calm down!
Hysteria and paranoia — two symptoms of a growing political pathology in South Africa that distort the truth, complicate the quest for solutions to problems and inflame the climate of fear, suspicion and acrimony as the ruling party approaches its watershed national conference. Hysteria comes mainly in the form of overheated rhetoric and extravagant ideological mudslinging. And as we report this week, the country is flooded with conspiracy theories that have no proven basis.
President Thabo Mbeki lashes union leaders as “thugs” and “counter-revolutionaries”; Zwelinzima Vavi hits back by likening Mbeki’s upbeat economic assessments to Nazi propaganda. There are (apparently false) claims of a murder plot against Jacob Zuma; Young Communist League leader Buti Manamela claims that someone who waved a gun at him at a football game was a political assassin; the Angolan and Libyan leaders are accused in the comically named Special Browse Mole Consolidated Report, apparently written by a hallucinating spook, of fomenting an anti-Mbeki coup; and — woe is us — Zuma spin doctor Ranjeni Munusamy squawks that a poisonous spider has been deliberately let loose in her home.
Many of these unsubstantiated and cavalier claims form part of the campaign of victimology by the Zuma camp, which is out to project itself as the victim of a gigantic Mbeki-spearheaded plot. But Mbeki set the tone in the late 1990s by accusing the left of “counter-revolution” and perceived leadership rivals of coup plotting. Last year he again told the ANC’s national executive committee that a faction using Zuma’s name wanted to topple him as South Africa’s president.
Each increasingly over-the-top round in the war of words deepens the South African public’s disillusionment with politicians and the political process. The spate of plot allegations projects a misleading impression, both locally and abroad, that the country is on the brink. And the left is correct to point out that the planting of false stories spawned a climate for Chris Hani’s murder.
For heaven’s, calm down! Enough hysteria and paranoia!