Pics of Jacob Zuma’s house ‘taboo’

Ministers in the security cluster say South Africans should desist from publishing and distributing images of President Jacob Zuma’s Nkandla home.

“It is against the law. We are asking nicely that people no longer do it,” said State Security Minister Siyabonga Cwele during a press briefing this morning.

The press briefing was to discuss Cabinet’s meeting yesterday. The ministers in the security cluster were in attendance to address the Nkandla issue.

Cwele and Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa made it clear that it is against the law to take photos of national key points and to distribute them.

Mthethwa said the Nkandla homestead had been declared a national key point in 2008 and this means that people who have photos or images may be in possession of classified information.

The cluster ministers said that media houses will be contacted and asked to no longer publish pictures of Nkandla.
“This kind of thing [distributing photos of national key points] happens nowhere else in the world in no other democracy,” said Cwele.

It’s unclear how an entity such as Google will be prevented from continuing to carry Nkandla on its Google images and maps functionality.

It’s also unknown if photos of other key points like the Union Buildings and Parliament are now also banned or if the matter is only related to the president’s private home.

The opening of Parliament is broadcast globally every year. It’s uncertain how this will be affected.

 


Zumaville

South Africa's Billion Rand President

By: Gareth van Onselen

 How much Jacob Zuma costs the South African taxpayer.






FEATURE: Cars, jets, VIP protection, spousal support, almost every week a new figure emerges suggesting that those privileges afforded President Zuma (and other members of the executive) are costing the taxpayer much money; but how much exactly is hard to say. No one has ever tried to total it all. The Presidency has certainly done everything in its power to shield the information. I have given it my best shot in the article below. It was a very difficult exercise but, using the Ministerial Handbook as a guide and by being very conservative, I have generated a total figure. To see it all set out, how much President Zuma costs per year and per term, and whether or not you think it’s excessive, read on.....

Introduction
The point of the exercise to try and derive a credible and defensible total figure for all primary direct expenses afforded to President Jacob Zuma by the Ministerial Handbook and for which the public – the taxpayer – is ultimately responsible. This is not an exact science. In every instance, I have been extremely conservative and thus, while the total figure might not represent the actual cost, I believe it certainly does represent the absolute minimum cost. Most likely, the final and ultimately unknowable total will be far, far higher.
It is not my purpose to analyse the cost or to give an opinion as to whether or not the amount can be described as exorbitant. I am merely setting out the facts. Regardless of whom served as President, a variation of the costs listed in this document would have to be born by the public purse. Likewise, one would have to take the opportunity costs into account and inflation. Whether or not the bridge between reasonableness and opulence has been crossed, I leave to you, the reader, to determine.
The document that follows is essentially divided into three sections. First, a summary. I have called this ‘The Zuma Balance Sheet’ and it follows below these introductory remarks. It is, essentially, all the key numbers totaled. Second, an explanation, in which I try to set out my reasoning in arriving at each number and some additional context, to try and set the scene, where appropriate. Third and finally, I have concluded with some supplementary information, based on the final numbers.
By way of concluding this introduction, a few brief words about the methodology. Zuma took office on 9 May 2009. For each amount I have tried to determine an annual cost (April to April) and the cost of a full five year term. I have assumed his term will end in April 2014 (there is a three month window in which an election can be called). No doubt there are many incidental costs I have not covered (I suspect they are too small to make a real impact) and probably one or two more substantial items I have not thought of – I am happy to adjust the document in this regard, and will aim to update and improve it. That said, again, the total amount can only really be adjusted upwards.
There are three kinds of figures:
[1] Those which can be fairly accurately quantified and which are publically available (his salary, for example);
[2] Those partly known and which can be broadly quantified or projected (allowances, for example); and
[3] Those which are unknown and which, in some cases, can be credibly estimated.
I have made use of the Ministerial Handbook as a guide to expenses. Although it doesn’t mention the Presidency specifically, the Presidency is on record saying it “currently rel[ies] on the ministerial handbook” for precedent. It gives a general framework and direction for the costs associated with the highest office in the country. For all intents and purposes, however, it remains a generally useless document. It was approved by Cabinet in February 2007 and although the government has been promising a new one for over two years now, nothing has materialised. It is vague and incomplete; and so badly written and constructed as to invite abuse – which has invariably and frequently happened.
Likewise, the Presidency’s Annual Reports hide figures within other figures (the Spousal Unit, for example) and makes oversight as difficult as possible. It is incredible hard, often impossible, to tie hard numbers to the amorphous parameters set out in the Handbook. The ANC’s refusal to establish a portfolio committee for the Presidency makes accountability even harder. Often one has to rely on parliamentary questions (the answers to which are hardly a model of transparency) and other sources.
A defining feature of this exercise, then, was how much effort the Presidency puts into hiding, concealing, manipulating and covering up its costs. The Presidency is an ostensible model of transparency and a very real example of secrecy. Putting this together was extremely difficult.
Here, then, is how much Jacob Zuma costs you.
The Zuma Balance Sheet
1. Annual Salary: [R2 275 802.00 to R2 753 689.00]
• Approximate Five Year Total: R12 315 706.00
2. Medical Aid: [At least R1 300 000 per year]
• Approximate Five Year Total: R6 500 000.00
3. Pension Payout on Retirement: [Approximately R2 753 689.00]
• Approximate Five Year Total: R2 753 689.00
4. Spousal Support: [At least R15 517 500.00 per year]
• Approximate Five Year Total: R77 585 000.00
5. Private Vehicle: [70% of salary - R1 835 792.00, for two vehicles]
• Approximate Five Year Total: R3 671 584.00
6. Flights – VIP Squadron: [An approximate average of: R46 838 476.00 per year]
• Approximate Five Year Total: R234 192 383.00
7. Flights – Additional: [R6 331 174.67 plus additional cost of two planes]
• Approximate Five Year Total: R10 000 000.00
8. Flights – VIP Protection Services: [Unknown]
9. Flights – Helicopters: [At least R14 400 000.00 per year]
• Approximate Five Year Total: R72 000 000.00
10. Overseas Allowances – President: [An average of R25 400.00 per year]
• Approximate Five year Total: R127 000.00
11. Overseas Allowances – First Ladies: [Unknown]
12. Accommodation – Hotels: [An average of R420 000.00 per year]
• Approximate Five Year Total: R2 100 000.00
13. Accommodation – Official Residences: [An average of R5 300 000.00 per year]
• Approximate Five Year Total: R26 500 000.00
14. Accommodation – Private Residences: [R6 400 000.00]
• Approximate Five Year Total: R6 400 000.00
15.VIP Protection [An average of at least R12 000 000.00 per year]
• Approximate Five Year Total: R60 000 000.00
16. Legal Costs: [Unknown]
APPROXIMATE FIVE YEAR TOTAL: R514 145 362.00
AVERAGE ANNUAL TOTAL: R102 829 072.00

At the very least, President Zuma will cost the South African taxpayer R514.1m over five years – an average of R102.8m per year; in other words, half a billion Rand. Were he to secure another term, his Presidency would cost the South African public, at least, R1 billion.

I have not adjusted some of these figures for inflation. VIP Protection, for example, is all based on a 2009 sum. At a modest average of 5% over this five year period, the R60 million I have projected would be closer to R75 million if inflation were taken into account. And, the R46.8 million per year on VIP Squadron flights is only based on figures up to April 2012. At 5% it would be closer to R51m per year by 2014. Obviously, if one projected the total figure forward to a second term, that too would not take inflation into account, easily an additional R130million. So, this is worth bearing in mind when considering just how conservative the total cost is.
Breakdown of Costs
1. Annual Salary [Known]: Zuma recently agreed to an inflation-related 5.5% salary increase, as recommended by the Independent Commission for the Remuneration of Public Office Bearers, bringing his annual salary to R2 662 561.00, up from R2 485 839.00 and backdated to 1 April 2012. Zuma was inaugurated on 9 May 2009. His annual salary breakdown over that period is as follows:
• 1 April 2009 – 1 April 2010: R2 275 802.00 (11 months, R2 086 151.00)
• 1 April 2010 – 1 April 2011: R2 367 466.00 (1 year, 5% increase)
• 1 April 2011 – 1 April 2012: R2 485 839.00 (1 year, 5%)
• 1 April 2012 – 1 April 2013: R2 622 561.00 (1 year, 5.5%)
• 1 April 2013 – 1 April 2014: R2 753 689.00 (1 year, projected 5% increase)
• Five Year Total: R12 315 706.00
I projected the Presidency’s salary for 2013/14 at R2.75m based on a 5% increase, which is typical. The five year total is approximately (and very near to): R12 315 706.00.

