Unpacking the latest tax hikes in South Africa

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South Africa’s 2018 budget seemed to be all about tax hikes. The most significant was the first increase in Value Added Tax (VAT) since 1993 from 14% to 15%. Sibonelo Radebe asked Muneer Hassan to make sense of the tax increases.

What is your general impression of the budget speech?

The 2018 budget was predictable in that it was similar to previous years – expenditure rose, funded by an increase in taxation. What was notably different in this year’s budget is that the issue of fruitless and wasteful expenditure was in the spotlight. One new measure being proposed on this front is that state owned entities will be denied tax deductions for expenditure or losses that are classified as fruitless and wasteful.

To minimise the annual increase in budgeted expenditure, a reduction in cabinet expenses amounting to R85 billion over the next three years is proposed. This is a positive proposal which shows a serious intent by government to cut expenses where possible. It can also be taken as a hint that not only a cabinet reshuffle, but also a possible reduction in the cabinet number count, is on the cards.

What is your impression around the key tax announcements?

I was not surprised by the one percentage point increase in the VAT rate. South Africa is in a way catching up with other countries in the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Their average VAT rate is around 19%. And most African countries have a higher than 14% VAT rate.

It was also not surprising that the VAT rate was raised rather than personal income tax. South Africa has seen a decline in collections from personal income taxes over the past few years. This has been attributed to job losses, lower bonus payments and moderate wage settlements. This suggests that the personal income tax front may have reached a ceiling.

The VAT rate increase is further justified in that 30% of the wealthy taxpayers contribute 85% of total VAT collections.

And to shield those on the bread line from the increase, social grants were adjusted by more than inflation.

The concept of multi-VAT rate, differentiated rates for different items, was on the cards. But the idea was dropped because it was considered unfeasible – it would need additional enforcement to work properly and there is also a view that it could have created legal uncertainty.

Instead of multi-VAT rates, the budget proposed an increase in duties on luxury goods such as cars, smart phones and so on through the current ad valorem excise duties. These items are largely consumed by wealthier people.

What are the main drivers of these tax developments?

The main driver was the need to fund the tax revenue shortfall which stands at R48.2 billion for the current (2017/18) financial year, slightly lower than the projected amount of R50.8 billion. The reason for the shortfall is due to lower than expected tax revenue collections, which is directly affected by the employment numbers, company results and consumer spending.

In addition government is struggling with ever increasing debt-service costs due to slowing economic growth and against rising social expenditure needs. The budgeted debt-service costs for 2018/19 is R180 billion. Goverment’s borrowing space has shrunk. Sovereign debt has skyrocketed towards unsustainable levels over the past few years.

The tax policy proposals are designed to raise R36 billion in additional revenue. The increase in the VAT rate will bring in an extra R22 billion.

From a tax perspective, were there any missed opportunities?

I expected more relief for small businesses particularly on the ease of administration for these taxpayers. Small businesses of today are big businesses of tomorrow. Unlocking the potential of small business is therefore a vital stimulus to the growth rate.

Any other thoughts?

I think this budget was largely about increasing taxes through indirect taxes. The increases in VAT, fuel levy, environmental taxes, ad valorem excise duties are all indirect taxes. This leads to the tax burden being placed ultimately on the end consumer. In my opinion this is the easiest way to increase taxes without introducing additional administrative costs.

Muneer Hassan, Senior Lecturer in Tax, University of Johannesburg

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

The Zuma regime is dead. But its consequences will linger for a long time

Jacob Zuma.
Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters

The flood of obituaries to the Zuma presidency are likely to stream in for some time to come. But how should the nine-year period of President Jacob Zuma’s rule be understood in its historical and theoretical contexts?

We can answer the question by applying a theoretical lens that distinguishes between state, government and ruling party as three dimensions of politics. The state is the overall machinery of power comprising different institutions and practices. It tends to persist over time even when parties, politicians and cabinets shift. Government is a formal structure of ministries and policies which may change every few years. The ruling party is an actor that plays a role in running the government, depending on circumstances.

The balance between the three dimensions is not fixed. Together they form what is often called “the regime”. This refers not only to structures, policies and practices, but also to a less tangible “ethos” that gives sense of coherence to the entire set of institutional relationships.

The post-apartheid era has seen three terms of rule, dominated by the same party, the African National Congress (ANC). For most of the post-apartheid period they were led by three very different personalities – Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma. Each was governed by a different ethos: reconciliation and nation building under Mandela, and building a technically capable state under Mbeki.

So what was Zuma’s ethos, and how does the period of his rule compare to his predecessors’?

Different eras

The primary challenge for the Mandela government was to merge different political institutions and traditions into a coherent whole while maintaining social and political stability. The ethos of reconciliation dominated. This required a reformist approach – keeping the old style of management while gradually changing personnel and policies. An orderly but gradual shift of power was needed to ensure that the volatile environment did not get in the way of a new political order being built.

This approach ensured a peaceful transition. But it was also problematic. Many senior apartheid and Bantustan bureaucrats kept their positions. Even when they were replaced, their ethos and mode of operation prevailed.

With the transition to the Mbeki period, changes in state, government and party became evident. The primary challenge shifted from ensuring stability to enhancing modernity; from racial reconciliation to technical proficiency; from creating a unified state to making it efficient.

The new imperatives were centralising planning and designing and implementing policies. The idea of the “African Renaissance” served as a unifying ethos. But it had ambiguous effects. On the one hand it presented a vision of unity and development. On the other it led to racially-inspired delusions, as was the case with Mbeki’s AIDS denialism and his support for Robert Mugabe’s regime in Zimbabwe.

The biggest problem of the Mbeki period was that its attempts at centralisation excluded voices from the margins of politics and non-state actors. In turn this undermined the quest for policy effectiveness, a failure that was to serve as the background for the Zuma period.

Man of the people

Zuma’s appeal was due precisely to his being so unlike his illustrious predecessors. Neither a giant of the struggle like Mandela nor an aloof intellectual like Mbeki. Instead, he was seen as a man of the people. Not known for grand policy visions, he was expected to be pragmatic, seeking practical solutions instead of ideological purity.

His lack of commitment to specific policies meant that he was supported by opposing factions that thought him malleable. In short, a man for – almost – all people. Even his ethical transgressions weren’t seen as obstacles. They made him more human instead.

And human, all too human, he proved to be. Dispensing with the need to offer grand visions for the state, or claim competence in government, or manage the party with impartiality, Zuma used power to advance a single goal: self enrichment. The ethos was clear: grab as much and as fast as you can.

