Media Monitor, 20 June 2011

Sixty-year-old Patricia Sylvester, a cleaner at the Bibette Clothing factory in Cape Town, said she wakes up at night in a cold sweat.

"I'm planning to try to retire next year. God help me," she said. "How can I do it if they’ve lost my pension money?"

Clothing workers who retire receive a lump sum provident fund payout. Sylvester is expecting to receive R50 000, which she plans to invest. But, like thousands of other clothing workers, she is increasingly alarmed by rumours that the provident fund money has been squandered.

South African Clothing and Textile Workers' Union (Sactwu) officials say that about 20 000 workers are affected, but others claim many more workers stand to lose.

Workers complain that no one at the unions head office is answering their questions about whether their money can be recovered from the investments they have heard were made in Canyon Springs Investments 12 and Pinnacle Point.

"We're so upset because we really don't know what is going on," said one worker interviewed outside the House of Monatic factory in Salt River. "We only know what we read in the papers. Nobody is keeping us informed and it’s our money." The worker said that Cosatu's Western Cape leader Tony Ehrenreich had visited the factory recently.

"The factory gave him a new suit but all we wanted to know was what has happened to our money and some of us eventually walked out of the meeting," she said.

Clothing factory workers earn on average R700 a week and contribute about 6.5% of their salaries to the provident fund.

Workers rushed out during their lunch break to talk to the Mail & Guardian, describing their frustration at being kept in the dark, even by their shop stewards.

Machinist Selena Solomons (50) said she wanted to retire in five years' time when she should receive a lump sum of R100 000. "I'm very worried. I've been working in this industry for 27 years. How can I see it go just like that?" she asked.

Maria Brander, a 49-year-old single mother, is a machinist and wants to retire at 55. She earns R700 a week and pays R50 to her provident fund.

"I've been almost 30 years in the industry. I'm very worried because I'm the only breadwinner," she said. "They are keeping all the information away from us."

Trustee turned Pinnacle chief denies conflict
One of the former trustees of Trilinear Empowerment Trust, which invested about R250-million of clothing workers' pension fund money in struggling Cape property developer Pinnacle Point, is now Pinnacle's chief executive, the M&G has established.

Former chief land claims commissioner Sibusiso Gamede said he was appointed Pinnacle chief executive this year to "turn around" the developer.

Asked if there might not be a conflict between his two roles, Gamede denied any impropriety. "I resigned as a trustee and my appointment [at Pinnacle] happened long after," he said. "But anyway, they are now saying I was not confirmed as a trustee of the Trilinear Empowerment Trust."

Gamede was referring to court papers filed in the liquidation application of Canyon Springs this week, which revealed that he was not registered with the Master's Office as a trustee of the trust.

In its application to interdict the liquidation of Canyon Springs, the Textile and Allied Workers' Provident Fund said the financial statements of Trilinear "invited questioning". Gamede was paid a trustee's fee of R187 000 and acted as trustee for just over a year.

He is now trying to stave off an application for the liquidation of Pinnacle Point's assets by Investec, which claims it is owed R85-million. The case has been postponed to August 18.

A German buyer is planning to buy Pinnacle Point Resorts in Mossel Bay, said Gamede, adding that it is hoped that a local interested buyer will snap up its Clarens Golf and Trout Estate.

Investec has applied to the Western Cape High Court for the provisional liquidation of three of Pinnacle Point's luxury development assets, Cairan Whelan, Investec group risk manager, confirmed this week.

Asked about the possible sale of the assets, Whelan said: "So we believe. This has been going on two-and-a-half years."

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1.2 Missing pensions may lead to prosecution

NEWS24, 20 June 2011

Cape Town - Those involved in the alleged misinvestment of hundreds of millions of rands of clothing workers' provident fund money – which is being forensically investigated – could be criminally prosecuted.

There is concern that the retirement monies of thousands of clothing workers who are members of the Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers Union (Sactwu) could be irretrievably lost.

Over the weekend Sake24 reported that Cape company Canyon Springs Investments 12 – which received some of the money and is allegedly unable to repay more than R100m – has been put into provisional liquidation.

One of the directors of Canyon Springs is the wife of Enoch Godongwana, Deputy Minister of Economic Development. Court documents state that his family apparently owns an equal stake in the business.

Another application for provisional liquidation of the AltX-listed company Pinnacle Point Group [JSE:PNG] was lodged in the Western Cape High Court last week. Most of the provident fund money causing concern is invested in Pinnacle Point.

Sactwu has appointed Tony Canny, head of the forensic department at legal firm Eversheds, to conduct a forensic investigation.

Canny said his brief was first to establish whether some of the money could be recovered.

He said that Sactwu had given instructions for a forensic investigation into the entire matter – not only regarding Canyon Springs, but also regarding all the money from Sactwu members invested in Pinnacle Point and Grand Parade Investments [JSE:GPL].

Canny said he needed to establish whether any people were to be criminally prosecuted, so that the matter could be handed over to the authorities.

In 2007 the provident fund money was invested in the Trilinear Empowerment Trust, which was established by the Cape management company Trilinear founded by Sam Buthelezi.

Canny said that he did not have an exact figure, but R400m to R500n had been invested in the trust.

The Financial Services Board has already investigated whether the provident fund money was invested in the trust in contravention of the Pension Funds Act. A report on the investigation has been completed and Trilinear was to have responded to it by last Friday.

According to Canny, Sactwu has an interest in the case because the money Canyon Springs received belongs to clothing workers who are members of the union.

He reckons that a final order for liquidation of Canyon Springs is a strong possibility. The return date is in August.

Canny said that “certain people” were not cooperating in his investigation and that he would be in Cape Town again this week.