Context: The graph below sets out how the President’s salary has grown over the last nine years. A significant increase occurred under President Mbeki, just before Zuma took office, when it jumped by almost R1 million, from approximately R1.2m to R2.1m in 2008/09. Zuma’s current salary makes him among the best-paid state-leaders in the world. Indeed, possibly among the top ten, certainly the top twenty.

Graph 1: The President’s Salary

[To view all graphs full size, right click on the graph and select 'view image']

2. Medical Aid [Known]: Zuma gets at least R1.3m as a medical aid contribution per year, outside of his salary. This would increase marginally with any salary increase so this is a conservative estimate. Five years at R1 300 000.00 equals approximately: R6 500 000.00 million.
3. Pension [Known]: On a monthly basis, like every employed person, part of Zuma’s salary goes to his pension (according to the Ministerial Handbook 5% from the executive member, 17.5% from the state). Outside and on top of that, however, he gets a lump sum paid into his pension on retirement, based on his salary, in accordance with the Remuneration of Public Office Bearers Act. That percentage fluctuates depending on recommendation from the Independent Commission for the Remuneration of Public Office Bearers. In 2008, the Commission recommended, exclusively for the President, the lump sum amount get increased from 75% to “equal to 100% of the annual remuneration paid to him or her on the day prior to his or her retirement from office”. If Zuma gets a 5% increase next year, as set out above, the total pension payout figure on Zuma’s retirement will be: R2 753 689.00.
4. Spousal Support [Known]: According to the Presidency, the budget for the Presidential Spousal Support Unit was R15 517 500 million for the 2009/10 financial year. At that time, Zuma had five wives. He now has six. So this will be a conservative estimate. The total over a five year term, at R15.5m per year, is thus at least: R77 600 000.00.

Context: According to the reply to a March 2010 DA parliamentary question, the amount allocated to the Spousal Support Unit had increased from R4.5m in 2004/05 to R8m in 2007/8, to R15.5 million in 2009/10 under Zuma. In other words, it has effectively doubled. Significantly, the only way you can get information on the Spousal Unit is through parliamentary questions. There is no longer a stand alone line item for it in the Presidency’s Annual Report (there used to be) and no dedicated programme of action for it in the Presidency’s strategic plan. It is money spent with no identifiable outcome attached to it. And for the last two years, its full costs are unknown.

Graph 2: The Spousal Support Unit Budget

5. Official Vehicles [Known]: The Ministerial Handbook states that every member of the executive is entitled to be reimbursed for any capital expenditure paid for the purchase of a private vehicle. Regulations set the amount at 70% of one’s annual salary and allow for two cars: one in Cape Town and one in Pretoria. 70% of Zuma’s currently salary is R1 835 792.00 which would make the total amount available to him R3 671 584.00. Cars can be replaced when they have travelled 120 000km or after five years. At the very least, then, Zuma would have purchased two new cars during his term, one in Cape Town and one in Pretoria, for a total amount to the taxpayer of, at least: R3 671 584.00

Context: The amount they could spend was originally set at 50% but was then adjusted to 70%. Following a public outcry, it has been reported that the revised Handbook (over two years in the negotiating and yet to be seen or adopted) has proposed a new figure of 60%, 10% higher than the original mark. If adopted, that would allow Zuma to purchase two cars each to the value of R1 573 563.00 or a total spend of R3 147 073.00.

6. Flights – VIP Squadron [Known]: For both domestic and international flights President Zuma is flown by a special squadron of dedicated VIP jets, reserved for senior members of the executive and operated by the Department of Defence. The primary such plane, a Boeing reserved for the President, is called Inkwazi.  In response to a DA parliamentary question, the amount and costs of those flights for Zuma’s first three years were recently revealed to be:
• April 2009 – April 2010: 91 Flights
• April 2010 – April 2011: 92 Flights
• April 2011 – April 2012: 97 Flights
The total costs of those 286 flights was revealed to be R140 515 430.15, at an average cost of R491 000 per flight. Thus, the annual cost would be approximately R46 838 476.00 and the total cost, over five years, would be: R234 192 383.00.
7. Flights – Additional [Known]: The flights listed above are only those undertaken by the VIP squadron. However, the President has made use of other aircraft on an ad hoc basis. In September 2011, for example, while the Presidential Jet was being serviced, the Department of Defence hired a Boeing 727 to fly Zuma to America. In reply to a DA parliamentary question, the full cost of that flight was revealed to be R6 331 174.67. However, it was later revealed that two further planes had ‘shadowed’ Zuma’s flight, in case his plane suffered some shortcoming – a South African Airways Airbus A340 and a Bombardier Global Express XRS, requiring around 35 crewmembers. The cost of these additional flights is not known but, together with Zuma’s Boeing, the exercise is conservatively estimated to have cost R10 000 000.00. How many times this has happened during President Zuma’s term is unknown.

Context: According to a document submitted to the National Assembly defence committee, operational spending on the President’s Jet for 2004/05 was R11m, rising to R23m in 2005/06 and just over R24m in 2006/07. The total amount for this period – R58m – was however later increased to around R78m.

8. Flights – VIP Protection Services [Unknown]: In November 2009 the reply to a DA parliamentary question revealed that the South African Police Service (under which the VIP Protection unit falls) had purchased a Cessna Citation Sovereign private business jet, at a cost of R150 million, among other things to “transport VIP protection service advance teams to countries in Africa“. It is not known how often or at what cost the jet has been used to send advance teams ahead of presidential visits to other African countries.
9. Flights – Helicopters [Partly Known]: The DA currently has a parliamentary question before the Minister of Defence about Zuma’s costs in this regard. The helicopters form part of the VIP Squadron. He typically uses them for interim flights; for example, between the official residence King’s House in KwaZulu-Natal and his private residence in Nkandla. According to experts, an hour flight in such a VIP helicopter would cost between R60 000 and R80 000. It is understood that a ‘shadow’ helicopter follows the one escorting the President. A return flight to Nkandla in such a helicopter would last approximately five hours. If we use the conservative figure of 15 such flights a year at four hours per flight and at the minimum cost per hour of R60 000 for each such helicopter, that would translate to at least R14 400 000.00 per year and a five year total of: R72 000 000.00.

Context: The figures for all flights cited above are massively conservative. The costs sited in response to the DA’s parliamentary question on aeroplanes does not, for example, include maintenance costs (Inkwazi – the President’s jet – recently spent three months undergoing maintenance in Switzerland, we don’t know how much that cost). It also doesn’t include the costs of additional slip crews (as many as four could be used for a single flight). Helicopter flights are almost entirely unknown and, likewise, when the costs are revealed, in all likelihood the President will have undertaken far in excess of the 15 flights I have estimated and, as with aeroplanes, they won’t include maintenance.