The strategy he adopted was to mix and match individuals and structures to serve the one goal. His approach had three components which he pursued systematically. These were to control:

• parts of the state that would help shield him from accountability, in particular the criminal justice system;
• aspects of government that facilitated access to resources: minerals and energy, state-owned enterprises, ultimately the treasury; and
• party institutions to neutralise opponents, particularly those who could undermine him.

The rest he discarded. Areas of government not directly relevant to looting resources received no attention. Left to their own devices, spheres such as education, health, welfare, public safety, housing, agriculture, water, were handled with no interference from the top.

Corruption and its aftermath

Corruption on a large scale preceded Zuma and is likely continue for a long time after him. The difference is that he opened the gates for political entrepreneurs to enrich themselves by creating looting opportunities.

The impunity that guided his actions permeated all state institutions. But there was resistance: within the state the court system remained largely intact and, in many cases, fought back as did the Public Protector. Large sections of the media, NGOs, the political opposition, and principled individuals all played a role. Enclaves within government – the Treasury in particular – continued to perform their role as long as they could.

Eventually the tide turned, heralding a new transition of power in the ANC. So, what lessons can we draw from a period that saw the state subordinated to the whims of a small number of people using it to their own ends?

One key takeaway is that free media and civil society voices, independent courts and accountability mechanisms, and honest politicians are all necessary. South Africa came very close to losing the battle against abusive and exploitative state power. The consequences of this will be with the country for a long time to come, which is why continued vigilance is essential.

Ran Greenstein, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of the Witwatersrand

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

South Africa must resist another captured president: this time by the markets

Cyril Ramaphosa addresses MPs after being elected president of South Africa.
Reuters/Mike Hutchings

The African National Congress (ANC) has made a dangerous habit of bringing post-apartheid South Africa to the brink of instability and the common ruin of all. The resignation of former President Jacob Zuma and his replacement by Cyril Ramaphosa was such a moment. It brought home the point that the over-concentration of power in the office of the president has clearly not worked.

A rethink on president-centred politics and the threats it poses to the democracy are crucial for the post-Zuma period. South Africa needs to re-imagine democratic practice, leadership and how power works.

Some sections of South African society have reduced the Zuma problem to a corruption problem. Dismantle Zuma’s kleptocratic network, the argument goes, and all is solved. Zuma’s demise and a few high profile prosecutions will suffice.

But another view on the Zuma problem – and one with which I concur – suggests it is a problem of contending class projects inside the ANC. The neoliberal class project under Presidents Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki saw South Africa integrated into global markets. It maintained stability through modest redistributive reforms. This project laid the basis for a new black middle class to emerge while systematically weakening labour and the left.

But it surrendered the state (including the presidency) to transnational capital and the power of finance.

The Zuma project, on the other hand, advanced looting as the basis of accumulation and class formation. The extra-constitutional state that emerged deepened the macroeconomic, institutional and legitimacy crisis of the ANC-led state. The left and labour, aligned with the ANC in the tripartite alliance, were co-opted and divided. Both these projects are entrenched in the ANC.

Now what? Messiah-centred presidential politics is extremely dangerous. This is particularly true in a country of extreme inequality and with a formal concentration of power in the office of the president. If politics is not represented, thought and acted beyond this, South Africa is going to repeat historical mistakes.

Since the ANC’s December 2017 conference the media, the banks and international institutions have been talking up a narrative of the “Cyril effect”. Zuma’s removal is attributed to this. In fact the Cyril effect is a narrative of capture of South Africa’s new president by transnational and financial capital.

South Africa’s democracy cannot afford another captured president beholden to credit rating agencies, currency fluctuations, investment flows and business perceptions. South Africa’s democracy has to be grounded in the needs of its citizens and the mandates given by its Constitution.

The ‘Cyril effect’ is hyperbole

The end of Zuma was in fact not because of the Cyril effect. In the main Zuma was removed by the people’s effect which connected the dots of corruption, a mismanaged state and rapacious capitalism.

This resistance was expressed over 15 years through various institutions and social forces. These included:

• Battles inside the South African Communist Party (SACP) against Zumafication but which led to expulsions;
• By feminists during Zuma’s rape trial and subsequently through #RememberKhwezi;
• Artists and cartoonists lampooning Zuma, including with shower heads;
• The ongoing struggles in communities against corrupt officials;
• The Marikana massacre in 2012. This produced rage among workers and major realignments away from Zuma’s ANC;
• The call by trade unions like the metalworkers’ Numsa for Zuma’s removal;
• The Vukani-Sidikiwe campaign during the 2014 elections which opened up a national debate on how citizens should vote;
• The rise of #ZumaMustGo Campaign. This was in response to the sacking of Nhlanhla Nene as finance minister in December 2015. The NUMSA-led United Front played a crucial role in this;
• The #FeesMustFall movement. Students’ demands included labour insourcing as well as quality, decommodified and decolonised higher education;
• The 2016 local government elections. These were a harbinger of seismic political realignments against the ANC in key cities;
• The role of investigative and nonpartisan media in probing corruption scandals. And the publication of the Gupta-leaks as well as “A Simple Man” and “The President’s Keepers”;
• The courageous role from 2010 onwards of then public protector Thuli Mandonsela in drawing attention to ethics and legal violations by Zuma;
• Court decisions affirming the judiciary’s independence in relation to Zuma;
• Zuma’s miscalculation in firing finance minister Pravin Gordhan, the rallying of activists and the rise of #SaveSouthAfrica. What followed were some of the largest post-apartheid protest marches;
• The powerful voice of liberation struggle veterans like Ahmed Kathrada and others who called for Zuma to resign.

The ANC’s legitimacy crisis

As a result of all this activity the crisis of legitimacy in the ANC – and the ANC state – has deepened. This has placed immense pressure on the party to act. In this context, Ramaphosa is playing out his role out of necessity and to secure the ANC’s electoral fortunes.

For middle class and rich South Africans Ramaphosa’s state of the nation speech represented a return to normalcy – a democracy that works for a few. That’s not to say that the new president didn’t make some important announcements in his state of the nation address. This included his comments about state owned enterprises, redistributive state programmes and anti-corruption mechanisms.

Nevertheless, the speech struck chords that resonated with the “return to normalcy” narrative.

