Last week the Zondo Commission heard alarming testimony on the extent of corruption within the State Security Agency (SSA) under Jacob Zuma\u2019s presidency. This had gone so far that elements of a parallel state had begun to be built to further the interests of Zuma and his allies \u2013 the \u2018Radical Economic Transformation\u2019 faction of the ANC, as it is now known.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anywhere up to R10 billion was looted by Zuma, his Ministers of State Security and their deployees. Witnesses claimed that under \u2018Project Commitment\u2019 Zuma received at least R80 million in cash between 2015 and 2017. This was literally carried-out of the SSA in instalments of between R2.5 and R4.5 million per month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Other projects included attempts to bribe judges presiding over cases impacting Zuma. One witness claimed this succeeded at least once. The SSA also funded media outlets, including the African News Agency<\/em> newswire service, the CNBC Africa<\/em> news channel and the online magazine Southern African Report<\/em>. They were tasked with planting stories that portrayed Zuma and his presidency in a positive light, especially as the scale of corruption in Zuma\u2019s rotten government began to be exposed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In December 2017, the month of the ANC\u2019s Nasrec conference, where the Zuma faction ultimately lost control of the ANC presidency to Cyril Ramaphosa, there was a big increase in cash outflows. This was, almost certainly, used to try and buy votes, mirroring the CR17 campaign\u2019s own big business funded war-chest. Also deployed to Nasrec were agents of a \u2018Special Operations Unit\u2019, an autonomous and unaccountable SSA unit \u2013 in other words a rogue unit! \u2013 that acted as Zuma\u2019s personal \u2018dirty tricks\u2019 squad. Many of its agents were brought-in by side-stepping normal recruitment procedures. It was also revealed that there was an outflow of guns and ammunition from the SSA during this time \u2013 arming whom, for what, it is not yet clear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The conduct of both ANC factions at Nasrec \u2013 Zuma\u2019s and Ramaphosa\u2019s \u2013 confirms the irredeemably corrupt character of the ANC. It is not a political party, where principled political and ideological differences are debated, but a criminal racket, where control of various offices, and the patronage networks that can be built from them, go to those with the deepest pockets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even now, this nest of thieves continues to plot and scheme against each other, even as a historic pandemic burns through society at the cost of thousands of lives, and the piling of additional suffering and misery on millions of working class families whose existence is already blighted by dire poverty. The only road out of this situation is through organisation and mass struggle. This includes, crucially, the building of a mass workers party that pushes the ANC aside and leads the working class in the socialist transformation of society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dirty Tricks<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Of all the new revelations at the Zondo Commission, it is crucial for the working class to register and digest the exposure of the \u2018dirty tricks\u2019 being used against the workers\u2019 movement and other protest movements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Testimony at the Zondo Commission has again confirmed that the SSA was responsible for the creation of the Workers Association Union on the platinum belt in 2014, following the Marikana Massacre. The intention was to use WAU to undermine the Amcu trade union, which had displaced the ANC-aligned NUM as the dominant union amongst mineworkers. Whatever divides the ANC factions today, they were united then in the need to suppress the mineworkers\u2019 struggle. Cyril Ramaphosa, then a director of miner Lonmin, outside government but still a prominent ANC leader, pressured the police to take \u201cconcomitant action\u201d against the mineworkers\u2019 the day before the massacre. The ANC factions remain united in their determination to suppress the workers’ movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The MWP\u2019s predecessor organisation, the Democratic Socialist Movement, which played a key role in the 2012 mineworkers\u2019 strikes, was a victim of SSA spying and interference, in collusion with mining company bosses. In line with its denunciation of the mineworkers strike as \u201ccounter-revolutionary\u201d, the SACP\u2019s Communist University project-leader, aided the state\u2019s activities by publishing the names and workplace addresses of leading DSM members on social media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the so-called \u2018Project Academia\u2019, the 2016 #FeesMustFall movement was infiltrated. Also targeted were the NGOs Right2Know and the Council for Advancement of the South African Constitution, as well as activists and organisers around the #ZumaMustFall