10. Overseas Allowances – President [Known]: Working out allowances for overseas travel is a tricky business, the amounts are also very small and I was hesitant to include them. The Ministerial Handbook states members and accompanying spouses are entitled to an allowance “equal to 110% of the daily allowance payable to Directors-General during visits abroad”. That amount is re-determined every year by the Department of Public Service and Administration. You can find the 2011 amounts here. In 2010 Zuma spent 25 days overseas on official state visits. Another 49 days on other business (summits, etc.) for a total of 74 days abroad. Using the DPSA amounts I have determined an average amount for the state trips of 127 US dollars a day for the President. (This is complicated, but I have set it out below). Over the course of 2010 (April 2010 through April 2011) that works out to approximately R25 400.00 and, if we use 2010 as an average, R127 000.00 as a five year total.
2010: Presidential State and Working Visits
1. India (State Visit, June 2010); (DPSA stipend: 79 US Dollars) (3 days);
2. Libya (working visit July 2010); (102 US Dollars) (2 days);
3. Zimbabwe (working visit, July 2010); (109 US Dollars) (2 days);
4. China (State Visit, August 2010); (117 US Dollars) (3 days);
5. Russia (State Visit, August 2010); (127 US Dollars) (3 days);
6. Lesotho (State Visit, August 2010); (84 US Dollars) (2 days);
7. Egypt (State Visit, October 2010); (107 US Dollars) (2 days);
8. Cuba (State Visit, December 2010); (121 US Dollars) (3 days);
9. Mexico (State Visit, December 2010); (78 US Dollars) (3 days);
10. France (State Visit, March 2011); (107 US Dollars) (2 days);
TOTALS:
• 25 days and $1 148
• $1 148 divided by 10 equals an average of $115 per day, per trip;
• 110% of $115 equals an average of $127 per day;
• Multiply that by 25 days equals $3 175;
• Multiply by an exchange rate of 8 Rand to the Dollars equals:
• R25 400.00
2010: Other Visits
I won’t set them all out (you can find the full list here) but Zuma undertook a further 23 trips abroad (49 days) in 2010 on other business, for a total of 33. I have not calculated the total cost in allowances for these as, when hosted by another country the allowance drops to 30%, so small as to be incidental to the total and in the majority of cases, the President would have been hosted.
11. Overseas Allowances – First Ladies [Unknown]: As set out, when accompanied by his wives, they each are entitled to the same allowance as Zuma qualifies for. It is difficult to determine how many of his wives accompany him on each trip. Some reports have suggested as many as four have accompanied him. I have not included a total because the amount would be incidental and, in all likelihood, is covered by the budget for Spousal Support Unit.
12. Accommodation – Hotels [Unknown]: If one again uses 2010 as an average, of the 74 days abroad, the President would have spent 42 days overnight. It is difficult to tell where Zuma has stayed, but an internet search suggests the hotels used have been upmarket. In India he stayed at the five star Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. One night there in a luxury suit costs approximately R25 000 per night. The Presidential suit, even more. In New York he is report to stay at the Carlton Ritz, costing as much as R50 000 a night. If we take a conservative average of R20 000 per night and assume half his nights overseas – 21 – are funded by the South African state, that works out to an annual average of R420 000.00 and a five year total of: R2 100 000.00
13. Accommodation – Official Residencies [Partly Known]: The Ministerial Handbook allows for members of the executive to stay rent free at official residences. The President has five such residencies available to him: Mahlamba Ndlopfu (Pretoria); Genadendal (Cape Town); Oliver Tambo House (Pretoria); Highstead (Cape Town) and Dr John L Dube House (formerly King’s House, Durban). They are each managed by the Department of Public Works. Obviously the cost of maintenance and upkeep of these houses must accrue to the President. So confusing has government information on this been, however, it is difficult to determine a figure. In October 2011, the Minister of Public Works stated in reply to a DA parliamentary question that as much as R400 million was to be spent on renovations for them. That figure was then refuted. I have excluded that amount, whatever it is, as the residences are national buildings and renovation and restoration is standard. However, it is possible to estimate the running costs. In a response to a parliamentary question in November 2009, Minister in the Presidency Collins Chabane revealed that the running costs of the five presidential homes was in excess of R5 300 000.00 for 2009/10, excluding the salaries of the 113 staff employed to service them. A conservative five year total is thus: R26 500 000.00.
14. Accommodation – Private Residencies [Partly Known]: The President owns a number of private homes, for him and his wives. Of these, two are his primary private residencies: a house in Forest Town, Johannesburg and Nkandla, in KwaZulu-Natal. Obviously the cost of the houses and their maintenance is for the President’s private expense but the Ministerial Handbook does oblige the state to provide security for them. How much has been spent on the Forest Town residence in this regard is unknown, but an amount has definitely been spent as it is surrounded by security and has been described as a “bunker”. More is known about Nkandla. According to a reply to a DA parliamentary question in August 2010, R6 400 000.00 was spent on security for the home, including a helipad, clinic and road bypass.
15. VIP Protection [Partly Known]: Working out Zuma’s VIP protection costs is difficult. There are no exact figures and, as with so many of these types of expenses, the ANC government goes out of its way to conceal them. That said, thanks to DA parliamentary questions, it is possible to work out a credible estimate. In March 2009, the Minister of Safety and Security revealed that the state spent R998 815.89 per month protecting Jacob Zuma. That amount includes close as well as static protection (guarding his homes), overtime, vehicle and telephone costs. This was prior to Zuma becoming President. Since then, no doubt, it has increased significantly. However, we can safely use the figure of R1 million per month as a credible estimate. On that basis, the annual cost would be at least R12 000 000.00 and, over five years, at least R60 000 000.00.
16. Legal Costs [Unknown]: Zuma is currently defending himself against the DA in court, in a protracted battle to have some 400 corruption charges against him reinstated. It is unclear who is paying for these nor are the amounts known – as the cases have not yet been concluded – and so I have not included them. Were it the state, however, the additional figure would be substantial.
Costs not Included
There are a number of costs I have not included in this analysis. For example, the cost of Zuma’s inauguration (R75m), the cost of renovations done to official residencies, the cost of the town supposedly being developed outside Nkandla at the President’s behest and smaller items, like the cost of the credit card to which he is entitled (no doubt small and for which it is next to impossible to work out an amount). Essentially I have focused on the President’s running costs. Where one to include actual government programmes, you might as well include the cost of the Presidency in its entirety, which would be to defeat the purpose of the exercise.
In turn, the President is funded in numerous other ways. The ANC, for example, would pay his costs when it comes to party political activity. Likewise, the President might benefit from various private benefits, financial or otherwise.
With regards to every one of the items listed, the public is ultimately responsible for the cost and the President has a say in the amount spent. Should he so chose, he could act to reduce or increase the amount dedicated to them. So they are a fair reflection of his attitude to public office and how he goes about his day-to-day business as President.
Conclusion
One can do various things with the R514 million figure. For example, one could break it down by term, year, month, week, hour, even minute:
• Five Years: R514 145 362.00
• One Year: R102 829 072.00
• One Month: R8 569 089.00
• One Week: R1 977 482.00
• One Day: R282 497.00
• One Hour: R11 770.00
• One Minute: R196.00
Put another way, in the 15 or so minutes it has taken you to read this article, Zuma has cost the public R3 000.
One could also break the figure down into its major component parts. Over five years Zuma’s salary and related expenses will cost at least R25m; his accommodation at least R35m; his protection at least R60m and his flights at least R316m.
Here is another blog I have created setting out and illustrating some of these such figures and a few others.
As I argued at the outset, South Africa needs a President, Jacob Zuma or no Jacob Zuma, and so many of these costs would have been incurred by the public purse regardless. How one interprets them is a matter of opinion. Let me know what yours is.
What can be said definitively is that there is a fundamental with transparency on this issue: The South African public simple doesn’t know and the ANC government acts to conceal how much Jacob Zuma costs. Were it not for DA parliamentary questions, the overwhelming bulk of this information would be hidden. Indeed, very often, even where replies were secured, they had to be fought for. The truth has been resisted at every turn. That this information has been so carefully guarded must tell one something.
Perhaps it is time for the Presidency to provide the definitive answer. It might go at least someway to restoring its battered reputation. Besides, we, the public, have a right to know.
Correction (21 August 2012): I incorrectly totaled the original five year total at R517 721 164.00. It is, in fact, R514 145 362.00. Apologies. All effected figures have been corrected. As it so happens, since this post, the total has since been superseded (new costs have emerged) and now stands at R522 312 029.00. See here for more.
UPDATE: For the latest up-to-date figures, including new information, see: ‘The Billion Rand President: Update – R8.1m in Ferry Flights added‘

http://inside-politics.org/2012/08/20/the-billion-rand-president-how-much-jacob-zuma-costs-the-taxpayer/

The ANC's split heritage: totalitarian and democratic

Paul Trewhela on the Shishita Report and the demonising of Mark Shope

BBC Radio Four in Britain broadcast an important discussion between Moeletsi Mbeki. Jay Naidoo and Nadine Gordimer on 30 December about restriction on media freedom in South Africa. In their discussion on the "Today" programme, Jay Naidoo raised the issue of what he called "totalitarianism" in relation to the Protection of State Information Bill (which has been passed in the National Assembly), while Moeletsi Mbeki made the point that the ANC had been an authoritarian body in exile.

This discussion had been preceded by a call for abrogation of South Africa's Constitution by a member of the government - President Zuma's ally, Ngoako Ramatlhodi, the former premier of Limpopo province, now elevated to deputy minister of Correctional Services. As stated last month in an article "Facing down the new authoritarians", by the editor-in-chief of the Mail & Guardian, Nic Dawes, Ramatlhodi is the survivor of a "corruption investigation that paralleled Zuma's."

Jay Naidoo was general secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions from 1985 to 1993. He then served as minister responsible for the Reconstruction and Development Programme in President Mandela's office and as minister of Post, Telecommunications, and Broadcasting (1996 - 1999). A former member of the national executive committee of the ANC, he is non-executive chairman of the Development Bank of Southern Africa

Moeletsi Mbeki, the younger brother of former President Thabo Mbeki, who like his brother spent three decades in exile, is deputy chairman of the South African Instute of International Relations and is author of Architects of Poverty: Why Africa's Capitalism Needs Changing, Picador Africa, 2009).