But South Africans can’t repeat the mistake made in 1994 when progressive civil society demobilised. The people’s effect has to continue to shape a post-Zuma democracy in the interests of all. The ANC has abused majority support and cannot be trusted with the future of South Africa.

People’s power has to be strengthened and continuously mobilised around strengthening democratic institutions, ending corruption, fundamental economic transformation and advancing systemic alternatives to the climate crisis.

Vishwas Satgar, Associate Professor, Department of International Relations, University of the Witwatersrand

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Zuma's removal was a masterstroke: can it be repeated for the economy?

Negotiation was key to convincing Jacob Zuma to step down as South Africa’s president.
Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko

The removal of South African president Jacob Zuma will be remembered for several reasons. One may be the gap between reality and what reporters, commentators and those who shape the national debate say happened.

There have been two South Africas over this period – one created by the echo chamber which dominates the public debate and the other in which millions live. There is no sign that this gap will narrow soon and so what South Africans read and hear will not be what most people experience.

This is a problem for the economy because business decisions which influence people’s ability to meet their needs may be taken on the strength of messages which are believed not because they are true but because they are the only story told.

The echo chamber insisted that a weak and vacillating ANC leadership allowed Zuma, a president widely rejected by citizens (the ANC’s vote share has declined by more than 20% under his watch), to dictate how and when he should go. It did this by trying to negotiate his departure rather than simply telling him to go.

This ignores the constitution and the real world of ANC politics.

On the first score, South Africa is a constitutional democracy, not a one party state. Presidents are chosen and removed by a Parliament elected by the people, not a committee of the governing party.

The ANC can ask a president to go but if the incumbent says no, only Parliament can force them. South Africa’s Parliament begins sitting in the second week of February; until then, the ANC could not remove Zuma. He was gone little more than a week after his removal by Parliament became possible.

If a company did something major which needed doing in little over a week, it would be hailed as a model of efficiency.

On the second, Zuma would not have been removed by the ANC unless those who wanted him out negotiated with him. Negotiation was essential because it was the only way in which to build enough support within the ANC to force him to go.

A point which seems lost on the echo chamber is that the ANC is deeply divided: two factions compete for power. One has supported Zuma avidly, the other wanted him gone. The new leadership was divided almost equally between them – those who wanted Zuma gone may have enjoyed no more than a two-vote majority in the ANC’s national executive committee, which runs it between conferences. A divided organisation which fires a president by a two-vote majority will face years of trouble and so Zuma could not go unless a much bigger majority was built on the national executive committee.

Factors that made things difficult

Two factors made this more difficult. Many in the ANC remember President Thabo Mbeki’s removal in 2008 as a traumatic event: it prompted a split and began the ANC’s slide at the polls. Even some who opposed Zuma may have baulked at treating him in the same way as Mbeki.

The ANC also spent decades being harassed by the apartheid government. This produced a tendency to stick together in the face of outside threats and to settle disputes internally. Using Parliament to throw out its own president does not fit well with this. Some national executive committee members who did not support Zuma may not have wanted Parliament to remove him.

So those who wanted Zuma out could not simply pass a resolution and be done with him. They needed a national executive committee majority so big that Zuma would be taking on not a faction but most ANC leaders. They could rely on some support from members who switched sides in the hope of gaining positions after Zuma went. But far more was needed.

Negotiation was the key. It impressed waverers by showing reluctance to repeat the Mbeki trauma. More important, Zuma’s opponents may have realised that he was likely to negotiate in a way that would alienate support. They presumably expected him to put himself before the ANC and the country: the more he did this, the more support would grow in the national executive committee for his removal and the more his options would narrow.

So it proved. Within the ANC, negotiation strengthened the anti-Zuma faction’s claim to care about the organisation. It revealed Zuma as a leader who cared far more for himself than the ANC. By the end, some of his most committed supporters were begging him to go.

There is nothing weak or vacillating about this. The faction which wanted Zuma gone read their options accurately and did what they needed to achieve their goal. They have also achieved changes –- a commission of inquiry into state capture, a board for the power utility Eskom which is widely agreed to want to run the company, not loot it, and police action against people accused of abusing public money, which few expected to happen this soon.

Hints of how the country will be governed

Why is this important for the country and the economy? The politicians who removed Zuma are likely to be running the government for the next five years. Current events were their first test and so they give a hint of how South Africa may be governed.

The echo chamber says they show that government will be weak and incompetent. The evidence tells a different story.

This does not mean that South Africans now know that government will do what needs to be done to restore the economy to health and improve living standards.
Current events do raise a crucial question about the new ANC leadership’s approach to the economy, but it is not the one which exercises the echo chamber. The question is not whether it can work out what is needed and get it done – it has shown that it can. It’s what it thinks is needed and what it is willing to get done.

The new leadership has shown great interest in the insider agenda – tackling the threats to the market economy which worry those who shape the debate. This means restoring the economy to the state it was in before Zuma: ensuring that government and markets operate as the rules say they should.

That is essential. But far more is needed. Unless the new leadership tackles economic exclusion, the problems South Africans associate with Zuma will remain. The key question is whether the new leadership believes that negotiating ways to include millions more in the economic mainstream is worth the same effort as removing Zuma – and whether they are up to this more difficult but more important task.

Steven Friedman, Professor of Political Studies, University of Johannesburg

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

What Ramaphosa needs to do to fix South Africa's foreign relations after Zuma

Cyril Ramaphosa being sworn in as the President of South Africa by Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng.
GCIS

When President Cyril Ramaphosa sits down to brief a newly appointed Minister of International Relations and Development, he might wonder what to say.

Here are three suggestions which could help guide the conversation.

Strengthen diplomatic service

Extensive evidence suggests that a professional and well-trained diplomatic service is vital for the success of any country’s foreign policy. During the Zuma presidency South Africa’s diplomatic service has been aimless at best, and sometimes simply embarrassing.

Some of this has been caused by a failure to focus on the needs of professionals in the Department of International Relations and Cooperation. So, this will be a good place to start.

Since the Mandela presidency, transforming the diplomatic service has been a priority. This has succeeded in terms of racial equity, although some work remains to be done on gender equity. But this is not a straightforward issue. Not all countries are keen to receive women as foreign representatives.

Of course, this is no excuse: thinking and planning around this issue, especially at the managerial level, has to match the requirements for gender transformation within the country.

An effective diplomatic service needs a continuous training programme. Language and career-level training does take place within the department, but long-term career preparedness – from entry into the service to exiting it – has dropped away. Unfortunately, diplomatic training has been merged with policy planning , which has led to mission drift.

