As you may know, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has referred to the riots that broke out in South Africa as a failed insurrection, and vowed to track down and punish the instigators. The riots and looting were apparently started by supporters of former President Zuma, who is currently awaiting trial on corruption charges. But is that all there is to it? According to Benjamin Fogel in his article "The insurrection in South Africa is about more than freeing Zuma" there is a lot more behind what is going on.
He begins by observing some of the big clues that this was not simply a popular uprising. For instance:
- The unrest began on Friday, July 9, when a heavily armed and masked gang hijacked trucks near the Mooi River Toll Plaza and used them to block the road before torching 25 vehicles. The toll gate is a key part of the country’s economy as it links the port of Durban, the largest in sub-Saharan Africa, to the country’s economic heartland of Gauteng. Following this attack, other groups used burning tyres and logs to block roads. In the days that followed, large numbers of people looted shopping centres across KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, before turning on other businesses.
- At the same time as the mass looting was taking place, a well-organised and planned campaign of economic sabotage targeted the entire supply chain of KwaZulu-Natal along with key communications infrastructure, water facilities and other vital parts of the province’s economy. Medical clinics, mosques, schools and pharmacies were also targeted and, as a result of the unrest, the entire COVID-19 vaccination drive in Durban, a city of around four million, was suspended amid a devastating third wave.
- According to reports from various municipalities in KwaZulu-Natal, police in the province largely disappeared from the streets during the riots. Intelligence reports about possible attacks on malls or logistics centres were ignored. There are also credible accusations that senior KwaZulu-Natal ANC officials and public office holders were involved in planning and executing these attacks.
This unrest has been unleashed by forces calling for the release of Zuma from prison. These forces are known as the Radical Economic Transformation (RET) faction of the ruling African National Congress (ANC). The RET includes Zuma’s unruly children who have been calling for violence and agitating via social media; political entrepreneurs who sell their services and media profile; mafias, who see defending Zuma as a way of protecting themselves from prosecution; military veterans loyal to Zuma, a senior commander of the ANC armed wing during the anti-apartheid struggle; elements of the charismatic churches, which have been vocal in defending Zuma for years and have benefitted from his patronage networks; and Zulu nationalists, as Zuma was the first Zulu president and has mobilised support through ethno-nationalist appeals to the country’s Zulu population. Since 2008, this faction has threatened to make the country burn if Zuma is prosecuted for one of the many corruption charges that still hang over his head. In the run-up to his imprisonment, these forces rallied at his infamous Nkandla compound – the site of the defining scandal of his presidency after it was revealed taxpayers forked out some $20m for “security upgrades” there – and armed men threatened violence and civil war if Zuma was imprisoned.
The ANC government has admitted that this faction also includes rogue elements from the state intelligence services, which absconded with billions of rand and untold numbers of firearms during Zuma’s presidency.
It is interesting to me how prominently intelligence services seem to pop up over and over again in the scandals revealed in the last 10 years. Remember Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer's comments in January 2017 that Pres. Trump was "really dumb" to take on the intelligence agencies, adding: "Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.” I suspect the intelligence services are playing king maker in more countries than just the United States.
Fogel goes on to note that the RET (Radical Economic Transformation) faction are "those who wish to radically transform South Africa’s economy in favour of the Black majority."
The irony is that the term “Radical Economic Transformation” was itself cooked up in the wake of the Nkandla scandal by the hired guns of British PR firm Bell Pottinger, founded by a Tory peer known as Margaret Thatcher’s favourite spin doctor. Bell Pottinger was employed by one of Zuma’s sons with Gupta money to clean up his father’s image. The firm, whose luminous clients included Augusto Pinochet, might be no more, but its campaign proved successful and RET is now an essential part of South Africa’s political lexicon.
The author describes the Gupta family as "a second-rate business clan from India who relocated to South Africa after the end of apartheid in pursuit of easier pickings."
With the help of Zuma and the sacks of cash handed out from “the Saxonwold Shebeen” – as the Guptas’ compound in Johannesburg is known – ministers were chosen, contracts were awarded, and economic policies decided based on what was best for the Guptas. According to some estimates, state capture cost the South African economy 60 billion pounds ($82.6bn).
He then explains how this qualifies as what I would term a Secret Combination:
The RET faction is best understood as a network of loosely aligned groups ranging from factions of the ANC, opposition parties – including at times the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) – criminal networks, media groups and influencers rather than a coherent movement. These groups coalesce to defend shared interests, in particular access to rents, securing illegal markets, like the illegal tobacco trade and the country’s booming extortion industry, and protection from criminal prosecution. They share a set of enemies from prying investigative journalists, the tax revenue collection service, prosecutors and the Ramaphosa faction of the ANC, as well as a rhetorical commitment to the articulation of a nation or social order based on Black majority control, particularly related to state-owned enterprises. Despite its alleged “radical” mask, RET essentially amounts to rhetoric to disguise a parasitic form of looting from state-owned enterprises and the call for more of the economy to be transferred into the hands of these criminal networks.
In this case, the imprisonment of Zuma might be the hill this faction is willing to die on, as they know that his imprisonment opens the door to future prosecutions. It is their shared opposition to accountability and the need to hold elements of political power in order to maintain their rackets that unites these forces under the banner of “free Zuma”. They are likely attempting to extract concessions from the government that protects them from prosecution or being removed from public office.
Also:
The closest analogy to the continuing unrest in South Africa can be found in the reaction of powerful, entrenched organised crime groups that are threatened by legal prosecution and a loss of political protection. The actors involved in instigating unrest are linked to organised crime and have used public office to build powerful patronage machines; factional politics in the ANC is a battle over resources and rackets rather than ideology in this sense, even if unlike the mafia RET still needs some popular support.
Fogel believes that the attempt will backfire on the RET faction and its supporters, citing for example the backlash in Italy against the Cosa Nostra when it unleashed a targeted wave of car bombings and assassinations in the 1980s and 1990s to attempt the closure of prosecutions against leaders that had been arrested. Similarly, he notes the failure of Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel in Columbia during the same time period who had pursued terrorism as a means of stopping his extradition to the United States.
There are some early signs that the RET overplayed its hand. The insurrection was geographically limited and has already sparked public fury; now the images on television screens are of communities repairing the damage, cleaning up the cities and rebuilding rather than fire, mass looting, and destruction. It is also possible that the unrest has in fact placed Ramaphosa in a stronger position to deal with his enemies, as he likely enjoys widespread public backing to crack down on those responsible. Furthermore, if he introduces the Basic Income Grant, which he has been hinting at over the last few days, this might go down as the defining moment of his presidency and secure him a second term.
As I hinted above, we very well may face such a Secret Combination of similarly loosely aligned groups, including intelligence services, major wealthy families, Silicon Valley oligarchs, and probably certain large criminal enterprises. Right now they probably think they are safe having gotten Biden elected and sworn in as President. But there are election audits, as well as proposed audits and investigations being called for in several states. If this grows to be sufficient to threaten the replacement of Biden with Trump, this Combination may well again resort to riots and looting, or worse.
Long ago, in the 1990s, I played a game called Primal Rage. The game was set in a post-apocalyptical Earth ("Urth") and the players controlled a giant dinosaur or some other huge monster that would battle head-to-head in different parts of Urth, including the ruins of an old human city. As an added touch, the game designers had tiny human figures that would sometimes dart out around the feet of the monsters. Right now, it seems to me that normal people are catching glimpses of titanic struggles between organizations that are much larger and more powerful than we can imagine. We are the tiny people dancing around the feet of monsters. It doesn't seem there is much we can do other than to avoid being stepped on.
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