The BBC discussion related obliquely to the totalitarian heritage of the ANC in exile, the subject of my book Inside Quatro: Uncovering the Exile History of the ANC and SWAPO in Exile (Jacana, 2009). It looked ahead by a week to the ANC's centenary celebrations this coming Sunday, 8 January. The discussion of the authoritarian heritage of the ANC was more than appropriate.

In an article on the ANC centenary in the Guardian (London) - published the same day as the BBC discussion -the former ANC MP and former chairman of the parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA), Andrew Feinstein, stated: ""In order to hide the corruption [of the arms deal of the late 1990s, which he had attempted to uncover], the ANC were prepared to undermine the very institutions of democracy that they had so courageously fought to establish.

"There's a strong sense that parliament has never recovered, that this was the moment at which parliament became nothing more than a rubber stamp for the ruling party. This really was the moment at which the ANC was prepared to say, 'Yes, we are prepared to sacrifice these institutions to protect ourselves, to protect the party.' It reflects a profound lack of transparency and accountability in the way the ANC operates - the corrupt core of the party. In that sense it had a devastating impact on our democracy."

Discussion of attrition of democracy in post-liberation South Africa received added sharpness last November with an important contribution to the history of the exile period, the publication by Paul Holden and Hennie van Vuuren of their study of the arms deal and its sources, The Devil in the Detail: How the Arms Deal changed Everything (Jonathan Ball, 2011).

In their first chapter, "A questionable legacy: The SADF and MK in exile, 1976-1990", the authors give the best account so far of an extraordinary, top-secret document which provides the most illuminating and concise expression of the totalitarian mindset of the ANC in exile, the so-called Shishita Report of 1981. The full title of this highly confidential ANC document was: "Report on the Subversive Activities of Police Agents in our Movement".

It gives the sharpest expression of the psychology of the anti-democratic current in the ANC, now obvious in government.

Of course, there was no lack of real "police agents in our movement" deployed by the security agencies of the National Party state from at least the time of Gerard Ludi, who attended a World Peace Conference in Moscow in mid-1962, on behalf both of the SACP and Minister of Justice John Vorster. (See Ludi's Operation Q-018, Nasionale Pers Boekhandel, 1969, replete with photographs taken in Moscow).

In the Shishita report - which helped to launch a reign of terror within Umkhonto we Sizwe in exile - this issue of actual infiltration of the ANC (up to leadership level) was not the real issue. The real issue was a hunting out of democratic discussion.

Its focus was above all on one man, a hero of the ANC, the SACP and the South African trade union movement, who was posthumously awarded one of the new state's highest honours, the Order of the Baobab in Gold, in 2002 for "exceptional contribution to the struggle against apartheid and the development of the labour movement" : the Treason Trialist, Mark Shope (1918-1998), former general secretary of the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU), the forerunner of COSATU.

A farm worker as a youth, later founder of the African Laundry, Cleaning and Dying Workers' Union and one of the earliest recruits to Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK, in which he was one of the first to receive military training in the Soviet Union in the Sixties), Shope was appointed commissar in Angola together with Professor Jack Simons to the new generation of recruits which had flooded into the ANC and MK following the 1976 Soweto uprising of school students.

Together, Shope and Simons educated the new recruits at the ANC training camp at Nova Katengue in western Angola in the late 1970s to ask questions - to think for themselves. The consequences were fatal. Nothing was more heretical to the power-holders at the head of the ANC and SACP in exile, any less than to the regime of Bantu education in South Africa itself.

Although - like Simons - Shope was a "leader of the South African Communist Party with comrades such as JB Marks, Moses Kotane, Moses Mabida and Joe Slovo", such an approach to the idealistic young soldiers of the June 16 and Moncada detachments was demonised by powerful figures in the leadership as a form of satanism. Without a shred of evidence, Shope was accused in the Shishita Report (together with a former Robben Island veteran, Albert Dlomo) of being an "enemy agent".

Holden and van Vuuren provide lengthy citations over several pages from this seminal document, submitted to the ANC leadership in secret in 1981 and kept secret until released to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1997. To this day its contents remain a secret to the overwhelming majority of former members of the ANC, the SACP and MK in exile, as they prepare to gather at Bloemfontein/Mangaung to celebrate the ANC's centenary. It is the most sordid official document in the history of the ANC, and has received almost no attention from historians.

The crucial passage in the Shishita Report states: "In the area of our investigation, it is clear that there was, in fact, a campaign promoted by enemy agents, within and outside our ranks, for discrediting the leadership of the African National Congress on the 'grounds' of 'corruption', 'in-effiiciency' [sic], 'money-making', 'too old to lead', etc." The report attributes blame principally to Mark Shope and Albert Dlomo.

The report then states: "Objectively these comrades are playing the role of enemy agents or provocateurs despite the fact that they were never formally recruited". (cited in Holden and van Vuuren, The Devil in the Detail, pp.52-53)

It is the psychology of diabolism and the witch-hunt. The category "enemy agent" is transformed verbally into a vast, abstract, shadowy evil presence whose sinister influence, like that of Satan, has the power of controlling human beings who have no idea of its presence and who have no real physical contact with it. It is the demonism of Stalin's OGPU, GPU, NKVD or KGB - a monster by whatever name - by which the Great Leader killed off his Old Bolshevik rivals under fevered accusations that they were agents of Adolf Hitler. "Objectively", comrades! Citizen A, or B, or C is an agent of the Devil... "despite the fact that they were never formally recruited"!

The most accessible account of this psychology is in the extract from Holden and van Vuuren's book, published in the Mail & Guardian on 11 November 2011 under the title "Arms deal inherited corrupt DNA", available here:

It should be studied with care.

There should be proper research into the lives of Mark and Gertrude Shope, as well as Albert Dlomo. Ntiti Gertrude Shope (born in 1925), was head of the ANC Women's Section in exile and the only woman chief representative of the ANC in exile. No ANC or SACP leader played a more humane role during the mutinies in MK in Angola in February and May 1984. She "appeared on the scene from Lusaka at that time [where she was chief representative] and was taken aback by what she saw. She ordered an end to executions and tortures, and that the prisoners should be allowed to get clothes, which was done." ("A miscarriage of democracy",Inside Quatro. p. 29)

Later, after the end of apartheid, during the heroic efforts of Andrew Feinstein to throw light into the foul pit of the arms deal corruption scandal in the National Assembly, "Ma" Gertrude Shope, as he recalls, as a fellow ANC MP, "sat down next to me and whispered into my ear: 'You just carry on doing your job'." Tremendous encouragement to the young man, under ultimately unsustainable pressure from a corrupt, unaccountable and undemocratic political elite. (Andrew Feinstein, After the Party: A Personal and Political Journey inside the ANC, Jonathan Ball, 2007. p.73)

If there were ever to be a movement for reform within the ANC, this is one of the sources to which it would have to return.

Happily, MaShope is still with us.

Let the heritage of Mark and Gertrude Shope be remembered on Sunday

CAPE TOWN May 29 1997 — Sapa

NP GOVT PLANNED TO ASSASSINATE ANC LEADERS: REPORT

The former government plotted to assassinate top African National Congress leaders in exile to pave the way for a new leadership dominated by police agents who would be more ready to agree to the National Party's strict preconditions for negotiations.
This is one of the allegations contained in a confidential ANC report released to the media for the first time on Thursday.
The Shishita report on the "subversive activities of police agents" details the investigation carried out by the ANC's department of intelligence and security (Nat) in 1981, which resulted in the uncovering the government's "most prized" network of infiltrators.
The document was included as a confidential annexure in the ANC's second submission to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission earlier this month.
The ANC was initially against it being made public as it named a number of alleged police spies who, according to the organisation, had already been punished for their actions and were now living normal lives back in South Africa.
Releasing the report on Thursday, TRC chairman Archbishop Desmond Tutu said the commission was committed to transparency.
However, the commission was also bound by existing legislation and a recent Appellate Division ruling that required alleged perpetrators to be given 21 days notice before their names could be made public.
"We are publishing as much as the law allows," Tutu said, explaining why the names of many spies have been censored.
According to the report, dated July 1 1981 in Lusaka, the large-scale infiltration of spies into the ANC coincided with the government's announcement of strict preconditions for negotiations.
These preconditions required the ANC to accept the homeland system and the free enterprise system, and rid itself of communist elements.
"In a word, the African National Congress must accept all the fundamental policies of the racist regime as a precondition for negotiations," the report said.
This, it said, was part of a wider plot to remove the "hard core" of the leadership through assassination and by discrediting them as being corrupt and inefficient.
"The new leadership, dominated by police agents (would then) accept these strict preconditions enter into negotiations with the racist regime.
"The ANC is then reintegrated into the status quo and in so doing brings to an end the national lbieration struggle in South Africa, if not for all time, at least for the forseeable future".
The ANC investigators also uncovered what they described as acts of economic sabotage.
"This indeed was a very big area of investigation," the report said.
"What has been exposed at this early stage clearly shows that the movement has already lost thousands upon thousands of Kwacha (the currency of Zambia) through economic sabotage."
In one case a cadre had confessed to stealing 12 dozen cassettes from the ANC and selling them to an electronics shop in Lusaka, Zambia.
Another had stolen the gearbox of a landcruiser and sold it to the sales manager of a motor dealer.
Seven typewriters were also found to have been stolen and sold by cadres over a period of time.