But the biggest obstacle to the development of a professional foreign service remains the issue of political appointments. All countries make these. But the operating principle is that they are limited, and made for strategic reasons – say, a well-connected individual appointed to a particular country to handle a specific issue.

In South Africa’s case, though, this has gotten entirely out of hand. Estimates are that some 80% of senior positions in South African missions abroad are occupied by ‘external non-career’ appointees. Many are casualties of the squabbles within the ruling party, the African National Congress.

Whatever the reason, the outcome has placed limits on the career prospects of the professional diplomatic corps.

Even more worrying is that many of these appointments have been made without due diligence. In the past few years, the dodgy backgrounds of a number of senior appointees have come to the fore. Besides embarrassing the country, it has undermined the professionalism of career diplomats.

Making use of a public process to select heads of diplomatic missions – along the lines of the Judicial Services Commission for the appointment of judges
may be a way forward on this issue.

Take BRICS seriously

The opportunities that the idea of BRICS – the grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – offers the country is poorly understood. As a result, BRICS gets a bad press, especially in establishment foreign policy circles.

This is a mistake, and needs to be changed, because BRICS offers new ways to think about – and engage with – the rise of new powers in a changing world. For good or ill, the liberal global order that was established in the late 1940s has given way to new ways of managing world affairs.

Many obstacles stand in the way of BRICS as a political project, but the idea has opened up a pathway to a non-Western-centred way of understanding international politics. South Africa can help to shape this new thinking about the future, which should draw on the spirit of the decolonisation debate.

The issue of where South Africa fits into BRICS and what this means for the world should be steered by a Minister (and Ministry) who understand that the country must help to make international rules, and not simply abide by them.

The region matters most

Southern Africa remains the formal focal point of the country’s foreign policy. Unfortunately, this is not always acknowledged.

The politics of each individual country in the region weighs on the fate of this country. A simple measure of this is the number of citizens from the region who are living and working in South Africa.

The following example carries the point. In some circles, it is thought that millions of Zimbabwean are living in South Africa. The figures for the citizens of other countries in the region are probably in the same ballpark.

South Africa must respond to the migration issue by accommodation, not the fierce acrimony that has emerged elsewhere. The hard fact is that the country’s borders cannot be sealed off from its neighbourhood, the only solution on offer by security-centred analysts who, unfortunately, dominate the debate about the region.

Foreign policy is not only about security: it is mostly about listening and understanding.

For the region to be at peace, South Africa has to recognise that the borders that divide its people are, after all, colonial constructs.

Foreign Policy begins at home

These three issues may seem banal – after all, the debates about South Africa’s post-apartheid foreign policy have largely focused on big-ticket items like the African Renaissance, making peace in Africa, and reforming the United Nations.

But these high-flying ideas have missed an old truth, namely that foreign policy invariably begins closer to home.

Peter Vale, Professor of Humanities and the Director of the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS), University of Johannesburg

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

The Ramaphosa moment: how many Messiahs can one country take?

Cyril Ramaphosa addresses a rally to commemorate Nelson Mandela’s centenary year in Cape Town, South Africa.
Reuters/Mike Hutchings

Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa – forgive me, President Ramaphosa – is self-evidently a private and reserved human being. Since his decision to contest the leadership of the African National Congress (ANC), he has been the subject of an endless series of “think-pieces”, more or less informed including by this author, as well as a year or more of attack videos and smears from those he ultimately defeated at the 2017 ANC elective conference. His private life has been examined, and people have tried to double-guess every move he has made, or should have made, or is about to make.

The man must be squirming. Worse than the attention, however, is his recent elevation to Messiah status in the media and the popular imagination. He maketh Zuma to bugger off. He maketh the currency to rise and pessimism to fall; he will cleanse where others defiled; and he may lead South Africans towards the promised land – or, for the non-believers, will it be down the garden path?

Messiahs are an expression of the need for the yoke of oppression to be lifted, by a god-anointed action man (there are precious few female Messiahs in history) who does what mere mortals cannot. Nelson Mandela was South Africa’s first Messiah, but was seemingly born for the role, relished it, and given the massive damage to economy and society in late apartheid, almost everything he did was inevitably positive. The economy grew, rainbows were believed in, the national football team Bafana Bafana were football champions. Anything was possible.

In Ramaphosa’s case, the context is horribly similar. The economy has been smashed by the labyrinthine tendrils of corruption and state capture that have insinuated themselves into every aspect of public life, compounding those already present in the private sector.

For every state owned enterprise there is a private sector player like KPMG, and for every bribe that is accepted, someone else offered it. Zuma tended his corrupt garden well, and South Africa feels like it is the early 1990s again: political killings are rife in KwaZulu-Natal, the economy is in tatters, racial tensions are high, the poor are getting poorer, the rich richer, and the country’s sports people seem unable to win a game of tiddly-winks.

What kind of president?

What kind of president will Ramaphosa be? Will he, like Zuma’s predecessor Thabo Mbeki, gravitate towards foreign affairs, the African continent, and playing a global role in various summits and multilateral bodies? Or will he be more Zuma-like, and regard the secret and security forces as his natural base?

The last 10 days should have answered part of this question. Because of Ramaphosa’s chess moves the country has seen the true colours of everyone in the ANC’s top six leadership and beyond. He and all South Africans now know where many of his enemies are. Those desperate to be reborn Ramaphosa-ites have become visible, and he knows (as South Africans do) who can be trusted and who not. He has forced people to play their roles out in public, for all to see and learn, and better to understand the challenges he faces.

More importantly, the state utility Eskom has been completely reconfigured with a new board, and fear has begun to percolate through to all those eating South Africa’s public funds.

But the most significant moves were left to the very end. Zuma’s last day as president – not in any way coincidentally – began with the news that the home of the powerful Gupta family had been raided and arrests had been made.

The second masterstroke was to allow Zuma to show his true colours in a rambling interview on state television to the nation. Everyone was given a taste of what Ramaphosa has had to deal with.

Once Zuma knew that his time was up – his Gupta buddies being arrested, his son Duduzane being looked for and some of his lieutenants deserting him – he declined into self-pity.

Zuma myths

For years the world has been fed several myths about Zuma. That he was steeped in strategy and that he was a master tactician. There was also the fable that he had dirt on everyone and would never be outmanoeuvred, that even a wounded lion is dangerous, that he may be down but never out, and so on.