protests in 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The capitalist media has mostly passed over all of this, mentioning it only in passing. There is a reason for this. It is normal practice for capitalist governments to monitor, spy-on, and even infiltrate and undermine, the workers movement, the socialist left and other protest movements. This is the case even in those capitalist countries which claim to uphold the democratic rights of their citizens, and claim to defend freedoms of speech, association etc. For example, in the UK, the oldest parliamentary democracy in the world, a so-called \u2018spy-cop\u2019 scandal is currently unfolding around police infiltration of socialist and anti-racist groups, including of the MWP\u2019s sister-organisation, the Socialist Party of England & Wales, when it was still known as the Militant<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thabo Mbeki\u2019s government laid important foundations for Zuma, when, in 2003 the mandate of the SSA\u2019s predecessor was expanded to include \u201cpolitical and economic\u201d intelligence. This is clear code for spying on the development of working class organisation and struggle in order to defend the capitalist status quo against any threats to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This was an inevitable development once the ANC government had decisively chosen to defend capitalism against the working class majority\u2019s demand for a rapid rise in living standards following the dismantling of apartheid. This was, and is, impossible upon the basis of capitalism and would therefore increasingly bring the working class into collision with the ANC government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Capitalism is a system where a minority exploits the majority. It is, by its very nature, incompatible with genuine democracy. The ruling classes have been repeatedly forced to make concessions to the working class majority\u2019s democratic aspirations throughout history. Especially in the advanced capitalist countries it was possible to grant what Marx and Lenin called \u2018bourgeois democracy\u2019 \u2013 a superficially democratic mask that hides the capitalist\u2019s real economic dictatorship over society. But even here the mask has often slipped. Things are even more precarious in the neo-colonial world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The democratic rights fought for and won by the working class under bourgeois-democratic regimes are important tools to supplement the class struggle, but they can never develop fully to match the masses\u2019 democratic aspirations within the straight-jacket of capitalism. Organisations like the SSA grow out of capitalism\u2019s contradictions, becoming a necessity for the ruling class to maintain its control of society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The parallel in methods between the SSA and the apartheid-regime is not accidental \u2013 the sponsoring of WAU mirrors the apartheid regime\u2019s sponsoring of Inkatha\u2019s amagundwane<\/em> union, UWUSA; the funding of the African News Agency mirrors the apartheid-regime\u2019s funding of The Citizen<\/em> newspaper. Under capitalism no democratic rights can be taken for granted, they must be defended every step of the way and linked to the working class\u2019s struggle for socialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Therefore similar anti-working class intelligence operations will inevitably continue under the Ramaphosa presidency. Indicating as much, Ramaphosa\u2019s current Minister of Intelligence, Ayanda Dlodlo, attempted to stop the Zondo Commission from even proceeding with hearings on the SSA, in order, she said, to protect \u201cnational security\u201d. The ruling class will need organisations like the SSA more than ever as the crisis of capitalism continues to deepen. A \u2018cleaned-up\u2019, \u2018professionalised\u2019 intelligence agency \u2013 which many are now calling for \u2013 will potentially be a greater threat to the working class than Zuma\u2019s crony gangster outfit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The MWP calls for the complete disbanding of the SSA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Of all the new revelations at the Zondo Commission, it is crucial for the working class to register and digest the exposure of the \u2018dirty tricks\u2019 being used against the workers\u2019 movement and other protest movements.<\/p>\n Testimony at the Zondo Commission has again confirmed that the SSA was responsible for the creation of the Workers Association Union on the platinum belt in 2014, following the Marikana Massacre.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2584,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,31,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comment","category-corruption","category-trade-union"],"aioseo_notices":[],"acf":[],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2586"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2589,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2586\/revisions\/2589"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}