PREVIEW
Instead of removing ANC ministers, allies of former President Zuma have been arrested
Brian Molefe and Siyabonga Gama, both deputies for former President Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party will appear in court in October after being arrested on multiple corruption charges last week.
The pair are veteran Zuma loyalists who were both brought into the MK parliamentary party late last year after Zuma fired 20 MPs who had been elected at last May’s general election. Yet graft charges have hung over Molefe and Gama for some time, and date to their tenures as executives at Transnet, a government-owned logistics company (AC Vol 65 No 24, The rise, fall and rise again of Jacob Zuma).
Transnet and parastatal energy firm Eskom, which Molefe was chief executive of during Zuma’s presidency, were seen as the main vehicles for the Gupta brothers and Zuma allies to illicitly benefit from state funds (AC Vol 63 No 22, Prosecutor Batohi swings into action).
The arrests may have been timed to try and shift the focus from the Government of National Unity’s problems. It was tottering last week after the Democratic Alliance reacted to the dismissal of a deputy trade minister by demanding that President Cyril Ramaphosa sack the ministers from his African National Congress party who face corruption allegations (Dispatches, 30/6/25, Centre-right Democratic Alliance baulks at collapsing the coalition after President Ramaphosa sacks its trade minister). There is therefore a clear reason for Ramaphosa to put Zuma-era ‘state capture’ back in the spotlight, especially as MK has positioned itself to go after ANC votes.
MK spokesperson Nhlamulo Ndhlela described the arrests as being part of a ‘pattern of selective and politically motivated prosecution aimed at black intellectuals in the party’. He added: ‘This two-tiered approach to justice is morally bankrupt and constitutionally dangerous.’
Yet any hopes ANC had of shifting the narrative were hurt by the DA submitting a formal fraud allegation against ANC Minister of Higher Education Nobuhle Nkabane on 1 July, a day after Molefe and Gama were released on bail.
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