He said that although liquidation was not the ideal, an insolvency investigation would follow. People might then be called to a hearing to answer questions, even if by answering they should incriminate themselves.

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1.3 Num workers strike in Sandton

Aldrin Sampear, Eyewitness News, 18 June 2011

Members of the National Union of Mineworkers (Num) have marched on Rivonia Road in Sandton on Saturday morning.

Samancor Chrome employees handed over a memorandum of demands to the mining company.

Workers are calling for the banning of labour brokers and accuse the company of nepotism and racism. They are also want the company to provide workers with better accommodation.

Dressed in Num t-shirts and mining gear, disgruntled employees chanted struggle songs outside the company’s headquarters.

Num's Lesiba Seshoka said, “We are saying that we want Samancor to transform entirely because its top and middle management remains lily-white and it must reflect the demographics of our country.”

Samancor management will be given a to respond to the memorandum.

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2. South Africa

2.1 Malema declares war on ‘policy shift’

By CARIEN DU PLESSIS, The Star, 20 June 2011

ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema has come out guns blazing and stronger than ever, calling for a “war on policy shifts” and for “proper” leadership in the ANC.

But he again tried to put President Jacob Zuma at ease by saying “we don’t want to remove anybody”.

Emboldened by his unopposed re-election by about 5 300 delegates at the league’s four-day, R37 million congress in Midrand, which ended in the small hours of Monday morning with a party, Malema laid into the government’s international policy, especially on Libya, the slow pace of land redistribution and“selective” disciplining of ANC leaders like himself.

In his speech lasting more than two hours on Sunday afternoon, to which tired and hungry delegates listened intently, a fired-up Malema called on youth league members to swell the ranks of the ANC. Also, to take over as many positions in the mother body as they could, from branch to national level, to push the youth league’s views on policies like the nationalisation of mines.

“We need to report on how many branches of the ANC are there, and how many are led by the ANC youth league. We are going to a war, comrades, a war on policy shift.

“Youth, you must be everywhere in the structures of the ANC,” he said. Fifty percent, or more, of all ANC positions should be occupied by league members, he said.

“Where there is a possibility of taking everything, just take.

“If there is a way of taking the whole (provincial executive council), there is nothing stopping you. It will be more revolutionary, if we find you all over.”

Former league leader Fikile Mbalula employed a similar strategy of flooding the mother body’s structures with youth to enable the league to play the role of kingmaker in Zuma’s election as party president in 2007.

The league is now likely to use this strategy to replace secretary-general Gwede Mantashe with Mbalula at the ANC’s elective congress next year.

The league had already succeeded in getting its preferred candidates – recent or serving youth league leaders – elected as provincial secretaries, organisationally among the most powerful positions.

It is unclear as yet who the league would support for president, and although Malema has gone out of his way recently to put Zuma at ease about the league’s support, some within the league want Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe to take over.

Malema also urged ANC leaders to lead the league, because in the case of a leaderless movement “reactionaries” would emerge.

“The ANC must lead our people. We are asking for radical policy shifts. We want action from our leaders,” Malema said.

In line with a resolution discussed by the league’s congress, Malema called for a more open discussion within the ANC on leadership and succession.

“For us to say we aren’t happy with this or that leader doesn’t mean we are calling for the closure of the ANC,” he said.

“This thing that you can’t talk about leaders undermines our capacity (to) strengthen the ANC, including making leaders aware of their weaknesses.”

Malema duly laid into leaders like Mantashe, and, without mentioning names, the leaders of the ANC’s leftist allies.

Various other ANC leaders came under attack, including Deputy Science and Technology Minister Derek Hanekom, who is the chairman of the party’s disciplinary committee, which last year found Malema guilty of sowing division in the party.

Malema slammed Hanekom for tweeting on Saturday that he would “never” support the league’s stance on land redistribution without compensation.

Malema also directed a veiled warning to Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa for removing his VIP protection last year, saying current leaders would themselves one day be out of power and walk without protection.

Malema ended his speech by profusely thanking everyone, including the congress’s funders, whom he didn’t name, his protectors who resigned from the police to protect him, and his grandmother.

Motlanthe, ANC stalwart Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, and some former ANC youth league leaders and ANC national executive committee members sat with the league’s newly-elected national executive committee on stage, while retiring members of the committee sat in the audience, including a smiling former secretary general Vuyiswa Tulelo, who had brought her children along.

Motlanthe agreed with the league that land reform should be speeded up, but urged “meaningful debate” on the matter.

In what could be interpreted as a way of tempering Malema’s talk on African nationalism, Motlanthe told the league’s new leaders to “discharge your responsibility… with ANC youth league members and South Africa as a whole at heart”.

Motlanthe called for regular meetings between the league’s leaders and the ANC.

Madikizela-Mandela had a few tips for the new leaders and told Malema he and his unsuccessful challenger, Gauteng chairman Lebogang Maile, should work together like former ANC leaders Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo. – Political Bureau

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2.2 Triumphant Malema wants open ANC leadership race

SIBONGAKONKE SHOBA, Business Day, 20 June 2011

THE African National Congress (ANC) Youth League has called on its mother body to break with tradition and allow members to lobby openly for leadership positions, a practice that until now has been discouraged by the ruling party.

This was one of the resolutions adopted by the league’s conference at the weekend in Midrand, which re-elected league president Julius Malema unopposed .

This resolution is an indication of the league’s determination to influence the outcome of the leadership contest at the ANC’s elective conference next year. The league wants to campaign for candidates it hopes will push for the adoption of its radical policies at the ANC conference.

"We must be able to talk about our leaders…. That must not be seen as a vote of no confidence in our leaders. Discussion of leadership must not be seen as a plot against a certain leadership," said Mr Malema yesterday.