---

© South African Press Association, 1997

This text is for information only and may not be published or reprinted without the permission of the South African Press Association

http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/media/1997/9705/s970529d.htm

CAPE TOWN May 29 1997 — Sapa

TRC RELEASES SECRET ANC DOCUMENTS

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Thursday released the confidential annexure to the African National Congress's second submission to the TRC, but not before deleting the names of suspected police spies.
Releasing the documents at a media briefing in Cape Town, TRC chairman Archbishop Desmond Tutu stressed the commission's continued commitment to transparency.
However, the commission was also bound by existing legislation and a recent Appellate Division ruling that required alleged perpetrators to be given 21 days notice before their names could be made public.
"We are publishing as much as the law allows," Tutu said.
The names of some informers had not been blotted out as their names were already in the public arena.
The documents released by the TRC on Thursday include the so-called Shishita report on "subversive activities of police agents in our movement"; a list of agents executed; a memorandum on the transfer of Camp 32 (otherwise known as Quatro detention camp); and a report on the investigation into the deaths of three inmates of Camp 32.
Still under wraps are the lists of Umkhonto we Sizwe cadres executed for major breaches of discipline and those who "died as a result of excessively harsh treatment after committing breaches of discipline"; the real names of the last group of 32 prisoners released by the ANC; the identities of those killed during and executed after the May 1984 Pango mutiny; and documents relating to the ANC investigation into the death of MK commander Thami Zulu.
Tutu said the circumstances surround Zulu's death was still the subject of a TRC investigation.
Commission investigations head Dumisa Ntsebeza told the media briefing none of the documents contained the names of "any big fish" as some newspapers had speculated.
"There are no cabinet members ... the whole thing has turned out to be a storm in a teacup. Reports (on ANC activities in exile) that have been given to us in the past were much more comprehensive than this one."
These reports are believed to be the Motsuenyane and Stuart commission reports on abuses in ANC exile camps. Copies were released to the public when the ANC made its first submission to the TRC last year.
Ntsebeza said the new documents contained no revelations and merely expanded on the ANC's second submission to the TRC made earlier this month.
"There is an expansion of details of things we are already aware of," he said.
Tutu invited journalists to look at unexpurgated copies of the documents to satisfy themselves there was no "hanky-panky" involved in the commission's decision to censor some of the names.

---

© South African Press Association, 1997

This text is for information only and may not be published or reprinted without the permission of the South African Press Association

http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/media/1997/9705/s970529a.htm

Uit Dir Blou Van Onse Hemel

It's Sunday morning and I am finding it very hard to get out of bed. I have a husband who loves me enough to have bought me a laptop. A nice warm bed and a laptop - the two go hand in hand.

Loging on to FaceBook this morning I came accross a post by a FaceBook friend, an ex-South African now living in the UK. She posted the words:

"Uit die blou van onse Hemel, uit die diepte van ons see....❤mooiste lied in die wereld!

Feeling nostalgic I went to YouTube to search for "Uit die blou van onse Hemel"

These are words that when you really take cognisence of what you are reading, have so much heartfelt meaning to elderly White South Africans. I say elderly because I am more than half a centuary old!

	The Call of South Africa
First verse
	Ringing out from our blue heavens,
	From our deep seas breaking round,
	Over everlasting mountains,
	Where the echoing crags resound,
	From our plains where creaking wagons,
	Cut their trails into the earth,
	Calls the spirit of our country,
	Of the land that gave us birth.
	At thy call we shall not falter,
	Firm and steadfast we shall stand,
	At thy will to live or perish,
	O South Africa, dear land.
Second verse
	In our body and our spirit,
	In our inmost heart held fast;
	In the promise of our future,
	And the glory of our past;
	In our will, our work, our striving,
	From the cradle to the grave-
	There's no land that shares our loving,
	And no bond that can enslave.
	Thou hast borne us and we know thee,
	May our deeds to all proclaim
	Our enduring love and service
	To thy honour and thy name.
Third verse
	In the golden warmth of summer,
	In the chill of winter's air,
	In the surging life of springtime,
	In the autumn of despair;
	When the wedding bells are chiming,
	Or when those we love do depart,
	Thou dost know us for thy children
	And dost take us to thy heart
	Loudly peals the answering chorus;
	We are thine, and we shall stand,
	Be it life or death, to answer
	To thy call, beloved land.
Fourth verse
	In thy power, Almighty, trusting,
	Did our fathers build of old;
	Strengthen then, O Lord, their children
	To defend, to love, to hold-
	That the heritage they gave us
	For our children yet may be;
	Bondsmen only to the Highest
	And before the whole world free.
	As our fathers trusted humbly,
	Teach us, Lord to trust Thee still;
	Guard our land and guide our people
	In Thy way to do Thy will.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Stem_van_Suid-Afrika

Debate Police Budget 2012/13

DEBATE ON POLICE BUDGET VOTE 2012 / 13

SPEECH BY DIANNE KOHLER BARNARD, DA SHADOW MINISTER OF POLICE
09 May 2012

Chairperson,

 The police are constitutionally mandated to prevent, combat and investigate crime, maintain public order, protect and secure the inhabitants of South Africa and their property, uphold and enforce the law. The police, in our society in which families and communities are being torn apart and ravaged by high levels of violent crime, is nothing short of an essential service.

 Yet our country has reached a defining political moment as we debate today the budget vote for this most crucial entity, the South African Police Service. The SAPS has asked us to approve R62.5 billion.

 The question being asked by every reporter, every political analyst, every citizen and which should be asked by every politician in the country is: Has there been political interference within the Service? The conclusion after joining the dots, is that President Zuma has quite possibly reached into the SAPS to protect a police officer accused of fraud, of murder, of corruption...one Richard Mdluli, the controversially reinstated head of Crime Intelligence and the man the Minister announced a few moments ago has now been removed from his position.

 One wonders if without the pressure from the Democratic Alliance and our free media, if the Minister would have made any move at all, and one must ask the question why it is that he’s being shifted rather than suspended as he should be.
This man, within a matter of months, was pushed into one of the most powerful positions held by any individual in the country. He was the only person who could approach a judge to request communication interceptions and even the allegedly independent Hawks had to go to him cap in hand asking if he would apply for communications interceptions for their investigations.
He also swept the VIP Protection unit under his control so he had a heavily armed team reporting on the movement of politicians 24-hours a day. This man had the ability to tap the phone calls of politicians as well as criminals, which is a tantalising fruit for someone who avoided prosecution as a result of secret recordings of telephone conversations.
This is the elephant in the living room. I refer to this situation as the elephant in the living room because while we all discuss budgets; and 27 000 SAPS members who have firearms without licences; the 150 police stations without electricity, or water, or toilets or all three; while we discuss the fact that Public Works regularly forgets to pay the rent on the dozens of SAPS buildings it oversees so that SAPS members are locked out by angry landlords – no one anywhere within Government dared to confront the issue of Richard Mdluli. Everyone knows he’s there, but within Government extreme care is taken to avoid discussing him. After all with him at the helm of the police, one faction could rely on state apparatus to investigate the activities of his opponents,
During the budget briefings I did attempt to have him speak, but he was shut down by the Acting National Police Commissioner.
Richar Mdluli is the quintessential Teflon Man who has shucked off murder and fraud charges, indeed an entire shopping cart of charges within the Service. The report by Major General Mark Hankel highlights in excruciating detail that shopping cart of alleged actions, any one of which would have had any other SAPS member suspended. Indeed the SAPS has the highest total monthly salary of suspended members of any Ministry because they are so serious in rooting out criminality within the Service, yet somehow that enthusiasm just doesn’t seem to apply to this man.
Has he in fact even got security clearance, I wonder? What with the ever-increasing density of the cloud handing over his head, I somehow doubt it, yet he surely deals with classified documents on a daily basis. I’ve put through a Parliamentary question to that effect, but perhaps the Minister would like to take this opportunity to give us the answer now?
Perhaps he could also answer how it was that Richard Mdluli was not arrested for defeating the ends of justice when the Hawks reportedly found at least seven missing police dockets locked in his safe over a year ago?
And I’d like to know if he was in any way involved in the decision to terminate the disciplinary proceedings against Richard Mdluli? And I’d like to know if he was in any way involved in the reinstatement of Richard Mdluli? And I’d like to know if he did indeed receive a copy of the letter in which Richard Mdluli made a pledge to the President to support him as a senior member of a political party ?

