Former state security minister Ayanda Dlodlo says she is unfairly being blamed for the riots in July 2021, which ripped through parts of Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal and further tainted SA’s image as a safe country for investor capital.
“I do feel like I was scapegoated, but to me that was really water under the bridge,” she told Business Day in an interview.
“The real truth might not be acknowledged today, but tomorrow it will be.”
Her comments in the wide-ranging interview come as she starts a new job at the World Bank in Washington, where she will be one of three board members representing the interests of 25 African states.
Dlodlo resigned as public service & administration minister last week. She was assigned to the role in August 2021, weeks after mobs ran amok in the streets of KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, looting shopping malls and setting ablaze commercial properties. A report into the response of SA law enforcement agencies, including her then department of state security, drew a picture of incompetence.
“I do not know what would have informed keeping others and letting others go,” she said, referring to the cabinet reshuffle that took place shortly after the July violence.
“It is not as though my performance was better or worse. I do not know if one’s factional or political standing in one province made a difference.”
Dlodlo has been fending off accusations that she withheld intelligence reports that could have helped the police tackle the violence. President Cyril Ramaphosa and police minister Bheki Cele have disputed that she had passed on intelligence. “Of course, I did. Intelligence was provided. Maybe people did not like that intelligence,” she said.
In last year’s cabinet shake-up the state Security Agency was folded into Ramaphosa’s office and Dlodlo said it is possible to reform the body.
“But when you want to do that you need to get rid of certain people. People should be asked to reapply for their jobs, which would be a good first step.”
Her departure has left some ministers on tenterhooks, according to several executive members who spoke to Business Day this week on condition of anonymity. They said Ramaphosa is likely to use the need to fill Dlodlo’s position for a wider reshuffle in response to the reports on state capture and the political unrest.
Dlodlo, who is already in Washington, described her decision to leave the government as the “most difficult decision”, but a necessary one to get “a different vantage point” to view the country’s leadership challenges.
“You come to a time where you say to yourself, ‘I have given what I could. I should go and learn more, be better equipped to come back and serve in whatever capacity’,” she said.
While not referring to Ramaphosa directly, Dlodlo said that as a former intelligence unit leader of uMkhonto we Sizwe, the ANC’s military wing during apartheid, she thought the
party’s then president, Oliver Tambo, set a high standard others have not lived up to.
“I worked within [the ANC] and was informed by a vision. Ours was about the liberation of South Africans. But within that was an astute leader, who gave us clear direction and instructions about what we had to achieve and we were held accountable, even in our little corners. There was no time for games, no time for playing people against each other. He expected the utmost and gave us full support,” Dlodlo said.
She added that progress was made towards economic equality in SA under former president Thabo Mbeki, but since then factionalism and state capture have become the order of the day. After the ANC conference in Polokwane in 2007, she saw first hand what factional politics was about, she said. Soon thereafter she took a principled decision to stay far away from any faction.
“We are in a rut. There is no conscious preparation to be an ANC of the future,” Dlodlo said.
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