The call will also put pressure on President Jacob Zuma to indicate if he intends standing for a second term as head of the ANC. The party’s secretary-general, Gwede Mantashe, refused to comment on the leadership resolution yesterday . "The youth league will come and table that resolution to the ANC," he said .

Open lobbying for positions in the ANC is discouraged to avoid causing divisions .

Yesterday Mr Malema expressed dissatisfaction with the ANC leadership under Mr Zuma, suggesting that he might not receive the league’s endorsement next year. However, he did not mention Mr Zuma by name.

The league again criticised the government’s handling of the crisis in Libya , and SA’s vote in favour of a United Nations resolution to impose a no-fly zone.

Mr Zuma told the conference last Thursday that SA voted for the resolution because Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was killing innocent people. He also explained that there was no democracy in Libya. Mr Malema was not convinced by this explanation as the ANC had associated itself with Mr Gaddafi in the past, knowing he was a dictator. "Why all of a sudden we want to use all we knew all along to justify the Nato’s activities?" he asked.

He then criticised Mr Zuma’s government for not carrying out resolutions on land redistribution the ANC adopted at its 2007 Polokwane conference. He said the ANC leadership had failed to provide an alternative to the willing buyer, willing seller policy, which he claimed had failed.

The league proposed that the government expropriate land without compensation. "You (ANC leaders) don’t have an alternative. We have given you an alternative," Mr Malema said.

He said the ANC’s succession race would not be about individuals, but about programmes. "We need political will and commitment. We are asking for leadership, we don’t want to remove anybody…. We’ll only vote for those who speak for our aspirations. If you say you are available (to lead), you must know you are available to fight capital."

Mr Malema said the government’s task was to prepare investors for nationalisation, as this was going to be ANC policy. "Continuing to mislead capital is going to be dangerous."

He said nationalising mines would not be easy if the banks were still controlled by "capital".

He accused enemies in the ANC of plotting his downfall. He claimed his disciplinary hearing last year was a tool to oust him, and Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa ’s decision to withdraw his bodyguards was politically motivated. He accused some ANC leaders — without naming them — of offering delegates R2000 each to vote against him. But he did point to which delegates had been influenced, saying, "We are proud of the youth of Mpumalanga for defying an instruction".

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2.3 I was abandoned to assassins: Malema

Nkululeko Ncana, The Times, 20 June 2011

ANC Youth League president Julius Malema has an axe to grind with leaders in President Jacob Zuma's government whom he believes deliberately exposed him to death when they withdraw his personal security guards for what he believes were political reasons.

Confident from his uncontested re-election as leader of the league for another three years, Malema told delegates at the closing yesterday of the league's national congress in Midrand, Johannesburg, that the guards assigned to him after he was threatened that his house would be bombed were abruptly recalled without his being told.

He said he believed the bodyguards were withdrawn because some leaders in the government had been irritated by his views about racial minorities handing over power to blacks.

"The government and the ANC gave me protectors because they thought my life was in danger. As we were going on with the programme of engaging our people in the economic struggle, our government withdrew security from me on bases that were unfounded.

"They just said they conducted a study and that I was no longer under threat and therefore I did not need to be protected. I had no reason to worry because I am not the first one. They can do that. If that makes them sleep at night, it's fine," Malema said.

He said that two of the guards assigned to protect him refused to follow orders to dump him.

Malema warned yesterday that "karma" would deal with those who made the decision to withdraw his security when he needed it most.

"[The two bodyguards] pleaded with their boss to say 'Let us take him to work and we will tell him later that we are no longer with him'. They were told to 'leave that man and that is an instruction'. They said they would 'protect this man with or without you'," Malema said.

"I know that even the posture that people may take regarding the youth league is very problematic. They will leave those positions. They come and go and one day they will be walking without protectors and all the benefits they have.

"We are not bitter about anything. Let them continue treating people the same way they do, there is absolutely no problem. Everybody will have his turn in life. This is our turn to be treated like this, it is no problem.

"I am fine. I do not need those police any more - not now, not ever.

"Whether my life can get taken away or not, it is a cheap life. It is a life of a child of a single mother; it's not worth being protected by the police. You can take it away. Any time you want to take this life away, you can take it away.

"I am not scared of anything or anybody, and nobody is going to threaten me."

Earlier, Malema blasted ANC leaders in Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal for offering bribes and for telling youth league delegate's to the congress from those provinces to vote against him.

Malema said that he would report these leaders to the ANC and that action should be taken against them.

He called for the ousting of Mpumalanga Premier David Mabuza for his alleged involvement in the moves against him.

The youth league leader told delegates that the league should intensify its struggle to attain economic freedom and that the expropriation of land without compensation from "criminals" [whites] who stole the land from blacks was non-negotiable.

"[ANC leaders] say we should not say that land was stolen [from blacks] but they are the ones who told us that.

"When you steal you are a criminal and should be treated as such.

"The real enemy is white capital. They are the ones we are fighting against. Those are the people we want to take from and give to the majority. It's not racism, it is written in every document of the ANC," Malema said.

He said that the league would support only those leaders who agreed with its policy proposals when it came to leadership elections at the ANC national congress next year.

"We are going forward and there is nobody going to stand in [front] of this moving train of economic freedom fighters.

"The leadership of the ANC should lead us. We are asking for radical policy shift. We want more action.

"We need courageous men and women who have the political will to change the lives of our people," Malema said.

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2.4 Malema sets his cap for ANC’s soul

By Jabulani Sikhakhane, The Sunday Independent, 20 June 2011

Julius Malema’s attack on ANC policies at the opening of the ANC Youth League’s 24th national congress this week struck at the very core of the ruling party, setting the stage for a bruising battle in the run-up to the 2012 conference over the future direction of the party.