Instead, the terrible sadness of a crumpled bully was in evidence on SABC TV. He spent 30 minutes spinning silly yarns about the lack of accusations or evidence against him, insisting he was innocent, trying to blame anyone but himself. It laid bare the truth – Zuma is merely PW (Botha) rebooted. Apartheid president Botha, nicknamed the Groot Krokodil (big crocodile), was a hardliner who refused to leave office and alienated everyone even in his own National Party.

Zuma’s incoherent television appearance was an old jackal meeting an old krokodil. Each filled with a sense of victimhood, denying any wrongdoing, both responsible for destroying the economy, the social fabric, and any number of lives. Ramaphosa left Zuma to show all South Africans his overweening vanity, his inability to distinguish right from wrong, and his arrogance. Shakespeare could not have plotted it better. Ramaphosa emerged as the true strategist.

A mere mortal

Ramaphosa is no Messiah, and when the post-Zuma champagne corks stop popping, South Africans need to assess him as a mere mortal. One who is inheriting a country laid almost as bare as the country Mandela inherited in 1994.

Ramaphosa has a massive job ahead of him, in trying to reignite national pride, self-belief, and mutual trust. He also has to salvage the ANC’s reputation and win the next election in 2019, no mean feat in itself. It would also be nice to win a match or two.

The man, rather than the Messiah, has shown he can move multiple chess pieces at once – and win. The last 10 days have seen him completely eclipse his enemies within, having defeated those without when he was elected ANC president in December. This will be a quiet president, in place of Zuma’s inane giggling and braggadocio that has gone. But as the saying goes, always watch the quiet ones…

David Everatt, Head of Wits School of Governance, University of the Witwatersrand

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

South Africa's future hinges on Ramaphosa's strategic skills

Deputy President of South Africa and leader of the country’s governing party, the ANC.
GCIS

South Africa’s 2018 State of the Nation address by the president of South Africa has been postponed. This unprecedented step makes it clear that the country is seeing the final days of Jacob Zuma as president although it may take a day or a week or two before things are finalised.

What’s important is that Zuma isn’t allowed to detract from the momentum that newly elected ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa has started to build. This has included a successful trip to Davos where he unequivocally pulled the carpet from under the nuclear power programme favoured by Zuma.

Ramaphosa has been working diligently to corral Zuma’s remaining freedom of action. Zuma was finally persuaded to establish a commission of enquiry into state capture and Ramaphosa started restoring credibility to the management of state owned enterprises.

The momentum built by Ramaphosa seems sufficient to avoid the most pressing concern, the spectre of a downgrade of South Africa’s long term local currency debt rating by the rating agency Moody’s. Such a step would trigger South Africa being excluded from Citi’s World Governance Bond Index. RMB Morgan Stanley projects a potential outflow of US $5 billion if this happened.

But his freedom of action is severely constrained by his narrow victory during the ANC’s leadership elections and the divisions within the party’s top leadership. The party has no choice but to design an early exit strategy for Zuma, or suffer significant political damage during the 2019 elections.

A downgrade would constrain growth and severely affect the ANC’s 2019 election prospects. Ramaphosa needs his own mandate, which only the 2019 national elections can deliver.

Economic growth

In November last year Ramaphosa outlined an economic plan aimed at generating jobs and economic growth and tackling inequality. The plan set a growth target of 3% for 2018, rising to 5% by 2023.

For its part the Reserve Bank has forecast the economy will grow by a measly 1.4% in 2018 and 1.6% in 2019. The International Monetary Fund is even more pessimistic, forecasting growth of 1.1% for this year.

Nothing is more important for South Africa – and Ramaphosa as the country’s incoming president – than growth and translating that growth into employment creation. That, in turn, requires foreign and domestic investment, which is only possible with policy certainty and rapid movement to a new leadership. It also requires a positive partnership with the private sector.

Assuming Zuma’s exit is imminent, serious consideration needs to be given to the team that Ramaphosa must put in place to help him achieve the economic turnaround he envisages. This brings us to the need for a cabinet reshuffle, including the appointment of a credible minister of finance.

Next steps

South Africa has a cabinet which is double the size required. A few ministers, such as Rob Davies at trade and industry and Naledi Pandor in science and technology, have established their credibility. But a large number of the current cabinet shouldn’t be considered for inclusion under a Ramaphosa administration.

The most important post is the minister of finance. Given the fact that former finance minister Nhlanhla Nene seems to have moved on, it is likely that either Pravin Gordhan or his then deputy Mcebesi Jonas will be invited back.

Ramaphosa needs to turns his narrow victory into a positive outcome. And he must convince non-voting ANC supporters who abandoned the ANC under Zuma to return to the fold of the governing party in 2019.

It will also depend on legal processes – such as the various probes into corruption and state capture – to strip out the internal contradictions within the top leadership of the ANC.

Long term voting trends indicate declining support for the ANC and as things stand, a divided ANC remains a plump target for opposition parties. It could see support decline from its current 62% nationally by around 10 percentage points in 2019 if that trend is not reversed. The impact of these developments were set out in a recent book Fate of the Nation that included political and economic scenarios to 2034.

A more positive party future requires the ANC to rapidly rediscover its unity although this seems unlikely in the short term. And here is the nub – as much as the traditionalist faction is associated with corruption and state capture, it also represents a strong ideological current that could still derail the party and even lead to it splintering.

Ramaphosa has been dealt a weak hand but he has proven to be a consummate strategist. The next few days and weeks will be crucial and are likely to determine South Africa’s future for several years to come.

Jakkie Cilliers, Chair of the Board of Trustees and Head of African Futures & Innovation at the Institute for Security Studies. Extraordinary Professor in the Centre of Human Rights, University of Pretoria

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

ANC power struggle shows that South Africa is not exceptional (after all)

Nelson Mandela and his successor Thabo Mbeki presided over the halcyon days of South Africa’s new democracy.

South Africa is in the grip of political uncertainty. That President Jacob Zuma will go before the official end of his tenure after national elections next year is inevitable. But when, how, and at what cost to the ANC and the country?

The current crisis is being framed as one of internal party politics – or the immorality of Zuma and his supporters. In fact, the impact is much bigger and wider, affecting South Africa’s standing in Africa, and in the world.

In 1994 the world, and particularly African countries, looked to South Africa to provide ethical leadership after the end of apartheid. This was boldly depicted in the “African Renaissance” – the cultural, scientific and economic renewal of the continent championed by former President Thabo Mbeki.