Meanwhile we’ve seen a senior public prosecutor have two attempts made on her life shortly after handing a 200-page report on the lifting of the murder charges against Mdluli to the Acting head of the NPA who now mysteriously says she’s never received it. We have the General Council of the Bar pointing to a spate of thefts from and harassment of advocates...thefts of just laptops and documents from advocates involved in high profile cases involving the Minister of Police or Police in his department. I don’t believe in coincidences.

Equally so in the case of a member of the Board of Inquiry into the suspended national police commissioner – three men armed with R5 assault rifles robbed him of laptops and documents. The rifles were the same type as those recently reported stolen from a safe at the Air Force Base in Waterkloof. The stolen rifles belonged to the VIP protection unit, until minutes ago situated under Richard Mdluli. Let me repeat: I don’t believe in coincidences.
While what we’re seeing is a fundamental collapse of trust in our Justice Cluster institutions, the Cabinet has claimed simultaneously that it didn’t discuss the Richard Mdluli saga, but that it had somehow without discussion come to the conclusion that what was going on in the SAPS was merely a series of “public spats”. A spat? That is what I would call the outcome of two women reaching for the same dress at a sale. And this was a comment from a collection of what are supposed to be the best political brains in our country. Are they frightened of Richard Mdluli, perhaps?

The South African public believes the situation is severe. That political in-fighting and factionalism are paralysing our law enforcement agencies. Severe in that many believe we are teetering on the brink of becoming a Police State and this situation is being described as the greatest threat to the Criminal Justice System South Africa has faced in years. This has been, and still is cadre deployment at its very worse, as a deeply, deeply compromised person was allowed to resume his position despite a national outcry.
All of this is linked to the ongoing leadership battle within the ANC ahead of its elective congress, and the outcry about the mismanagement of the SAPS by the suspended national police commissioner pales into insignificance in the face of this debacle.

Meanwhile, every South African newspaper, radio and television station has been highlighting the war between various factions within the SAPS.
This is the same Cabinet of the current Government under which the Ministry of Police has become something of a hot potato, with one National Police Commissioner behind bars, the next suspended for conduct that was improper, unlawful and amounted to maladministration...and the latest under investigation by the Public Protector who says there is a prima facie case of improper conduct and abuse of power, which warrants an investigation.
We’ve seen what happens when the wrong person is at the top – with just 5% of the SAPS budget audited, the Auditor General found R76-million worth of irregular expenditure.

I was told by the Minister that the reason he wouldn’t detail who had been given the contracts for the two national police days was that there was an investigation under way. The real answer which had been prepared by Ministry staff, was somehow released to the media and ended up in my hands. Presumably this investigation will look into whose family members from the top tier of the SAPS were allegedly granted the contracts for the R65-million spent. It will take a brave police officer indeed to investigate their superiors so I’m not holding my breath on the outcome which I believe will join so many other investigation outcomes under that well-used Police carpet.
Of equal import to the Mdluli saga has been the Ministry’s response to the Glenister Judgement by the Constitutional Court when it ruled on the unconstitutionality of the Hawks. It was left to Parliament to ensure that a sufficiently independent unit was created and it did not determine that it should be within the SAPS.
We had such a unit of course, but the Scorpions were shut down because it investigated corruption without fear or favour and one ANC politician too many ended up feeling its sting.

At the time virtually every legal firm, NGO, individual citizen, every Member of Parliament who spoke against the closure of the Scorpions, said they believed Bob Glenister would win his case. Yet honourable members Maggie Sotu and Yunis Carrim said the decision had already been taken in Polokwane in 2007, and therefore would be implemented no matter what. The tens of thousands of petitions, the marches, the editorials, they were ignored, and Parliament and the Police Portfolio Committee have ended up with egg all over their faces. The two who drove the closure of the unit were, of course, given Deputy Ministerial-position rewards...one ironically, of the Police.
We all know that full independence means exactly that – a unit of primarily civilians who will service this country without fear or favour. Not members of SAPS – not the units of whom have simply been gathered together and named the Hawks. The Blue Code of Silence always has and always will mean that police close ranks to protect their colleagues from investigation – there can be no independence in this ranked structure.

While we have taken this brief break for this debate, the Police Portfolio Committee, known as the toughest portfolio committee in Parliament, with the strongest Chairperson in Parliament, is presiding over the bizarre process of rubberstamping what the Secretary of Police finally presented a few weeks ago – a year after the judgement.
No attempt at all is being made to include anything but a single correction from the 12 substantive inputs from top Law Professors and Advocates from around the country. Indeed, it seems the committee is simply being herded down a pre-determined ANC path while going through the motions, pretending this is all a democratic process. Not a single deviation from this path is even being considered.
This is exactly what happened the last time, this same process that has ensured this whole sorry mess has been dumped back in the lap of the Police Portfolio Committee.

Mr Glenister has already stated that he will take this proposed Bill straight back to the Constitutional Court should he not believe the unit to be sufficiently independent.
This is hardly comforting to South African citizens who have once again become equally scornful and terrified of SAPS members as, according to the ICD, they shoot to kill - and miss - on a regular basis, killing civilians and protesters, while on the side they demand bribes, rape, rob, torture and plunder. They are terrified because the difference between armed pursuit and extrajudicial assassination has become increasingly blurred.

At least we now know why so many of them miss what they aim at as 27 000 of them are carrying firearms without having passed their licences – in fact many of them have actually tried and then failed their licences, but of course the move to by the Acting National Police Commissioner to do the right thing and disarm them was stopped in its tracks. He then told us not to panic as it was all a misunderstanding – as though proper training in the use of firearms was negotiable for SAPS members. Perhaps it was all a misunderstanding that the Westville Hospital gunman who held staff hostage was able to renew his firearm licence despite having bipolar disorder – while SAPS members can’t seem to get around to renewing theirs?
We don’t have the death penalty, but we have hundreds of deaths in custody and at the hands of SAPS members, as well as allegations of hit squads operating in several provinces.

Indeed in between the stories littering pages of the media, all focussing on the issue of the looting of the Crime Intelligence Slush fund by SAPS members and top politicians, and this past weekend the revelations of a second slush fund, are the reports which relate to an unprecedented assault for the first time in our democratic era, by police using unrestrained violence in hunting down criminals and non-criminals alike that is literally exploding across SA.
What it is, is a saga we hoped we’d never see again because we hoped that the people in this teenage democratic dispensation would be a head and shoulders above what we had before.

What I smell in South Africa today is fear, fuelled by the very budget we debate today. This fear is in response to this mess which represents everything we should never have allowed ourselves to become. Where is the credible reason of how it was that Richard Mdluli escaped criminal prosecution for alleged murder, abuse of state resources, fraud, corruption and defeating the ends of justice?
Those charges were withdrawn contrary to the advice of the senior NPA Prosecutor Glynnis Breytenbach – and right after she handed over a 200 page report, challenging the dismissal of these charges, the attacks on her began.
Everything about this case is a mystery, the NPA won’t explain their decision to drop the charges, and when someone questions that decision her life is in danger; while a letter emerges wherein Richard Mdluli declares his political allegiance to the President. Our police are, of course, meant to be apolitical.

Another area where we are seeing inexplicable deals done is in the area of personnel. On one Police Portfolio oversight visit I discovered a woman with an MA degree who had had a man with just a Standard 8 promoted above her. Firstly how did someone with just a Standard 8 get into the SAPS? And secondly why aren’t they promoting this highly qualified woman? And before those currently in the government benches start hurling racist invectives at me – they were both black.
The Public Protector is investigating the claims of bizarre promotions within the SAPS at my request and I assure you we will hear how it is that drivers and secretaries and relatives are bounced up the ranks when they have zero experience or qualifications.
Following bizarre promotions, are the even more bizarre retirements with huge padded pension payouts under Section 35 – R31,2-million in the past two years – especially when those given these packages are under criminal investigation.
Literally everywhere this Portfolio Committee looks there is criminality within the SAPS – to the extent that the majority of our honest and honourable police are actually becoming increasingly embarrassed to wear the uniform. Not that I’m saying that any of them have joined the SANDF Pink Slipper brigade – but morale is at an all-time low.