The ANC celebrates its centenary next year, which it will cap with its 53rd conference in Mangaung, Free State, where it is to elect new leadership as well as adopt new policies.

Borrowing from Hugo Chavez and other populists, Malema built his narrative this week on three pillars: he tapped into and stoked the anger and feelings of social despair among the black majority; framed poverty as a function of conflict between the powerful elite (white people in this case) and the majority (poor, landless black people who own very little of the economy); and then presented the youth league, if not himself, as capable of radically transforming the lives of the poor.

In his political report, which he delivered with President Jacob Zuma sitting on the podium, Malema criticised the politics of accommodation and social harmony, which has been a defining feature of the ruling party since its unbanning in 1990, if not longer.

He painted a stark picture of South Africa’s socio-economic progress since 1994 and then called for bold leadership and radical policies if the country’s apartheid legacies are to be eliminated.

Malema’s political report sharply contrasts with that of the ruling party as outlined in its strategy and tactics document adopted at the 52nd annual conference in Polokwane, Limpopo, in 2007.

If the league succeeds in pushing its policy proposals through in Mangaung, they would radically transform the ANC into an African nationalist movement and set it on a collision course with investors.

Interestingly, the youth league’s stance is a replay of the policy platform of the youth league of the 1940s, which, according to a brief history of the ANC on the ruling party’s website, based its ideas on African nationalism – a belief that Africans would be freed only by their own efforts.

Malema made it clear on Thursday that minorities, especially white South Africans, were a lost cause for the ruling party.

He called on ANC members to increase the party’s support to more than 75 percent in the 2014 general election, a target he said would only be possible with increased support from black people and from Africans in particular.

“The rest are unlikely to vote for the ANC because they feel threatened by the aspirations of the Freedom Charter and they do not want to share in the country’s wealth, which are the key messages we will not betray,” Malema said.

He added: “In the struggle to emancipate our people, we should never live in dreamland and for a moment believe that those empowered and enriched by the murderous apartheid system will share in our vision to transform South Africa for the benefit of all.”

The ANC needed at least 75 percent electoral support because it must enact key radical transformation policies and legislations, he said. “For us to expropriate without compensation, we should change the constitution, so a greater majority is necessary.”

Malema’s stance challenges current ANC policy. While ANC analysis agrees with Malema that many in the white community still have to realise that the poverty and inequality spawned by apartheid are not in their long-term interest and that black people are as capable as anyone else to lead and exercise authority in all spheres of life, the ruling party’s position is more nuanced.

It qualifies its position by adding that unlike in the past, when antagonists across the apartheid divide were locked in mortal combat, “engagement around issues of transformation in a democracy forms part of legitimate discourse and electoral politics”.

“Those who continue to resist change within the constitutional framework are opponents in a democratic order.

“Their political and other organisations are legitimate expressions of a school of thought that should be challenged, but at the same time accepted as part of democratic engagement,” the Strategy and Tactics document says.

In addition, the ANC makes it its task “to persist in clarifying the long-term self-interest that the white community shares in ridding our society of the legacy of apartheid”.

Malema also called for a more open confrontation with the private sector, asking delegates to decide whether “we have men and women of courage in the Liberation Movement who are ready to confront white monopoly capital and imperialism and fearlessly fight for the ideals of the Freedom Charter”.

“Do we have courageous men and women who, 100 years after the existence of the ANC, will say we should confront the economic and neo-colonial subjugation of the black majority and Africans in the same way Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo and their generation confronted apartheid repression in the face of death, torture and imprisonment?”

There was greater consensus in the ANC on the nationalisation of mines and other strategic sectors of the economy, Malema added, but “we are still to see if the leadership has the political will to confront mining capitalists”.

“It is the courage and the political will of the leadership which must inform the militant and radical resolutions and policy directions to be taken at the 53rd National Conference of the ANC in December 2012,” he said.

Accusing the ANC of managing the state on behalf of the private sector, Malema called on the ruling party to act on behalf of the class that did not own the means of production.

With his narrative of what ails South Africa and how to fix it, Malema has marked his policy territory – gunning for the soul of the ruling party before the 2012 conference.

What remains to be seen is whether Zuma and the leadership of the ANC have the stomach to defend the ANC. - Sunday Independent

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2.5 Public works DG pressured into approving police lease

STEPHAN HOFSTATTER and MZILIKAZI WA AFRIKA, Sunday Times, 19 June 2011

The director-general of public works feared for his safety and believed his phone was being tapped as he was pressured into approving two dodgy police lease deals worth R1.6-billion.

The explosive revelations by Siviwe Dongwana are contained in a report into the lease scandal by public protector Thuli Madonsela. The report, which is marked "provisional" and will be officially released this month, is highly critical of police commissioner General Bheki Cele, Minister of Public Works Gwen Mahlangu-Nkabinde and businessman Roux Shabangu.

The report covers leases in Pretoria and Durban and follows an earlier one slamming the Pretoria lease. It describes how Cele flouted procedure and drove a plan to move the police into new headquarters in Pretoria and Durban against the advice of several government officials. The leases were exposed by the Sunday Times in August last year.

"Due to the pressures put on me by the new minister (Mahlangu-Nkabinde) I signed the lease agreement," Dongwana told Madonsela. "If it was not for the pressures put on me, I would never have done so. By this point I was extremely stressed, tired and scared and was concerned for my personal safety and that of my family."

This is one of the revelations in the provisional report seen by the Sunday Times.