For a short time, South Africa occupied the moral high ground and was able to influence the agenda of intergovernmental organisations like the United Nations, the African Union and the South African Development Community.

South Africans were called on to play a key role in a number of areas. Two stand out: conflict management in, for example, Burundi, DRC, Lesotho, Ivory Coast and Zimbabwe. And as the “bridge-builder” between the West and Africa.

It also twice took a seat on the United Nations Security Council and was part of initiatives such as the India Brazil South Africa Dialogue Forum. It also became part of the Brazil Russia India China and South Africa (BRICS) association among other international bodies.

But from around 2010 South Africa’s leadership role began to slip. It has now arrived at a point where it can no longer claim to be leading any renaissance. The new reality is that it’s beset with governance challenges similar to many other African states.

The rest of the continent watches and sees yet another example of a dream deferred. The expectations that the country would lead the continent have gone. It, too, is in the throes of regime survival. The lament is:

South Africa has become just another African country.

The beginning of the end

The meltdown of the ANC should not have come as much of a surprise given events over the past 20 years, and the inevitable decline of liberation parties. Pointers to the inglorious direction the country was headed in were evident in the corruption around the arms deal (1999), the fight over Mbeki’s refusal to roll out antiretroviral treatment (1990s), the decline in the economy on the back of a global crisis (2008-2009) and rising unemployment (from 2008). To this should be added the growing appetite of an emerging black elite, whose acquisition of wealth was closely tied to state resources tenderpreneurs.

Then in 2007, buoyed by populist appeal for a change of the guard, Zuma rose to power as president of the ANC. The following year the ANC’s National Executive Committee forced Mbeki to resign. Mbeki had lost the support of the committee over a range of issues including economic policy, his style of leadership, and a focus on continental and international affairs rather than domestic issues.

Mbeki sacked Zuma in June 2005, after the court findings of a corrupt relationship with Schabir Shaik, his friend and financial advisor at the time. The political contestation between the Mbeki and Zuma factions set in, leading to Mbeki’s political demise.

The deepening of the structural roots of the malaise in South Africa has therefore been long in the making.

Conflation of the state and the party, state capture, and patronage politics became the defining features of Zuma’s presidency. And ultimately they became the factors that led to his dethroning. South Africa began to display the stereotypical symptoms of the typical African state:

• elite decadence in the midst of poverty,
• accumulation of wealth through proximity to state resources and state capture,
• challenges in the delivery of services, and an inability to provide human security.

South Africa’s exceptionalism claim is dead

South Africa’s claim to exceptionalism in Africa has been dispelled. Two decades ago Ugandan academic and author Mahmood Mamdani pointed to the myth of South Africa’s exceptionalism and that it shares the legacies of colonialism and the bifurcated nature of the state that colonialism had bequeathed other African states too. This meant that South Africa was no different in its political and development outcomes.

Leadership is an important mediator for the direction of any country. Visionary and principled leadership led the continent – and South Africa – to liberation. It’s what is sorely needed now across the continent, and in South Africa.

South Africa finds itself in its current situation because the country has succumbed to nationalist, chauvinist, patriarchal and elite interests. But changing the president, though necessary, won’t be sufficient to get South Africans out of this quagmire. South Africans needs new leaders as well as new forms of leadership that understand the driving forces of post-colonial states and their proclivity towards non-democratic forms of governance.

South Africa needs leadership that places it once again in the political and socio-economic trajectory of Africa and fosters a collective responsibility to develop and share its wealth among all who call it home. It must also develop the governance structures that will lead it to that goal. To do this requires moving beyond regime survival towards reinvigorating a visionary pan-African leadership that once again begins to set an agenda of unity, prosperity and dignity.

South Africa is no longer the beacon of hope for the continent it once was. But South Africans needn’t despair. The recognition of its banality finally presents the opportunity for its people to sit as equals at the table with other Africans and engage in much needed dialogue on the kind of leadership and governance that would take them forward on the journey to an African Renaissance.

Cheryl Hendricks, Professor of Political Science, University of Johannesburg

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Zuma's reluctance to leave office is offering sound lessons in democracy

South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma is resisitng attempts by his party, the ANC, to force him out of office.
Reuters/Sumaya Hisham

South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma is digging in his heels and refusing to relinquish the top job despite mounting pressure from his own party, the African National Congress.

His determination to stay put is being widely condemned by a range of South African voices. But there’s a case to be made that his reluctance is doing South Africans a favour as it is forcing them to clarify various constitutional and political issues. Most obviously, albeit inadvertently, he is asserting the supremacy of parliament over the authority of the party.

Because the top leadership structures of the ANC are divided – including the top six where it seems that only four want him to leave office immediately – Zuma is exploiting what wriggle-room he has left. He’s effectively saying that the forces ranged against him aren’t convincing enough, and that he still has considerable support within the party.

In other words, he is daring the ANC leadership to put a motion of no confidence to the National Assembly and to use the party’s majority to vote him out of office.

His gamble is this: he can survive such a motion if it is put by an opposition party because to support an opposition motion would prove hugely embarrassing to the ANC. The speaker of parliament has already put down a motion of no confidence tabled by the opposition party, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), for discussion after the budget speech on February 22.

For the ANC to put down its own motion, and then try to ensure it received a majority, would all take time, time, time. And that’s what Zuma wants so that he can rally his supporters, convince waverers that he still has some clout, and maximise his bargaining power.

If the party’s new president Cyril Ramaphosa could manage to secure a clear majority of the ANC’s national executive committee (it’s highest decision making body in between elective conferences) asking Zuma to resign, then it is conceivable that Zuma might accede to leave office. But more likely, he would continue to force the ANC to resort to parliament.

And even if he were to step down at the very last moment, his behaviour is reminding South Africans where, ultimately, the power to elect and depose a president lies, and that is, with parliament.

Zuma’s nine lives

Zuma has already survived umpteen votes of no confidence brought about by opposition parties. Not enough ANC MPs have ever voted with the opposition to carry the motion.

In the last event, a small minority of ANC MPs used the cover provided by a secret ballot to vote in favour of the motion (or to abstain). But the large majority voted for Zuma to stay in office. At the time, they could use the excuse that the ANC’s national conference was coming up and that it was the appropriate place for the leadership issue to be decided. But now that has passed, Zuma’s favoured candidate has lost, Ramaphosa has triumphed, and he now wants the President to resign. What excuse would the ANC MPs have for not supporting the opposition motion this time round?

