South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has a long fight ahead of him. Sworn in last February, after the resignation of President Jacob Zuma, he has promised to clean up the rampant corruption that has long haunted the nation. Ramaphosa is indeed starting off his tenure with a bang, commissioning a multi-expert review panel to investigate South Africa’s State Security Agency (SSA). The move is regarded as a major stepping-stone towards restructuring the SSA, identifying the factors that led to its rampant abuse and now forging it into a valuable institution.
The SSA was forged in 2009, after five of the nation’s security agencies were combined by Zuma into one larger intelligence apparatus. Although the government insists the point of unification was to streamline information, the result—rather than creating transparency—was an increasingly disorganized, difficult to supervise web working at the behest of the president.
The review panel organized by Ramaphosa is set to look at not only the restructuring of the organization, but into top-down abuses, mismanagement and the allegation that the SSA went through over 1 billion Rand in taxpayer money in a matter of only 3 years’ time. These allegations, first made in an explosive book by South African journalist Jacques Pauw, contend that the SSA worked to get former President Zuma “off the hook” for nearly 800 counts of corruption and fraud.
Although Zuma has declared that he “never committed any crime”, he is currently in court for numerous counts of corruption, racketeering, and fraud. Even many within his own party, the African National Congress (ANC), believe that widespread, government-sanctioned fraud was aided and abetted by the SSA.
But no matter how much Zuma insists on his innocence, the evidence for the deterioration of the SSA under his aegis is stacking up. One of the most notable examples of the SSA’s overreach involves British American Tobacco’s (BAT) South African subsidiary.
As early as 2014, an investigation by the South African Center for Investigative Journalism found that BAT had been relying on SSA assistance to engage in espionage against competitors, both in South Africa and neighboring Zimbabwe. This included access to government facilities and CCTV cameras to use in reconnaissance operations. According to whistleblower François van der Westhuizen, BAT also employed agents from the South African Revenue Service (SARS) to conduct raids on the warehouses of opposition cigarette producers.
This shows how SSA’s rot progressively infiltrated SARS as well – conveniently undermining SARS right as it was cracking down on BAT’s involvement in illicit cigarette trade. In 2013, SARS took action to stomp out illicit cigarette trading, announcing its intent to prosecute 15 tobacco producers and importers for tax evasion and tobacco smuggling.
The twists and turns of this multi-way battle between SARS, BAT and the SSA not only severely diminished the public’s confidence in the political system, but also caused serious delays—which plague the country to this day— in the implementation of smoking regulations. For example, South Africa was one of 57 countries which ratified the WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) in 2005 and pledged to apply its provisions to better manage tobacco use.
However, progress on implementing the treaty has been slow. Although Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi promised to stand up to Big Tobacco and accelerate the implementation of the FCTC in South Africa, little will come of this push until the deep state’s networks are completely rooted out. After all, the battle wounds from the tussles with the previous administration are still very apparent in the current ANC leadership. And the insidious reach of private corporations under the former presidency, and the complicity of intelligence networks, is a lesson not soon forgotten.
This is one of the reasons why Ramaphosa’s crackdown on corruption will either make or break South Africa’s political future. After all, many parliamentarians, including Ramaphosa himself, who either willfully ignored or green-lit Zuma’s spending and controversial plans, still hold office. Although signs are looking strong that Ramaphosa is willing to act against corruption, it’s still too early to say how far he will go in turning against his own party members to regain the trust of South African citizens.
Ramaphosa has multiple challenges ahead of him: he must strengthen the country’s much maligned tax system while also working to stabilize the South African Rand, which is now at a six-month low. However, if Ramaphosa can inspire confidence in investors and his tax base by rooting out those who enabled such corruption, there is still a good chance South Africa can emerge from the legacy of Zuma’s noxious presidency a stronger, more unified nation.
By Steve K. Dave