This week the report was sent to President Jacob Zuma, Mahlangu-Nkabinde, Cele, Shabangu, Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa and Finance MinisterPravin Gordhan, among others. The report says:

Mahlangu-Nkabinde was guilty of "improper" conduct and failed "statesmanship" for going ahead with both leases after two legal opinions found them invalid;
Cele was guilty of "maladministration" and "unlawful" conduct for driving the R1.1-billion Durban deal;
The Treasury should consider blacklisting Shabangu's company, Roux Property Fund, for its involvement in "unlawful and irregular procurement";
Rentals for both buildings were inflated by up to 300%. In Durban alone, floor space worth R78-million was added without justification;
Locating staff from the specialised child protection and sex offences units in central Durban contradicted Mthethwa's vision of bringing police closer to the communities they serve; and
A new tender issued for the Durban lease in April - but shelved after the Sunday Times exposed it last month - was rigged to suit a previous offer by Shabangu.

The report contains the most damning findings the public protector's office has yet made against senior political figures and reveals that officials were victimised for doing their jobs.

Among them is Dongwana, who was pressured to approve the deals with Shabangu, who is close to Zuma.

Mahlangu-Nkabinde's predecessor, Geoff Doidge, had launched an internal probe that produced the first legal opinion declaring the deals unlawful. According to the report, Dongwana said Doidge himself was "under pressure" from an unknown quarter to wrap up his probe.

After Mahlangu-Nkabinde replaced Doidge last November, Shabangu became "more aggressive". Dongwana said Shabangu even showed him SMS exchanges about the leases between him and Mahlangu-Nkabinde, the report said, and boasted that Mahlangu-Nkabinde was his "elder sister".

Dongwana told investigators: "I am also convinced that communications on my phone and that of my wife were being intercepted.

"I say so because every time that I had a conversation about this matter, Shabangu would call me about the contents of the conversation shortly thereafter."

On one occasion, Dongwana said, he was surprised to learn details of the state attorney's opinion on the lease - from Shabangu. He, as director-general, had yet to even approach the state attorney.

Dongwana, who was suspended by Mahlangu-Nkabinde a month after her appointment, declined to comment. He was suspended for, among other things, insubordination and dereliction of duty.

According to the report Mahlangu-Nkabinde admitted to Madonsela she "had telephonic contact with Mr Shabangu and that she met with him personally on more than two occasions, both at her office and outside".

Yet she refused to answer specific questions, according to the report. Her spokesman, Obakeng Modikwe, yesterday promised to respond to questions by the Sunday Times but did not do so.

Madonsela's report said action ought to be taken by Zuma and Mthethwa against, respectively, Mahlangu-Nkabinde and Cele - whom she again found guilty of misconduct.

Madonsela's first report, "Against the Rules", was released in February and dealt only with the R500-million police lease deal for Sanlam Middestad in Pretoria. It, too, made serious findings against Mahlangu-Nkabinde but no action was taken against her, fuelling speculation that she may have been appointed in place of Doidge to ensure the deals went through.

The new document, titled "Against the Rules Too", is the final report on Madonsela's investigation. It incorporates findings on a deal worth R1.1-billion for leasing the Transnet building at 477 Anton Lembede (formerly Smith) Street in Durban - worth R400-million more than initially thought. The building was eventually sold for R15.8-million.

In both cases police would have leased buildings from Shabangu for 10 years without the deals going out to tender. Treasury rules say all contracts over R500000 must go out to tender.

The report documents how Cele issued an instruction that all procurement for R500000 or more had to be directly authorised by him, and then signed off on the financial details of the two leases without following proper procedure. It cites documents detailing how Cele personally identified the Durban building soon after Shabangu bought it.

Cele's protégée, KwaZulu-Natal police chief Lieutenant-General Monnye Ngobeni, conducted a site visit of the building with Shabangu's staff a month before public works was even informed, the report said. Provincial police property management head Brigadier Thembinkosi Ngema warned Ngobeni this was highly improper; he was eventually elbowed out of the deal during negotiations.

This week Shabangu refused to discuss the report.

After providing a detailed response to the Sunday Times, Cele later retracted this, saying: "We are legally barred from responding to any of your questions as they relate to an ongoing investigation by the public protector."

Public protector Mandonsela declined to comment, saying "it was supposed to be confidential until the final report is released".

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3. Comments

3.1 Not too late to do the right thing, Mr Zuma

AUBREY MATSHIQI, Business Day, 20 June 2011

I SPENT my entire weekend looking for Marxist- Leninist literature, which I last made contact with after the Berlin Wall was reduced to rubble in 1989. I must remember to thank young Julius Malema, who was re-elected unopposed as president of the African National Congress (ANC) Youth League on Friday, for this reunion with Marx, Engels and Lenin. Now we can eat sushi, talk about tenders and use phrases such as "dialectical materialism" and "vanguard party of the proletariat" at our favourite watering holes in Sandton and Rosebank.

Shame, our beloved vanguard party, the South African Communist Party (SACP), will never be the same again after it was demoted by Malema at the youth league congress. The league has decided to supplant the SACP as the vanguard of the working class. The silver lining in this Marxist-Leninist cloud is that the ANC and the SACP can console each other and, hopefully, strengthen the alliance because they are both victims of crime — theft, if we must be specific.

During the local government election campaign, the Democratic Alliance broke into the struggle vault and stole precious items from the ANC’s struggle heritage.

Now the youth league is stealing the proletariat from the SACP.

At the youth league congress, Malema argued that the vanguard party of the proletariat has abandoned the working class.

Thereafter, he reminded us that nature does not allow a vacuum.

The vacuum in this case is the space previously occupied by the SACP in the National Democratic Revolution (NDR). Malema and I have had our differences — he does not know this of course — but I am tempted to agree with him on this one.

The SACP, despite its size, used to punch above its weight by making significant contributions to the political and ideological content of ANC and alliance programmes. This it was able to do without undermining the leadership role of the ANC in the alliance. While one is not oblivious of the dynamics of the Cold War and the effect they had on the strategic content of the alliance, the SACP must take some of the blame for the strategic incoherence that characterises the post-apartheid phase of the NDR.