The justification that they cannot be expected to vote for a motion put by the EFF is morally and politically threadbare. What is Ramaphosa going to do? Argue that internal ANC unity matters more than the needs of the country? What would the popular reaction be to the ANC in effect voting for Zuma to stay in office?

Frankly, the ANC’s cover would be blown.

The role of MPs

Beyond the immediate issue of Zuma, South Africa’s political parties need to debate what they expect of MPs. There was much talk prior to the previous vote of no confidence for the need for ANC MPs to display their ‘integrity’, a code word for them to break party lines and vote for the opposition. In other words, it was suggested that MPs should resist acting like party cyphers. Yet, in the ANC’s eyes, its MPs are ‘deployed’ to parliament, and have to obey party dictates. Little or no room is left to individual conscience.

Cyril Ramaphosa, Deputy State President of South Africa, and president of the governing party, the ANC.
GCIS

Historically the tradition in parliamentary systems has been that certain issues, often relating to human rights, are resolved by party whips allowing MPs to vote according to their individual consciences. In South Africa, political parties have largely been spared potential conflicts over divisive issues such as the death penalty because they’ve been resolved by the Constitutional Court.

This has meant that, since 1994, MPs have largely been kept in party line because of the threat of being disciplined by their parties. The ultimate threat is their dismissal from the party which in turn means being kicked out of parliament. This follows largely from South Africa’s adoption of a party list proportional representation system. In contrast, in constituency based electoral systems, for instance in the UK, MPs are accountable downwards to voters in their constituencies as well as upward to their party bosses in parliament.

This means that MPs in South Africa are unlikely to put the interests of the people (the voters) above those of their party. This issue is not satisfactorily resolved, as the ANC likes to say it is, by voters having given the majority party most votes at the previous election.

Alas, political life is more complicated than that.

Voters want accountability as well as representation. While most South Africans understand the need for proportionate representation of political parties in parliament, there is nevertheless a substantial hankering for MP’s to be more accountable to the voters.

There is a widespread argument that a change to a mixed member proportional representation scheme would square this particular circle. Some MPs would be elected from multi-member constituencies (with from three to seven MPs as recommended by the Van Zyl Slabbert Commission on the electoral system) while others would be elected from party lists to bring about overall proportionality. This would mean that South African could be able to identify particular constituency MPs who had particular responsibilities to represent them.

In turn, this would mean that MPs would have to consider more than the interests of party bosses when casting their votes.

It is certainly an attractive idea, and is one which needs a proper airing. Whether practice would match electoral system theory is another matter. For all their numerous faults political parties can’t be dispensed with; nor can they be expected to operate without exerting discipline on their representatives in parliament.

At the same time, citizens want to be represented by individuals who are more than party donkeys.

South Africans need to debate in what sort of circumstances they expect or make allowance for MPs to deviate from the party line. But they need to recognise that there is an inherent ambiguity in the role of MPs: at times, they are faced by conflicting obligations, simultaneously to party versus people. Accountability demands that they justify their decisions.

Ironically, Zuma is banking on that ambiguity, while hoping that ANC MPs duck the need for accountability.

Roger Southall, Professor of Sociology, University of the Witwatersrand

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Why it's taken so long to prosecute state capture cases in South Africa

Head of South Africa’s National Prosecuting Authority, Shaun Abrahams.
Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko

The Asset Forfeiture Unit of South Africa’s National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) has confirmed that it is probing seven cases related to what has come to be known as “state capture”, involving R50 billion. This development follows months of public frustration due to lack of action by the country’s law enforcement agencies despite mounting evidence pointing to massive corruption. Politics and society editor Thabo Leshilo spoke to legal expert, Professor Penelope Andrews.

What does the NPA’s decision tell us about South Africa’s prosecutorial capabilities and resolve?

The failure of the NPA to act swiftly and vigorously against those involved in state capture shows that there has been a dereliction of duty.

The NPA has the capability and could muster the resolve to pursue prosecutions according to its constitutional mandate: without fear, favour or prejudice. So its decision to act now says little about its capabilities but more about its autonomy and independence.

The latest developments highlight the challenges around the appointment of National Director of Public Prosecutions. From all accounts, the incumbent Shaun Abrahams is deeply compromised. His loyalty to President Jacob Zuma, who appointed him, means that he is caught in a professional malaise and inertia.

The president has the right to appoint the head of the NPA as set out under South Africa’s Constitution. There is unlikely to be a conflict of interest if a strong independent individual is chosen. But when a weak individual – someone who is chosen for reasons other than their legal talent and skill – is put in the post, the chances are that they will fail to act decisively against their line managers. The result will be the situation South Africa finds itself in now.

Why did it take so long for any action to be taken?

There are several possible explanations that the NPA could offer for the delay.

Firstly, they could argue that it takes time for evidence to be gathered to build a solid case.

Secondly, South Africa’s political climate, particularly in the last two years, has not been conducive to pursue those involved in allegations of state capture. This seems to have changed with a new president, Cyril Ramaphosa, at the helm of the governing African National Congress.

The third possibility is that the NPA has finally decided to act because it didn’t have a choice. Of all the institutions involved in discussions about state capture, the NPA’s silence has been the most noticeable. It finally got to the point where it had nowhere to hide and was forced to act.

The last possibility is that the NPA has been spurred on by developments in the British Parliament where Lord Peter Hain called on UK regulatory bodies to investigate some British companies mentioned in the Gupta e-mails. These actions stand in direct contrast to the inaction of the NPA, an embarrassment, thereby forcing it to proceed.

Should South Africans be concerned about the rule of law?

The NPA and the police have not promoted and protected the rule of law as well as they could have. But the country’s judiciary has been a ray of light.

Except for a few lapses, the judiciary has consistently tried to strengthen the foundations and safeguard South Africa’s very fragile democracy since 1994. This has been despite many attacks – direct and indirect.

Several judgments show this. One was the case of Johannesburg businessman Hugh Glenister who took then Police Minister Nathi Nhleko and the Director of Public Prosecutions to court to force them to prosecute police officers involved in a crime. Another was the Nkandla case which involved the use of public money on President Jacob Zuma’s private homestead. The Constitutional Court found that Zuma had failed to uphold the rule of law.

The unique feature of the South African Constitution is that judges are the final arbiters over the exercise of all public power. This is a welcome departure from the apartheid era, where parliament was sovereign and judges had no authority to review or overturn parliamentary actions, no matter the lack of morality or justice. In short, public power under apartheid was not subject to review by the courts.