To turn this situation around what we need here in Parliament today, is an assurance from the Minister that this deeply compromised man, Richard Mdluli, is not even being considered as our next national police commissioner.
Of course we do still have a national police commissioner but since he moved out the nation has moved on. There is wide acceptance that his shoot-to-kill mantra, learned at the feet of the then deputy Minister of Police, Susan Shebangu, has lead to a massive increase in the numbers of fatal shootings, rapes and instances of torture by SAPS members. Protesters today are once again likely to be murdered, there are allegations of hit squads – all under the newly Militarised SAPS into which Bheki Cele brought the apartheid era ranks
Few can actually imagine why the President appointed Bheki Cele at all. He is the man who infamously said, and I quote, “A monkey came all the way from London to have his wife murdered here.” That was a reference to murder accused Shrien Dewani. The National Police Commissioner presumably never learned about innocent until proven guilty, and made that and many other comments in what seemed to be an all-out attempt in terms of prejudging the issue, to destroy the extradition application.
Others may have forgotten, but I certainly remember that the Public Protector had to pressure the now suspended National Police commissioner to look into allegations that Richard Mdluli chose not to investigate certain matters in Gauteng – and yet Richard Mdluli was hired anyway, spent a few days in a cell...and is back as the head of Crime Intelligence.

Nor will we forget that the acting national director of public prosecutions, Nomgcobo Jiba, who suspended Glyis Breytenbach, was one of those who owes a huge debt to Richard Mdluli as he came to her rescue when she was suspended over her alleged involvement in a plot to have Scorpions Gauteng boss Gerrie Nel, arrested. Nel had prosecuted her husband for stealing a client’s money out of his firm’s trust account – but of course the President expunged his criminal record in September 2010.

The NPA in turn dropped the charges against Richard Mdluli.
All of the things I’ve touched on today explain why it was that Vusimuzi Silwanyan found himself so disgusted at the SAPS indifference at his 14-year-old daughter’s murder that he hunted down the killers himself in just five days. He did what the SAPS members either couldn’t or wouldn’t do, and one has to ask, if the citizens are doing a better job than the SAPS – why are we looking to give them a greater budget than ever before?
In closing I must thank especially our extraordinary Chairperson Sindi Chicunga, for her leadership, and also thanks must go to the vast majority of SAPS members – even in this dark time in the history of the Service.
Minister Nathi Mthetwa has been ominously silent during the months of disturbing developments within the SAPS – despite his responsibilities in terms of overall control and management. Moving past the Mdluli saga, as difficult as that is, we see a growing list of revelations about the Service that he has sidestepped such as the evictions and lockouts of police officers from their offices in at least four provinces; the reports that the suspended National Police Commissioner signed off on a R26-million tender awarded to a businessman who had showered top police officials with expensive gifts to cinch the deal; and the alleged involvement of the Acting National Commissioner in the cover up of the murder of an innocent civilian to name but a
In any other democratic society in which the police, its senior management and its political head were so deeply embroiled in allegation and counter-allegation, a Minister who has been so ominously silent and this lax in effectively dealing with the situation, would have done the honourable thing and resigned.

SO YOU DON’T NEED WHITE’S?

So you have never needed whites??

So some brain dead limp wristed African moron wrote a letter this week that was published on the News24 website about how they don’t need white’s and never have and that white’s are to blame for all the bad things in Africa??

This is really rich coming from a a new generation of blacks that is more obsessed with western lifestyle than the whites have ever been? You love flashy cars, well they were invented by white folks and without them you would still be walking around on foot, and what about your obsession with fashion and clothes? Without the white folks you would still be in loin cloths! You say that we brought the idea of war to Africa? I suppose Shaka and Dingaan and the boys held tea parties to solve their issues? No! You simple minded twat! They slaughtered people who got in their way – its the African way!

You say white homosexuals brought HIV/AIDS to your people? Is that why as much as 80% of the black population in Africa is HIV Positive? Strange that it has not reached such epidemic proportions in the white population? It is because we have something you will never have – self control! All industry in Africa was started by white people, the same industry that generates the billions of rands that supports the useless black bastards that have no interest in working. The only industry you had was sitting on a rock in the veld scratching your nuts while you keep an eye on your dads starving cows! You survive on a small minority of white peoples tax money and without them you would literally starve to death.

But hey, next time you get sick or contract a deadly sexually transmitted disease don’t go see a doctor, no go visit a witch doctor and let him throw some leftover oxtail bones for you, I mean really doctors as you know it are a white thing? Sell your car and start walking, get rid of all your money because that is also a white thing? For that matter fire the entire parliament and go back to your tribal chiefs and let them send you out to fight other tribes for land, that way we can sit back and watch you die, and dont forget not to use guns because they are a white thing, only sticks and stones and spears allowed! Lets face it, without us you are completely fucked!! We generate the tax money that keeps you alive and we maintain the economy that would not last a week without us and our white money!

I really am not adverse to the idea of all the whites leaving Africa so go ahead and get your leaders to expel us from the continent because left to your own devices without white people to maintain everything you would destroy the country and yourselves in short order. Then we could return and do what we white folks do – rebuild, create, improve and make a good life for all. You don’t need white’s is about the stupidest thing I have ever heard, just look around in Africa and you will see that Africans cant look after themselves – no they require white people to look after them.