For instance, the SACP has been an active participant in ANC and alliance factional battles at the expense of re-engineering and expanding the boundaries of the NDR as a theory of revolution. As a result, the leadership vacuum that was caused by the battle between former president Thabo Mbeki and his nemesis, President Jacob Zuma , is now a black hole of political intrigue, battles for positions and money, and lack of policy co-ordination in the state.

What we have now is an ANC, SACP and alliance in qualitative and strategic decline.

Because of this state of decline, anything and anyone can rise to the status of heroic saviour. Increasingly, the state of qualitative decline is reflected in the subordinate role that Malema seems to have assigned to Zuma. Malema sets the agenda and Zuma seems content with explaining himself to the youth league.

Think of the p ast 10 images of Malema with Zuma and you will be forgiven for thinking that this country is governed on the basis of a joint presidency.

Zuma must rise to the challenges that face the ANC and this country to avoid being forced to pass the baton on to someone else next year.

While one does not agree with all the remedies that were proposed by Malema, his critique of post- apartheid SA and issues such as land reform is spot on. Also, but for reasons that are different from Malema’s, one is getting more and more embarrassed with the fumbling that is paraded as our foreign policy on the global stage.

Simply put, the challenge facing Zuma is that of ensuring that SA becomes one of the leading countries in the quest for a less unethical global order.

The alternative is a world that is held hostage by thugs, who have bigger budget deficits and toys of war. Here at home, Mr President, do the right thing before you discover the gap between the words and intentions of your "allies".

• Matshiqi is research fellow at the Helen Suzman Foundation.

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3.2 Zuma the street fighter

Justice Malala, The Times, 20 June 2011

The story is often told of how the apartheid Security Branch was waiting for Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma at Jan Smuts Airport in 1990 - to arrest and torture him - after picking up intelligence that he was making his way into South Africa. Zuma was at the time head of ANC intelligence.

The team assigned to arrest Zuma started sending messages to their boss at the Union Buildings saying that he was in the country and his arrest was "imminent". It turns out Zuma had outsmarted the spooks. He was sitting at the Union Buildings with their boss.

Zuma's lack of formal education, his plodding style, his numerous mistakes in the romantic and marriage arena - all these lead those who take him on to think he will be a walkover. Even seasoned pugilists like Thabo Mbeki, Zuma's long-time comrade, but opponent at the 2007 Polokwane ANC national conference, made this mistake.

Mbeki thought Zuma would be taken out by the courts, or by middle-class blacks appalled by his sexual shenanigans, or by international opportunists worried by where South Africa would go when the man from Nkandla walked in.

It was a terrible miscalculation that led to humiliation and ignominy for Mbeki at Polokwane.

Zuma might know very little, as so many assume, but he is perfect at manipulating the workings of the party he has dedicated his life to. In the run-up to Polokwane, Zuma knew enough to ensure that every province and every branch of the ANC was controlled by him.

The press was not voting at Polokwane; the middle classes, appalled by his behaviour, were not voting either. It was the ordinary ANC branch delegates who had the right to vote. They were the focus of Zuma's mobilisation in the run-up to that conference. That was how he unseated Mbeki.

Now it might be Julius Malema who is underestimating Zuma. The ANC's young lion has, over the past few weeks, been traversing the country, complimenting Mbeki on his presidency in a clear dig at Zuma, commenting on polygamy and taking pot shots at the ANC leadership directly and at Zuma indirectly.

There is no doubt that someone is preparing to run against Zuma for the ANC presidency and Malema is preparing to back him if he has the gumption to raise his hand.

That potential challenger can be narrowed down to either Kgalema Motlanthe or Tokyo Sexwale. Whether they have the guts to take on Zuma at next year's conference is debatable.

They have both - Motlanthe before Polokwane and Sexwale during the past few months - proved to be flip-floppers - you can't tell if they are saying "yes" or "no".

They need to speak a little more clearly simply because, if they do not declare their candidacy in the next six months, power will have calcified around Zuma.

And there is a lot of power that Zuma can still draw on despite the belief of some, Malema and a few others included, that he is a man alone and isolated.

Zuma's stronghold electorally is KwaZulu-Natal. The ANC has been losing power everywhere in the country except in Zuma's home province where, in both the 2009 and the May 18 elections this year, the ANC experienced such a surge that losses elsewhere were compensated for.

KwaZulu-Natal , despite murmurings that Premier Zweli Mkhize has turned sour on Zuma, remains firmly in the hands of the man from Nkandla. Mkhize has comprehensively denied talk of a rift between himself and Zuma.

Zuma retains the support of other provinces, notably Mpumalanga, the Free State, Eastern Cape and even Malema's Limpopo.

This is a massive disadvantage for anyone wanting to get rid of Zuma. Plus, despite criticism from Zwelinzima Vavi, trade union federation Cosatu remains a Zuma poodle through and through. The SA Communist Party has become a branch of the Zuma-supporting wing of the ANC.

For Malema, with his bravado and loudness, the question becomes one of timing: whoever his candidate might be, he must declare himself early. Malema's hero, Peter Mokaba, managed to cut Cyril Ramaphosa out in 1997 by coming out very early for Mbeki.

If Motlanthe or Sexwale do not declare their candidacy in the next year, Zuma will have a year in which to move against Malema before he becomes a lame-duck president.

Given that Malema outsmarted him last time, Zuma will be going in for the kill. Malema should temper his tongue. Zuma is not a man to underestimate.

