By: Steven Ncobo
A corruption buster and ethical tower of the ANC, Lindiwe Sisulu is undoubtedly, the president South Africa needed. She is also, undoubtedly, the president South Africa should have had. Instead, SA got Cyril Ramaphosa. Why do you think this is?
Sisulu was the one NEC member who had the relevant qualifications, governance expertise, political experience and brand appeal for the job of presidency. Her track record and no-nonsense stance on corruption speaks for itself..
But the US intelligence and UK secret services as the dominant partner of the Anglosphere, in cahoots with the Thuma Mina faction, went all out to prevent Sisulu from ever becoming the leader of the party and the mineral-rich country that South Africa is. Surely this is because their biggest fear is a leader with integrity.
A leader who will not kowtow to the Stellenbosch mafia, who will put white hegemony in its place, who will put the people native to this land first. A leader who fearlessly speaks about decolonisation and redistribution.
Ramaphosa, of course, poses no such threat. This is because his ethics were compromised way before he became president. For the full story of his historical partnership with white business, read this excellent article penned by Sipho Singiswa, Ramaphosa and Mantashe groomed for decades by white monopoly capital. https://africanewsglobal.co.za/ramaphosa-and-mantashe-groomed-for-decades-by-white-monopoly-capital/
What Singiswa did not mention was that Ramaphosa was the son of a policeman way back in the 1970s, he used to frequently visit the Sisulus in their house in Orlando, it’s he alone who knows the rationale behind those visits. It is said that Ramaphosa senior was the policeman who kicked down the doors and raided the homes of student protesters and those in the Struggle for the emancipation of black people from apartheid.
This included the Sisulu family and it was he who kicked down the doors of their Orlando home in Soweto and arrested the Sisulus. Ironically, the Sisulus continued to embrace Ramaphosa. It is no surprise then that the son of the late Ramaphosa is now dealing with Lindiwe Sisulu in much the same fashion – kicking down the doors of her stellar record in governance, throwing her into the jail of obscurity by finally axing her from his Cabinet in a cruel and strategic stroke of an axe that has been poised and ready to execute her for a long time.
We all know that the children of the black African policemen of apartheid were headhunted as spies in the Struggle against apartheid, and this is most probably what Ramaphosa was. A spy. His history in student Christian politics and his subsequent position in the Urban Foundation speaks volumes. So, too, does his move into mining unions.
As Singiswa points out, all of this was to make sure that he was groomed to one day become president of South Africa, and that when he did he was trained to have the best interests of the colonial land and resource grabbers at the forefront of his concerns. He would, in return, be greatly rewarded for this through shares that would make him a billionaire. He would be allowed into the exclusive club for the top 1% of white wealth extrapolated through the usurpation of the people of Mzansi.
This, of course, has all been criticised by Sisulu, much to the ire of her detractors in the business sector and in government. Her call to decolonise the judiciary was the last straw for these straw men.
If this were the 1980s, Sisulu would probably have been assassinated. Except that nowadays there are other means of political assassination easily funded by the talk left, act right ANC and their business partners. Their new weapon of political assassination is the paid-off media as they pull out all the stops to smear and ruin reputations while constructing certain left-leaning figures as monsters with malevolent plots to destabilise whole countries through murder and mayhem. This is exactly what they have been doing to Sisulu for the past decade.
In this same decade it has become more than obvious that the media has been fully captured in a post-apartheid South Africa. It has also been strategically weaponised against leftist ideology in a way that, ironically, reflects apartheid-style reporting.
The “Daily Maverick” is the head honcho in this conservative media terrorism. They seem to be funded to take out anyone who threatens the status quo. This includes the strategic demonising of figures such as Winnie Mandela, Chris Hani and Lindiwe Sisulu. That they belong to different eras makes no difference. They all spoke unambiguously insofar as native African agency is concerned.
Anyone who does not recognise this manipulation of the press has to be very naïve. And if they do not recognise that Ramaphosa is a puppet in the pockets of the local and global hegemony, then they must be suffering from political amnesia. He does not work for the people, he works for the Western powers that be.
How else did he get away with the Marikana massacre, the Glencore corruption debacle, the Lonmin, MTN tax evasion swindles and last but not least, the Phala Phala money laundering heist. Like any member of any mafia, Ramaphosa is afforded protection from all and any damage. This ensures that the man at the top is both compromised by and beholden to his handlers and thus is putty in the hands of the top wealthy white percentile and will do their bidding for a price.
