GARETH VAN ONSELEN: Back to the future with Ebrahim Rasool

Ebrahim Rasool is a party man. There is much evidence for this, but amongst it all, the following story best captures his commitment:

On August 24 2006, Tony Yengeni was due to report to Pollsmoor Prison, to begin serving his four-year sentence for fraud. After a small ANC delegation had visited his house in the morning, Yengeni arrived outside Pollsmoor prison at about 12pm in a black Range Rover sports car.

(During that morning’s visit, the minister in the presidency at the time, Essop Pahad, had told reporters: "It is a very sad day. Tony is an old friend and he suffered a great deal for the Constitution. I am here to wish him well as a friend and a member of the NEC of the ANC.")

Yengeni was greeted at the prison by about 500 supporters who carried him for half a kilometre on their shoulders, from his car to the prison gates. The crowd chanted and denounced Yengeni’s sentence as "a travesty of justice". They carried posters which said, among other things, "Yengeni is a leopard" in Xhosa.

He had been flanked by leading ANC members and public representatives, including Ngconde Balfour, then MP and minister of correctional services; James Ngculu, then ANC Western Cape chairman; Lindiwe Sisulu, MP and then minister of housing; Baleka Mbete, MP and speaker in the National Assembly; Mbulelo Goniwe, then-MP and the new ANC chief whip in the National Assembly, and, of course, Ebrahim Rasool, then-Western Cape premier

The ANC had announced the day before that several of its leaders would be accompanying Yengeni. The ANC’s deputy provincial secretary, Max Ozinsky, said: "He is a leader of the ANC … we stand by our leaders." Explaining his presence, on the day, Balfour said he was there "to make sure that due process was followed", as Yengeni’s was a high-profile case. James Ngculu told the crowd that Yengeni’s crime did not match his punishment because he "did not steal from government or take a penny from anyone".

Ngculu, speaking from the back a bakkie, was accompanied by Rasool, who told the crowd that while Yengeni might have committed fraud, it was nothing compared with what the DA had committed — hypocrisy — "a crime worse than fraud". (The DA had been highly critical of the ANC leadership’s decision to accompany Yengeni.)

Finally, Yengeni himself addressed the crowd: "I don’t think this is the right time or platform to go into details of my trial; suffice to say that what has happened to me is a great injustice. It is an unfortunate travesty of justice," he said.

After Yengeni had spoken, he was led through the prison gates by guards. Within 24 hours he was transferred to the more modern, less crowded and far more comfortable Malmesbury Prison. Four months later, his sentence was commuted and he was free.

Rasool knew the routine well enough. In 2000, he had been party to a similar hero’s send off for Allan Boesak, also outside Pollsmoor. Back then he told the crowd, "He is not a criminal, he is a hero of our struggle".

The ANC sticks by its own. Rasool knows that. And the worm turns. Recently announced as the ANC’s elections head in the Western Cape, has now reaped the rewards of this kind of loyalty.

The fact is, Rasool’s record is also rather tarnished. He escaped any real interrogation or consequences for the "brown envelope" affair in 2005 (it was alleged, in some detail, that Rasool had been paying journalists to promote him and discredit the opposition), primarily by scuttling off to the US as SA’s ambassador. The particulars of that scandal have yet to be fully revealed.

But now he is back. Back to take the ANC into the future. Or back to where it was in 2008 at least. But, generally, back.

It’s a curious state of affairs. Rasool was the last mainstay ANC premier in the Western Cape. Lynne Brown took over from him for a short stint of less than a year in 2008, before the ANC lost the province in 2009.

It would be a mistake to pin the ANC’s entire electoral record on Rasool alone but, as he was premier (and the ANC Western Cape leader), it would be a mistake not to associate any of it with him either. One way or the other, it was dire.

Rasool was premier from April 2004 to July 2008. In the 2004 election, the ANC got 45.2% and managed to cobble together a government with the New National Party, which had managed 10.8%. The DA got 27.1%. By 2009, however, the ANC was on 31.5% and the DA on 51.4%; with that, outright control. The DA has never looked back.

So, for the ANC to invest so much faith in Rasool is rather odd. During his time at the top, the ANC vote collapsed from 45% to 31%. That is a fairly staggering decline of 14 percentage points over five years —hardly what you would call evidence of great skill and expertise.

Not that facts count for anything in the ANC. Remember, this is the same party that once claimed that the Great Wall of China was built in ten months. At the media conference announcing his comeback, ANC elections head and a man with the game of Balderdash permanently integrated into his frontal lobe, Fikile Mbalula, described Rasool as the party’s "most successful premier" in the Western Cape.

The historical record doesn’t seem to count for much among the media either. The Daily Maverick described Rasool’s appointment as evidence the ANC was "getting serious about reclaiming Western Cape". TimesLive went with the headline, "Rasool to the rescue for ANC in Western Cape", and the Mail & Guardian with "ANC Western Cape brings in Rasool to bolster election campaign".

Not quite sure what all that optimism is based upon — definitely not Rasool’s electoral track record, which, oddly, none of those stories cited. You would have thought it important, given the particulars of his latest party mandate. But perhaps they know something otherwise.

Rasool and Mbalula both made much hay about appealing to coloured voters in the Western Cape. Demographically, they constitute almost 50% of the province and, the saying goes, whichever party the majority of coloured voters endorse in the Western Cape inevitably controls the province. To this end, the ANC statement read: "We want to see coloureds and Africans taking centre stage in economic transformation of this province. They must feel like a part of the province and not mere labourers."