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3.3 The ANC needs to pull the plug as the Juju jive goes into overdrive

Mondli Makhanya, Sunday Times, 20 June 2011

South Africa will wake up to a new week with the realisation that it has to endure another three years of Julius Malema at the centre of the political stage.

A chill will run down many a spine and some will sink into depression as they think of the damage this young man has caused to society since assuming the presidency of the ANC Youth League in 2008. Others will cheer the triumph of someone who seems to speak their language.

Whichever way you look at it, it is time to buckle up and prepare for an extended and more riveting run of the Julius Malema show. The Malema who has emerged from this conference is a much more powerful man. Not only is his grip on the youth league machine much tighter, his ability to wield power in the ANC and broader society is now considerably enhanced.

To understand the phenomenon of Malema's power and why it is likely to be with us for some time, it is necessary to detour into his past.

It is worth remembering that this was the Congress of South African Students lad who in the late '90s and early 2000s (long after "liberation before education" was passé) sacrificed school for student activism. This was the guy who, in 2000, led students down the streets of Johannesburg, trashing the city and looting hawkers' wares; the character who was banned by the Gauteng Education Department from coming within 500m of the province's schools (at the time the Limpopo-based boy spent much of his time at Cosas headquarters).

With this rabble-rousing pedigree he propelled himself up the ranks of the youth league to become Limpopo provincial secretary.

His power reached into the heights and bowels of government. Cleaners and chief directors quivered equally at the mention of the name Julius.

He made sure senior provincial leaders danced to the youth league's ditty, and those who did not knew they were courting pain. Former premier Sello Moloto still carries scars from encounters with the enfant terrible.

So when it was time for Fikile Mbalula to step down from the league presidency in mid-2008 , it was inevitable that the post-Polokwane wave of populism and appeal to the lowest common denominator would also carry Malema.

The thinking among those who had engineered Jacob Zuma's triumph in Polokwane was that, with the corruption charges still hanging over him, their man was not yet safe. Mbeki was still in the Union Buildings, some in the new ANC leadership were already harbouring big ambitions and the pesky unions could not be trusted.

The best way to protect Zuma, they surmised, was through a powerful youth league that would be loyal to his cause. Malema was the best man to lead this defence.

Once at the helm of the league he has used a mixture of witty populism and an Mbekiesque understanding of power to great effect. He wows crowds with choice words. He picks subjects that get hearts beating fast, but have as much in common with reality as Swaziland sending a navy flotilla to tackle the Somali pirates. Because he is such a meticulous orator and because of the power and influence he wields, his fantasies carry weight.

He has been able to determine the tune, tone and pitch of the national conversation. Even this lowly newspaperman, who would rather have delved into the hugely important National Planning Commission's Diagnostic Report, finds his attention diverted.

The other tool Malema uses effectively is brute political force. In his consolidation of power since 2008, Malema has borrowed cleverly from the Mbeki manual on how to deal with perceived challengers and dissenting voices. Youth league structures are strewn with such political corpses.

Senior ANC leaders know Malema's adeptness at the power game. They also know that they gave him the space to accumulate and wield this power.

So what does an emboldened Malema mean for South Africa?

For starters it will give him formidable say in two important events in 2012: the ANC's mid-year policy conference and the elective conference in December.

Expect President Zuma's paranoid furtive glances over his shoulder to increase.

Expect the queue outside Malema's office in Luthuli House to be very long as grown men and women fawn over him.

Expect more demagoguery on nationalisation, large-scale land expropriation and other outlandish ideas.

Before we depress ourselves too much, let us remember every nation has its demagogues. The Americans have their Limbaughs, the French have their Le Pens and the Brits have their Griffins.

The difference is that they were all contained on the periphery of power. Our demagogue is at the centre of power with the possibility of acquiring even more power in future.

The only thing that can stop him is his party bowing to society's disapproval.

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3.4 Time is running out for President Jacob Zuma

Business Day, 20 June 2011

BENEATH all the rhetoric and muscle-flexing, the past weekend’s African National Congress (ANC) Youth League elective conference merely confirmed President Jacob Zuma is caught between a rock and a hard place. League president Julius Malema’s unopposed re-election and general dominance of the event hogged the headlines, but the undercurrent was an unspoken but blatantly clear threat to Mr Zuma: do as we say or suffer the consequences at next year’s ANC elective conference in Mangaung.

Mr Zuma is experiencing similar pressure from the other side of the vice grip he finds himself in — that controlled by alliance partners Cosatu and the South African Communist Party. They too have been getting increasingly assertive, reminding him he would not be in power were it not for the support of the left at Polokwane in 2007.

During the early part of his presidency, Mr Zuma was able to string both sides along by making concessions designed to buy time while he consolidated power, but it was inevitable that he would eventually have to choose sides. That moment is rapidly approaching. Will it be the African nationalist faction as represented by Mr Malema, or the workerist bloc headed by Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi? Since many of their demands on Mr Zuma are mutually exclusive, somebody is bound to be disappointed.

Unless he is able to expand his power base to cover the middle ground, this could end badly for Mr Zuma and the ANC in 18 months’ time. Apart from the likelihood that the losing side will turn on him — possibly even before the conference, if matters are forced to a head — it is hard to see how the alliance can continue to function as a broad political movement and government if it continues to wage war with itself.

A leaked draft report prepared by Mr Vavi for Cosatu’s central committee meeting painted a stark picture of the state of the union federation’s relations with the ANC, revealing that ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe actually invited Cosatu to walk away from the alliance in September following stinging criticism of the ANC’s hesitance in addressing corruption.

Mr Vavi also specifically warned that should the youth league come to dominate the party, "the current challenge of corruption will be institutionalised, with a risk that the very country will be sold to the highest bidder". Apparently enraged by the accusation that the ANC had been hijacked by a "predatory elite", Mr Mantashe is said to have responded, in writing, that the party would not be "frogmarched and won’t be blackmailed — Cosatu may walk if that is what it wants to do".