http://nubbi.wordpress.com/2013/03/13/so-you-dont-need-whites/

SANDF

South African National Defence Force

Index

1. Order of battle
2. Defence economics
3. State of military forces
4. Country threat report
5. External deployments

1. South African National Defence Force (SANDF) Order of Battle

Total force strength	Army: 39 445* Army Reserve: 12 300 Air Force: 11 245* Air Force Reserve: 831 Navy: 7 585* Navy Reserve: 861 Military Health Service: 9 098* Military Health Service Reserve: 1 115 Civilian: 12 382 Total: 88 563 * Actual strength as of March 31, 2012
South African Army:
Armour	191: 177 Olifant 1A/B (Of which 133 in storage) and 26 Olifant Mk 2 (for training)
Reconnaissance	178: Rooikat 76 (Of which 94 in storage)
AIFV	1200: Ratel 20/60/90 Mk3 (Of which 666 in storage)
APC	370: Casspir 440: Mamba
Self-propelled artillery	43: G6 155 mm (41 in storage)
Towed artillery	72: G5 155 mm (66 in storage) 75: G2 140 mm (all in storage)
Multiple rocket launcher	26: Valkiri Mk 1 127mm MRL (all in storage) 25: Bateleur Mk 2 127 mm MRL (4 in storage)
Mortar	1190: 81 mm 36: 120 mm
Anti-armour	52: ZT-3 (Of which 36 in storage) 43: Milan ER ATM
Recoilless rifle	171: 106 mm M40A1
Rocket launcher	92 mm FT-5 (in reserve from 2007)
Air defence gun	36: 23 mm Zumlac (self-propelled) 40: 35 mm GDF-002 (towed)
Air defence missile	8: Starstreak launchers (as part of GBADS – Ground Based Air Defence System)
Structure	Army Office: 2 Brigade HQs: 43 SA Brigade, 46 SA Brigade SA Army Infantry Formation HQ: 20 Group HQs (to be phased out); two  mechanised infantry battalions; three motorized infantry battalions; one  specialized infantry battalion (to be phased out); School of Infantry; 10 Light  Infantry Battalion SA Army Artillery Formation HQ: School of Artillery; 4 Artillery Regiment; 1  Artillery Mobilisation Centre SA Army Air Defence Artillery Formation HQ: School of Air Defence Artillery;  10 AA Regiment SA Army Armour Formation HQ: School of Armour; I SSB; I Tank Regiment SA Army Engineer Formation HQ: School of Engineers; 2 Field Engineer Regiment;  1 Construction Regiment; 35 Engineer Support Regiment; 4 Survey and Mapping  Regiment; 1 Military Printing Regiment SA Army Intelligence Formation HQ: School of Tactical Intelligence; 1 Tactical  Intelligence Regiment. SA Army Training Formation HQ: 14 General Support Bases; 101 Field Workshop;  16 Maintenance Unit; National Ceremonial Guard; 102 Field Workshop;  17 Maintenance Unit.
Forces by role
Armoured	1 division
Mechanised infantry	1 division; 1 independent brigade
Infantry	6 divisions; 7 independent brigades
Reconnaissance	1 independent brigade
Special forces*	5 coy * Special Forces fall under Joint Operations
Airborne	1 division
Artillery	3 independent brigades
Engineers	1 division
Border Guards	1 brigade
South African Air Force (SAAF)
Combat aircraft	9: Gripen D (Two seat) 17: Gripen C (Single seat) 24: Hawk 120 (Trainer/light support)
Trainer aircraft	53: PC-7 Mk 2 Astra (60 delivered; 35 being upgraded; 20 offered for sale.  Upgraded aircraft known only as PC-7 Mk II)
Transport aircraft	9: C-130BZ Hercules 3: C212 7: C-47TP Turbo Dakota (nine in service until crashes in November and  December 2012. Five configured for maritime patrol; two for transport; 1 as transport/photographic platform) 3: Beech 200 King Air 1: Beech 300 King Air 11: Cessna 208 Caravan 1: PC-12
VIP aircraft	1: Boeing 737 BBJ 2: Falcon 50 1: Falcon 900 2: Cessna Citation II
Combat helicopter	11: Rooivalk Mk I
Transport helicopter	39: Oryx 29: AW-109 6: BK-117
Maritime/EW/RECCE helicopter	4: Super Lynx 300 (Navy)
Air defence radar	2: Static radar (Mariepskop and Ellisras) 2: Mobile long range radar 4: Mobile short range radar
Structure
Fighter squadrons	2 Squadron (AFB Makhado) with Gripens
Maritime patrol	35 Squadron (AFB Ysterplaat) with C-47TPs and C-47TPMs
Transport	28 Squadron (AFB Waterkloof) with C-130BZs; 42 Squadron (AFB Waterkloof)  with King Airs, PC-12, C208 Caravans; 44 Squadron (AFB Waterkloof) with C212s; 21 (VIP)  Squadron (AFB Waterkloof) with Boeing BBJ, Falcon 900, Falcon 50s, Cessna Citation IIs
Helicopter	17 Squadron (AFB Waterkloof) with Oryx and A109s; 19 Squadron (AFB Hoedspruit) with Oryx and A109s; 22 Squadron (AFB Ysterplaat) with Oryx, Super Lynx and A109; 15 Squadron (AFB Durban) with Oryx, BK 117s and A109s; 16 Squadron (AFB  Bloemspruit) with Rooivalks
Trainers	Central Flying School (CFS Langebaanweg) with PC-7 Mk IIs; 85 Combat  Flying School (AFB Makhado) with Hawks; 87 Helicopter Flying School with Oryx, BK 117  and A109 LUH
South African Navy (SAN)
Frigate	4: Amatola (Valour) class (German Meko A-200 SAN)
Mine layer/hunter	2: River class (German Navors class – one in reserve) 4: City class
Submarine	3: Manthatisi (Heroine) class (German Type 209)
Patrol/Strike boat (Gun/Missile/OPV/IPV)	3: Warrior class (currently being upgraded to offshore patrol vessels) 1: Sarah Baartman class (OPV) (Former Dept of Agriculture, Forestry and  Fisheries vessel) 3: Lillian Ngoyi class (IPV) (Former Dept of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries vessel)
(Amphibious/Transport/Supply)	1: Drakensberg (fleet oiler/transport/supply)
Scientific (Survey)	1: Protea class (Survey) (UK Hecla)
Harbour patrol	21: Namacurra class
Structure	ASA Navy Office in Pretoria; Fleet Command in Simon’s Town; Naval Station in Durban; Maritime Reaction Squadron (commissioned in 2008 and tasked with peacekeeping operations, boarding at sea, humanitarian assistance and anti-terrorism)
South African Military Health Service (SAMHS)
Structure	Surgeon General and Staff (Pretoria): Office of the Surgeon General; Chief Director Force Preparation; Chief Director Support Tertiary Military Health Formation: 1 Military Hospital (Pretoria); 2  Military Hospital (Cape Town); 3 Military Hospital (Bloemfontein); Institute for Aviation  Medicine (Pretoria); Institute for Maritime Medicine (Simon’s Town); Military Psychological  Institute (Pretoria); Military Vetinary Institute (Potchefstroom) Military Health Support Formation: Military Health Base Depot (Pretoria);  Military Health Procurement Unit (Pretoria) Area Military Health Formation Area Health Units: Western Cape, Eastern Cape, Northern Cape,  Free State, KwaZulu Natal, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Northern Cape, North West Province Military Health Training formation: School for Military Health Training;  School for Military Training; Physical Training, Sport and Recreation School; Nursing  College; SAHMS Band Mobile Formation: 7 Med Bm Gp; 8 Med Bn Gp; 1, 3 and 6 Med Bn Gps

SANDF overview

Minister of Defence: Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula

Chief of National Defence Force: Lieutenant General Solly Shoke

Member of: UN, AU, IAEA, ICAO SADC, ISDSC

Structure: The President is Commander-in-Chief of the South African National Defence 
Force (SANDF) and appoints the Chief of the SANDF. The Department of Defence falls under 
the Ministry of Defence with its Minister and Deputy Minister of Defence. The Chief of the SANDF 
is the commander of the SANDF, which comprises of four services: South African Army, Navy, Air Force 
and Military Health Services. The Joint Operations Division (J Ops) is responsible for the deployment 
of the SANDF on operations.

2. South African defence economics

Defence budget: 
FY 2012/13: R38.4 billion
FY 2013/14: R39.9 billion (projected)
FY 2014/15: R42.3 billion (projected)

Defence budget percentage per GDP (2000-2010)





















Defence budget per US$ Mil (2000-2011)























Defence budget percentage growth (2000-2011)























3. State of military forces

South Africa’s military operational effectiveness is hampered by insufficient funding. A significant amount of the defence budget is going to salaries alone. The SANDF does not have the funds needed to adequately train its personnel, replace old equipment and maintain existing equipment. While the 1998 Strategic Defence Procurement packages saw the acquisition of new fighter jets, helicopters, frigates and submarines, most other equipment is ageing rapidly and due for replacement. The South African Air Force has been particularly hard hit by budget constraints that are limiting flying hours.

In November 2012, Admiral Alan Green told the South African parliament that the South African Air Force did not have a sufficient budget to keep all of its 26 Gripens in the air. The SAAF’s nine reserve squadrons have also been grounded because of a lack of funding.

Maritime security operations in the Indian Ocean have also drained the South African Navy’s operational budget. According to Admiral Green the Navy requested R126 million for these operations but only received R63 million from South Africa’s national treasury. Permanent deployment of a vessel to the Mozambique Channel on anti-piracy operations has resulted in heavy wear and tear on the four frigates, while the ageing of the other vessels in the Navy fleet remains a problem.

The SANDF has a number of projects underway for the replacement of existing equipment (such as Biro: offshore and inshore patrol vessels; Saucepan: maritime patrol aircraft; Hoefyster: Badger infantry combat vehicles; Sepula: armoured vehicles and Vistula: trucks). However, funding is hampering the acquisition process and resulting in large delays.

An important development for the SANDF is the drafting of the 2012 Defence Review, which looks at defence spending, threats, procurement, strategy, industry and defence force structure. This far-reaching document is scheduled to be presented to Parliament in early 2013.

4. Country threat report

South Africa is currently facing no external military threats. The biggest security threats relate to internal security with high crime rates threatening foreign investment. Public disorder bought on by poor government service delivery has also become an issue in the last seven years.

The country is also suffering from crime ridden national borders. However following a government decision in 2009 the South African military was redeployed back to the country’s borders and has achieved some success in this regard.

Maritime piracy has also become an issue following several pirate attacks in the Mozambique Channel in late 2010. The South African military has since launched Operation Copper within this area, with a ship and aircraft on patrol, to counter the threat and no piracy attacks have been recorded since.

5. External deployments

Operation	Country	Personnel/asset
Peacekeeping	DRC	1 200
Peacekeeping	Sudan (Darfur)	800
Peacekeeping	CAR	300
Stabilization (Anti-Piracy)	Mozambique	1 x Combat vessel + air assets

SANDF Address
Private Bag X161
0001 Pretoria
South AfricaTel: (+27 12) 355 63 21
Fax: (+27 12) 355 63 98
e-mail: info@mil.za
Web: www.dod.mil.za

http://www.defenceweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=29273:south-africa&catid=119:african-militaries&Itemid=255