Through their creative and courageous decision-making the post-1994 judiciary, especially the Constitutional Court, has demonstrated the textbook example of an effective separation of powers doctrine in a democracy.

Why is it hard to prosecute corruption and commercial crimes?

It is probably harder to prosecute corruption because it invariably involves subterfuge and deception to create the web of relationships. These relationships are often challenging to unpack.

And the levels of complexity in certain kinds of commercial cases – sometimes involving layers of complicated financial and other documents – make them harder to prosecute.

Yet the NPA has in the past two decades succeeded in a few prosecutions for corruption, including that of Schabir Shaik, Zuma’s then financial benefactor.

Its challenge is resources. Its a David versus Goliath situation if you compare the expertise in the NPA’s ranks with the resources that white collar criminals have at their disposal. This is true even though the NPA has expertise in its senior ranks.

In addition, in most cases South Africa’s top legal minds provide expertise, at very high rates, to white collar criminals.

There is nothing that prevents the NPA from employing outside expertise to prosecute complex cases, as it did in its case against tax dodger David Cunningham King.

To prevail in the pending state capture prosecutions, the NPA should look beyond its in-house expertise and gather the best talent in the legal profession.

Penelope Andrews, Dean of Law and Professor, University of Cape Town

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

South African news station ANN7 is on the skids: why it won't be missed

Television news station linked to the Guptas faces imminent closure.
Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko

The closure of any media outlet is normally mourned by all journalists, because of the loss of jobs, diversity and competition. But the announcement that South African pay-TV operator Multichoice will not renew the contract of news channel ANN7 will be no great loss to the news media, or the public debate.

It will, though, be a setback to the corrupt three-way state capture conspiracy which brought together ANN7, Multichoice and elements of the government, as exposed by the now notorious Guptaleaks emails.

The emails were leaked some months ago from inside the Gupta clan. The family has been at the centre of state capture accusations in South Africa because of its extraordinary influence over President Jacob Zuma, his family and members of his Cabinet. The allegations of corruption have extended to Multichoice. It stands accused of making multi-million rand payments to both ANN7 and the South African Broadcasting Corporation to get their support for Multichoice’s attempt to influence government policy on digitalisation.

Yesterday Multichoice, which is facing an inquiry by South Africa’s broadcast regulator Icasa, announced the results of its own internal probe. The company said it had made mistakes, but there was nothing corrupt or illegal about its decisions. Nevertheless, it would not be renewing ANN7s contract when it expired in August. Instead Multichoice would open up bidding for another black-owned news station.

The night before this announcement, ANN7 had run a piece on air about the Vrede dairy farm, in central South Africa, which is part of the police investigation into Gupta-inspired fraud. The TV station promised to give the country the real story that the rest of the corruption obsessed media were not telling.

The report aired by ANN7 was a clear illustration of the kind of dishonest journalism the station has produced since its launch in 2013. It was unmistakenly part of the fight back campaign being launched by Zuma’s supporters, a number of whom are among those accused of fraud in relation to the dairy farm.

An unseemly story

As part of the piece station owner Mzwaneli Manyi, a former government communicator who was gifted the station by the Guptas, went to the farm himself to show that it was not derelict, but a “world class facility”, a fact being downplayed by the rest of the media. It was a repetitive piece in the ANN7 tradition of trying to deflect criticism of friends and sponsors accused of corruption and state capture.

There were also some significant omissions in the report. It made no attempt to tell the audience why the farm’s current state was relevant to fraud that happened at least five years ago under different ownership. Nor did it address the issue of whether it was worth the R220 million of taxpayers’ money that went into it, nor why most of that money appeared to have been peeled off to pay for a lavish Gupta wedding and other non-farming activities.

It did not say whether the farm was profitable. They did speak to some of the 45 employees who said they and their families depended on the farm, though the townspeople they spoke to all said that the politician’s promises that this farm would benefit the community had come to little.

It was the worst kind of sham, poisonous journalism for which ANN7 has become known. It was based on a false premise (that the media were suggesting that the farm was still derelict) and intended to throw up dust around those accused of involvement in what was by all accounts a fraudulent business venture.

One veterinarian took one look at the pictures of cows and tweeted, “Call the SPCA”, saying these bony bovines did not look healthy enough to produce significant amounts of milk.

But Manyi did not get an expert to look at the pictures. Instead the station wheeled out analysts and commentators to repeat the station’s mantra that other media was hiding the real story as part of the grand white monopoly capital conspiracy.

A history of dishonest journalism

Was this kind of dishonest political propaganda the reason Multichoice not renewing ANN7’s contract? It’s impossible to tell how the decision was made because the company gave no details of what their mistakes were, nor any explanation of why it was not corrupt.

One possible conclusion is that Multichoice and its parent company, the global internet and entertainment group Naspers, was doing what it has done best for over 100 years: move with the political wind to stay onside with whoever is – or is going to be – in Pretoria’s Union Buildings. With Zuma about to be replaced as president of the country by new African National Congress president Cyril Ramaphosa, the Gupta connection becomes a liability rather than an asset.

This is why the demise of ANN7 is more worrying for the Gupta network of corruption than for journalists or the viewing public. Surely in the post-truth age we have to act against those who knowingly purvey falsity?

The closure of ANN7 could be viewed as South Africa’s Facebook lesson: diversity in news is of dubious value when it means polluting the air with dishonest journalism. What South Africa audiences want is more, better, independent journalism – and they will have a better chance of getting that if ANN7 is replaced by another station.

There is a precedent in this country for a media outlet that was born in sin and shunned for decades by anyone who cared about news and journalism: The Citizen newspaper. It was started in the 1970s with secret government funds, with the express intention of undermining the Rand Daily Mail, at the time the most liberal and anti-apartheid of our newspapers.

The Citizen went through multiple changes of ownership until this history was bleached out. But only diehard apartheid supporters would have mourned its closure in the 1980s, just as only diehard Gupta-supporters will mourn the disappearance of ANN7.

What this incident highlights more than anything is the danger of the Multichoice monopoly on pay-TV, which gives it extraordinary power to decide what alternatives audiences have to the public broadcaster, the SABC.

Rather than the future of ANN7, South Africans should perhaps worry about Multichoice having so much power, and using it so cynically.

Anton Harber, Caxton Professor of Journalism, University of the Witwatersrand

This article was originally published on The Conversation.