Unfortunately for Mr Mantashe, confronting Cosatu has not been enough to get him into the league’s good books. It is no secret they want him replaced as secretary-general by former youth league president Fikile Mbalula.

Mr Malema paid lip service to the league’s official position at the weekend that Mr Zuma should serve a second term as ANC president but made it abundantly clear in his speech that this depended on him toeing the youth league line.

Mr Zuma was clearly irritated by this and made a halfhearted attempt to remind the league’s leadership that it is subordinate to the ANC and should respect its policies, but this just came across as weakness. When you have a tiger by the tail everybody knows who holds the power.

While Mr Malema is undoubtedly strengthened politically by the way he has retained his grip on the league and exposed Mr Zuma’s vulnerability as a leader, he has also stuck his head above the parapet and invited others in the alliance to take a pot shot.

Whereas many moderates in the party have been avoiding choosing sides, Mr Malema’s obvious ambition and determination to force confrontation with the left may persuade them to take a stand. Mr Zuma gained majority support at Polokwane as much because of widespread disenchantment with Thabo Mbeki as for anything he stood for. Similarly, he might be able to add a third leg to the ANC cooking pot by simply choosing a path that bisects the existing factions.

Time is running out, though, and based on his track record it is doubtful Mr Zuma would know how to lead decisively even if it is in his own interests to do so. His administration has been carefully structured to balance power between extremes; creating a lean, mean governance machine that takes and implements decisions rather than presiding over seemingly endless commissions, consultations and investigations will not be quick or easy.

Counting in Mr Zuma’s favour is the fact that there is no obvious alternative to his leadership at present, although that could change rapidly were either the youth league or Cosatu to conclude they have lost the battle for control of the party.

The party’s elders, many of whom are privately appalled by the excesses of the youth league, disappointed in Mr Zuma’s limp-wristed leadership and wary of Cosatu’s approach to economic issues, are eager to avoid another public leadership battle after the damage caused by Polokwane and the breakaway by the Congress of the People. Every effort will therefore be made to reconcile the two extremes before Mangaung, although the positions staked out by Cosatu and the youth league are now so far apart that this would seem impossible.

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3.5 The thick end of the wedge: The editor’s notebook

PETER BRUCE, Business Day, 20 June 2011

JULIUS Malema won, overwhelmingly, everything there was to fight for at the African National Congress (ANC) Youth League’s elective conference this weekend and is now arguably the most influential person in the country.

There seems little doubt that it will be hard for anyone to get elected president of the ANC in Bloemfontein in December next year without his support. A kingmaker supreme, he is all but King himself. Take a bow, President Jacob Zuma ; what an incredible success your leadership of party and country has been.

If Zuma doesn’t already have bank accounts abroad, now would be a good time to open one or two and salt some of his salary away. Because by the time Malema is finished with this economy, if he is not stopped (and there is nothing in the ANC standing in his way), every dollar Zuma saves today will be worth hundreds of rands in 2023.

It will be hard one day for historians fully to capture the stupidity and spinelessness of Zuma and his administration. Compromised politically from the start, he has so stuffed his cabinet with people he owes political debts to that none of them now has enough authority to stand up and say that nationalisation or land seizures by the state without compensation will never happen. Derek Hanekom made a brave attempt on Twitter at the weekend, but he has no authority.

How, I wonder, do Ebrahim Patel and Rob Davies , in the face of Malema’s bullying rhetoric, plan to persuade people to invest another cent in SA? Zuma was happy to report the other day that three projects worth about R4bn had been created under his job creation incentives but he was careful, I saw, not to say what they were or exactly where they were. He wouldn’t want anyone discovering a little deceit now, would he?

I know that it is fashionable to argue that Malema is a clever chap who knows what he’s doing. But he’s not. Like Zuma, he is an economic airhead with an instinct for politics and survival. No one in their right mind could possibly argue nationalisation and expropriation are cures for poverty and mean it. No one with a smidgen of concern for the destitute could seriously argue throwing a productive farmer off his land and settling the poor on it amounts to a plan worthy of the name.

But it’s the economy that matters and I wonder now what business will do.

For one thing, it could try to not only understand what Malema thinks he means, but why he wants to nationalise the mines. Don’t show him this clinic here and that school there, built by the mining companies. Ask to see the deprivations he says they have caused in areas where they mine . Perhaps there’s some sort of late partnership to forge with the youth league in fixing them.

But, more broadly, business has got to take sides in the power struggle going on in the ruling alliance. There’s the youth league, full of self-assurance and barely able to listen to anyone. There’s the (so-called grown-up) ANC middle, the nationalists. And there’s the left, the communists and the unions.

If I were in business I’d be pouring money into the left. Bring the unions onto your boards and give their members shares in your companies. Lots of shares. They’ll at least have a stake in the status quo, or a version of it, which could force them to choose between survival and the economic destruction Malema proposes. In Malema’s economy, workers will be mostly employed by the state and union leaders know what that means — real falling wages. Ask any Cuban.

The scene may now be set for things to get worse in SA, not better. Zuma has no clue, except survival. If he pulls out of a second term now, candidates who could oppose Malema might at least be able to put their hands up.

But while Zuma is still in the race for December 2012, no one will. And, trust me, he is already licking Malema’s boot. He waited two hours for the youth league leader to pitch up for the opening of the ANCYL’s conference last week. And he was three hours late at Orlando Stadium, to address the June 16 commemorations.

The Orlando event was a national commemoration of young black people who offered up their lives for a democratic SA. The conference he was early for was for a young black man who wants it all for nothing.