Rasool himself has a rather, shall we say, love-them or hate-them, relationship with coloured voters. In 2001 the ANC took out the following advert in the Cape Argus:

It wasn’t very well received, for obvious reasons. Later, he would apologise. "In this province the buck stops with me", he said. "I really want to say that I apologise. I believe that everything I have said about the ANC’s long and noble fight against racism is undermined by the use of the word coconut."

Yeah, good point that.

The ANC is, as ever, divided on quite where coloured South Africans fit into the equity queue. Head of the presidency in the ANC, Smuts Ngonyama, was quoted as saying in 2006 that black South Africans had been oppressed more than coloured South Africans during apartheid and that, as far as the ANC was concerned, black South Africans therefore came before coloureds South Africans when it comes to redress.

And then there was Jimmy Manyi, who believed coloured South Africans were "over-represented" in the Western Cape. So, between "coconuts" and quotas, Rasool is going to have a difficult time balancing the ANC’s various racial prejudices.

He has, in his time, also flirted with some rather antiSemitic people. On March 21 2004, Rasool participated in a rally in which one speaker claimed that Jews had "murdered and killed most of the prophets of God", before favourably citing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Another referred to Israel as "the filthy Jewish nation" and admonished his audience: "Do not go into any agreements with Jews, they are a filthy people".

Rasool himself used the opportunity to describe the late Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin as "one of the greatest inspirations". He prayed that Palestinians "stand up to these enemies and never succumb, that they fight and they fight under a flag of Islam" and called on his audience to "face the enemies — they are all over the world".

He never got around to justifying his words, distancing himself from them or explaining his attendance and the endorsement implicit to it.

And one shouldn’t forget the manner in which Rasool tried to use his formal powers to destroy the opposition, when he established the Erasmus Commission in 2008, ostensibly to probe the allegation that the DA-led coalition in the City of Cape Town — and Cape Town Mayor and DA leader Helen Zille in particular — had improperly used public funds to spy on their political opponents, despite the city having initiated an independent investigation into the matter, which cleared the administration and the DA of any wrongdoing.

There are many juicy sections to choose from in the subsequent high court judgement, which found the commission unlawful and without merit. But here are some of the best:

"What, then, was the premier’s purpose? If due regard is paid to the above factors, namely, evidence the premier was aware of, which contradicted concerns of beliefs he professed to hold on major issues, his reliance upon two sources of information, which he must have appreciated was unlawful, as well as the political background against which the commission was established, as well as the absence of any credible purpose advanced by the premier for establishing the commission, I am driven to the conclusion that his purpose was the improper one of embarrassing political opponents and, more specifically, the DA"

This one also a humdinger:

"Having found that the premier did not possess an honest belief that good reasons existed for establishing the Second Erasmus Commission, and acted with the ulterior motive of embarrassing political opponents, these words assume even greater significance on the facts of this case. In this context I find the inference irresistible that one of the reasons why the premier appointed a judge to chair the commission, was in order to cloak his ulterior motive with the neutral colours of the judicial office."

Read the judgment for the full indictment of Rasool and his entirely political, selfish and unlawful abuse of power. Social media these days is all over Malusi Gigaba for the recent judgment against him and which found he lied. Rasool’s actions were far worse. And his contempt for judicial independence detestable.

Strangely, none of this found its way into any of the news stories announcing his triumphant return either.

All of this before one gets around to the state of the ANC in the Western Cape. It is akin to a hurricane of incompetence whirling round in a desert of factional self-interest. And Rasool is well-versed in that kind of chaos himself. For years, he and Mcebisi Skwatsha were at each other’s throats.

So, historically at least, he has not exactly been a calming influence. The mess that is the ANC in the Western Cape today, has its roots in the reign of Ebrahim Rasool.

Finally, there is his governance. Now, one could write a book on the catastrophe the DA inherited in the Western Cape government when it took over. No doubt over the course of the next year and in the run-up to the 2019 election, the party will spell out exactly just how disastrous things were back in 2009.

It suffices to say that it was, what Malcolm Tucker would call, an omnishambles, although probably with several expletives preceding that description.

But SA has a goldfish memory and, after his time in the wilderness, Rasool is back, seemingly cleansed of his sins and reborn. One has to take him seriously, because Marius Fransman he is not. But then he is hardly the kind of person, given the clean-sweep approach Cyril Ramaphosa has adopted, you would want back at the top of the ANC.

Beggars can’t be choosers. There really are so few people of genuine calibre left in the ANC, the party has been forced to dig deep into the past and drag out from the wilderness the one man who played no small part in losing the Western Cape, to help them win it back.

The DA has done a fair bit to help unsettle its core constituency in the province — mostly as a result of the mess that is the City of Cape Town, but most voters are unlikely to distinguish the city from the province in any meaningful way, which is tough on the DA provincial administration.

So, as Rasool and Mbalula were quick to point out, the ANC has some momentum. Really all that means is it is no longer stationary — or moving backwards. To get to the necessary speed, it is going to need rocket fuel. And Rasool’s record suggests he runs on molasses.

When Tony Yengeni was freed from the prison, the ANC put him to work in the party’s political school. It is very good at choosing exactly the wrong people for the job. It now has put someone responsible for a 14-percentage point decline in the Western Cape in charge of turning around its fortunes — kind of like electing Jacob Zuma to run an ethical leadership course. Perhaps that is still coming.

Maybe Rasool, freed from actual governance, will make a better run of it when it comes to hard electioneering. But if he makes the kind of decisions he did as premier and ANC leader, or indulges the kind of racial fear mongering he did when in power, the ANC’s problems in the Western Cape are going to remain far from solved, for a long, long time to come.

• Van Onselen is the head of politics and governance at the South African Institute of Race Relations