God forbid Sisulu took over that seat and told them all to go to hell.
What we now have is an ANC president who seems to be working closely with the DA in their planned coalition of neo-liberal parties for next year’s elections.
Of course, Lindiwe Sisulu’s commitment to the Freedom Charter values of the ANC – her call to go back to its liberation premise, her love of the party’s original liberation tenets, make her enemy number one to the “Thuma Mina” faction and the DA. They had to get rid of her come hell or high water.
She became the ultimate threat to this anti-black, anti-poor plot to sell off whatever was left of the resources to the Anglosphere under the brutal thumb of the US and the dollar. The speculation that Ramaphosa was so hugely funded in his CR17 campaign, including EU funding, in order to set the coalition plan in motion and break the ANC from within rings true. Lindiwe Sisulu, with her great credentials and commitment to the party, had to go.
What has Ramaphosa actually done for South Africa since he became president? Nothing is what. Even his EU backers have thrown up their hands in despair at their blind backing of such a useless horse. As for the citizens of this land, he has plunged us into darkness and sold off assets at an alarming rate. He has further subjugated the poor to heinous living conditions. He has tightened the screws of draconianism. He has brought us the disgrace of Phala Phala. Food prices are out of control and totally unregulated, leaving millions of already malnourished babies and children to starve. He turned a blind eye on the so-called state capture report because it implicated some of his friends. Instead, he rewarded them with Cabinet positions.
Ramaphosa has also reneged on the withdrawal of South Africa from the ICC. He has resisted land redistribution on behalf of Western powers who own our resources. And he has kept our so-called sovereign country in the master/slave grasp of the World Bank economy by wilfully neglecting his government’s relationship to BRICS.
Sisulu, on the other hand, has left a shining legacy. She leaves behind 4,3 million houses which benefited 20 million people in SA, She uncovered corruption in the water sector with no support from the president, let alone prosecutions of the politically connected individuals during CR’s administration. She took tourism to the next level and helped the industry survive the Covid blackout of global tourism.
She also called for the judiciary and its constitution to be decolonised and changed into a system more friendly to the people rather than landowners and business. She has consistently refused to sell out to white business – all of which has made her a pariah to the neo-ANC and the private sector alike.
Sisulu is senior in every way to Ramaphosa. She is senior in political rank, she is senior in governance experience, she is senior in her own right as an awarded MK soldier – not only because she is a Sisulu, even intellectually she is above him. Ramaphosa would refuse a public debate with Lindiwe, as it was once requested by Sisulu’s camp in 2017 and his team refused. She is a woman who has worked hard to serve her country and deliver on the ANC’s original promises..
Ramaphosa, on the other hand, has worked hard at trying to displace Sisulu from liberation history as part of the mandate handed to him by his handlers. This all comes together when we see him handing over the tourism department and industry to an obscure opposition party whose board is composed of all DA members, an opposition to the ANC rather than keep the strong-minded Sisulu in his Cabinet.
With her progressive ideology, Lindiwe could have delivered us from the dominant dollar and created a stronger alliance with BRICS. Eskom would be effectively working and lights would have stayed on had she was the president. This would have potentially given South Africa the opportunity of returning to its developmental mandate and becoming a more significant voice in global politics. Under Ramaphosa we remain the ka**irs of the global economy – mere pawns and puppets willing to do the bidding of Western leaders who all want a chunk of our plentiful resources. That this leaves the majority usurped and landless and impacts the entire African continent’s economic growth and sovereignty, is not Ramaphosa’s concern.
It is Sisulu’s concern, though, and this is why he has ruthlessly attempted to slaughter her political career. But try as he might, Sisulu remains a Sisulu with all her Sisulu integrity and accolades intact. She was correct to say lights were on during all Ramaphosa’s predecessors’ tenures, but during his term lights are off. Truth-telling is what is courageous and inspiring about Sisulu; she must remain alone in that line because she is ethically winning history.
Comrade Lindiwe Sisulu is indeed the president South Africa deserves but never got.
Steven Ncobo is a member of the South African Security Forces Union, a military trade union. He writes in his personal capacity.