IMRAAN BUCCUS: EFF and MK would sink democracy given half a chance

You need a strong stomach to read the affidavit of former VBS Mutual Bank chair Tshifhiwa Matodzi, who has just been sentenced by the Pretoria high court to an effective 15 years in prison after pleading guilty to 33 counts of corruption, theft, fraud, money-laundering and racketeering. He paints a picture of what can only be described as a frenzy of looting from a bank that largely served the rural poor, many of them elderly.

When Bertolt Brecht famously asked, “What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank?” he was not thinking of a group of political entrepreneurs stealing from the old and the poor for their personal gratification. That, by any measure, including the morality of the left, is sickeningly unethical.

Of course, we were already aware of the link between this looting and factions of the ANC, and how EFF leaders spent vast amounts of money looted from VBS on luxury goods for themselves. We know from meticulous investigations by the media details such as that Julius Malema spent R415,087 on an LM “tailored suit”, blew R569,270 at the Durban July and shelled out R35,100 at Louis Vuitton.

Taking money from the rural poor, many of them elderly, and wasting it on this sort of luxury consumption is simply sickening. To do so while claiming to champion the poor, as the EFF does, is almost psychopathic in its hypocrisy and cynicism. When Josef Stalin robbed the Tiflis bank in 1907 the money was used to fund a revolution. The EFF leaders used their ill-gotten gains to go shopping.

While Matodzi makes many new allegations, one is particularly important in terms of understanding the crisis of our politics. He clearly alleges that the EFF took enormous bribes from VBS in exchange for shifting its position on the bank. The EFF had been highly critical of VBS for giving a home loan to Jacob Zuma for his sprawling Nkandla estate, but agreed to do an about-turn in exchange for a bribe.

Political thuggery

If this is true — and, let’s face it, it does have the ring of truth — it means the EFF uses its claim to represent the poor, and its seemingly bottomless capacity for insult and disruption, for the personal benefit of its leaders rather than any kind of principle, no matter how perverted that principle may be. What we are dealing with is sheer, grossly personal opportunism cynically dressed up as radical politics.

We must take seriously the reality that this opportunism is backed up with unlawful behaviour, including outright political thuggery, and that this demands that the law be enforced without fear or favour. 

Unlike the US after the recent Supreme Court ruling that gave Donald Trump immunity from prosecution for actions undertaken in his official capacity, we are a constitutional democracy, and politicians are subject to the rule of law. Any evasion of this must be vigorously opposed by all actors, across ideological divides, who are committed to democratic principles.

The rot in our politics that manifested so crudely in the VBS matter is not just about a political class cynically looting with no regard to the law, with an assumption of impunity. It is also about how they spin their looting. 

The full gamut of genuinely democratic political organisations needs to work together to push for legal accountability for all wrongdoing by all actors — including by corporates. The rot in our politics that manifested so crudely in the VBS matter is not just about a political class cynically looting with no regard to the law, with an assumption of impunity. It is also about how they spin their looting. 

The EFF, like Jacob Zuma’s MK party, constantly misrepresent predatory modes of politics as somehow being “pro-poor”. As I write this, the abuse of the claim to being “pro-poor” is playing out with MK in its response to the John Hlophe fiasco. We are told that the constitution is a barrier to realising justice for the poor and that Hlophe has been opposed by reactionary forces because he is pro-poor.

This is all wildly untrue. The undeniable facts of the matter are that the constitution is far to the left of Hlophe, if we define left as being pro-poor. In 2008 Hlophe ordered the eviction of 20,000 people from the sprawling Joe Slovo informal settlement in Cape Town. That ruling, which by any standard was deeply anti-poor as well as wrong in law, was later overturned by the Constitutional Court.

Craven support

The lack of regard for basic facts is often apparent in the EFF but is even worse in MK. With Hlophe, Andile Mngxitama is a significant figure in the party’s “brains trust”. His craven support for the Guptas and willingness to take direction from Bell Pottinger are well known and was often mentioned in media coverage of that sorry era in SA’s history. 

The point is that just as it is incumbent on all of us to insist that no-one is above the rule of law, it is also incumbent on all of us to insist that plainly untrue claims are not allowed to go past unchallenged. If we do not do this, the rot in our politics can only worsen, possibly to the point where it overtakes us completely — as now seems increasingly likely in the US in November.

The media has an important role in this, and it has been encouraging to see that most media houses have been making it clear that MK has provided zero evidence for its claim that 9-million votes were “stolen” from it in the recent election. This is ethical and responsible reporting, and a similar standard of rigour should be applied more widely.

It would be responsible when reporting on MK claims that Hlophe was punished for being pro-poor that his judgments show that he was in fact anti-poor. It would similarly be responsible to preface a remark by Mngxitama on the “stolen election” by describing him as a conspiracy theorist, which he indubitably is.

It is abundantly clear that both the EFF and MK would, acting together or separately, sink our democracy if they were ever to get their hands on the levers of power. We would find ourselves living under a highly authoritarian and kleptocratic state in which the political elite lived in gilded luxury while everyone else grew rapidly poorer.

Avoiding this dystopian future requires moral, legal and political clarity and strength in the present. That includes ensuring that no-one is above the law and that lies and spin are not misrepresented as legitimate and credible statements. We all have a responsibility to insist on this.

• Dr Buccus is a political analyst.