Listen here
In his latest interview with Chris Steyn, Solly Moeng, blasts President Cyril Ramaphosa for his appointments of Ayanda Dlodlo as Ambassador to France and Dina Pule to Cabinet. “…the ANC still looks in its own dustbin of people they’ve thrown in the past to say, OK, maybe this one, people have forgotten who they are. Let’s use them again.” He further slams the President’s failure to act against suspended Police Minister Senzo Mchunu. “It’s the same thing as Jacob Zuma not being charged for State Capture… This whole Madlanga Commission was started because this man decided to, from what we’ve heard, listen to voices that he shouldn’t have listened to in order to dismantle a police unit that was busy scratching in places where seemingly the criminal network was not liking it anymore.” Moeng also describes the “mud pit” predicament of current Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Geordin Hill-Lewis over the damaging public spat between two former party leaders, Tony Leon and John Steenhuisen “… whether Geordin Hill-Lewis wants to be part of the conversation or not, it’s hurting the political party. This is the DA that has always been positioned as morally higher, holier than thou kind of party…it’s pushing the DA morally, ethically on the back foot. So it’s going to be interesting to see how they survive this.” Moeng further comments on the latest corruption revelations at the Madlanga Commission, and the games being played by some of the big role players. “I really hope that Madlanga will give the criminal justice system something that will lead to the fall of the big names hidden in there.”
Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. Register here.
Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.
If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.
Edited transcript of the interview
Chris Steyn (00:01.484)
With critical Local Government Elections coming up this November, one would expect politicians to go all out to impress the voters. Let’s hear from political commentator Solly Moeng how that is going. Welcome, Solly.
Solly Moeng (00:17.07)
Hello Chris, lovely to see you again. Look, how is it going? These guys are always looking for the lowest hanging fruits in anything. I mean, just two weeks ago, last week we were thinking this immigration thing is going to be the big thing. Now we don’t know anymore with how the corruption was going to come out of Madlanga.
Ramaphosa continued piling up, you know, old people that we thought we had died. I’m not talking about age in terms of…old in terms of age, but old in terms of people who have been used before, who failed, before, have been discarded, some of whom were fired by Zuma in 2013, Dina Pule. We thought this lady no longer existed. And suddenly, Boom!
So, I mean, what message are these politicians sending to South Africans in terms of their credibility? The DA, of course, as you know, is also being questioned and its credibility…being hoisted on his own petard by the revelations by John Steenhuisen; he has Tony Leon coming to defend his political party and poor Geordin Hill-Lewis trying to look ahead. It’s like, I’m not getting involved in this stuff. It’s hectic.
Chris Steyn (01:26.84)
Hm. Well, not only did President Cyril Ramaposa appoint Dina Pule to Cabinet, but also Ayanda Dlodlo as ambassador to France, where the previous ambassador apparently jumped out of the window.
Solly Moeng (01:41.282)
Yeah, it’s absolutely crazy, isn’t it? If you really think about it. Paris is a very important diplomatic position for South Africa. This is where we interact with the EU. France is a big player in the European Union. The people that we send there must be robust, they must be credible, they must be strong, they must know what they’re talking about, and they must stand firm for South Africa, and by extension, for Southern Africa.
Now, when you send people there, who have all sorts of…in the past. I think it’s unfortunate because you know what? The world watches. We mustn’t be naive. Each time we send somebody out there, these people who receive, the receiving states, in this case France and the EU, will have gone into the profile of this Ayanda Dlodlo…at some point she was chief of the intelligence services and Minister of Intelligence, but she hasn’t got a brilliant record.
…it’s painful because South Africa has got amazing men and women who can be sent out there in these very strong, powerful foreign multilateral organisations to represent us proudly. But the ANC still looks in its own dustbin of people they’ve thrown in the past to say, OK, maybe this one, people have forgotten who they are. Let’s use them again.
But now we can do far better than that. The ANC needs to stop thinking that South Africa belongs to the ANC, because it doesn’t.
Chris Steyn (03:11.726)
Well, still with President Cyril Ramaphosa, he’s former Minister of Police, suspended Minister of Police, Senzo Mchuno, still sitting at home. The very man who is credited with having helped President Ramaphosa become president of the African National Congress. And the president still has not acted against him, despite all the allegations that have emerged at Madlanga Commission of Inquiry.
Solly Moeng (03:24.237)
Yeah, it’s almost a year. It’s almost one year.
Solly Moeng (03:42.81)
Yeah, I mean, he is at the centre of the thing. It’s the same thing as Jacob Zuma not being charged for State Capture, the State capture of the Gupta Era. We know that there have been several of them. Now we have a new one now.
This whole Madlanga Commission was started because this man decided to, from what we’ve heard, listen to voices that he shouldn’t have listened to in order to dismantle a police unit that was busy scratching in places where seemingly the criminal network was not liking it anymore.
Ramaphosa didn’t fire him. But this is Ramaphosa’s style. Remember during the year of COVID, when everybody was told, stay at home, you can’t work, people were being arrested by walking alone on beaches and stuff. The Minister of Health at the time was accused of stealing 150 million rands during the year of COVID when we were in pain, people were dying. This man was not fired. He didn’t fire him. He waited for him to step aside and this stupid thing called, what do you call it? Something leave, special leave. I mean, it’s absolutely nonsense.
Leadership is not seeking to be popular. Leadership is saying, this is the tone that I’m setting and this is how it draws. And you run for South Africa. The thing is, the problem we have in South Africa is that presidents…wake up…confused as to whether they are presidents of a political party or president of the Republic. That’s why Ramaphosa was able to stand in front of a South African flag wearing his suit, not ANC paraphernalia, and said, I would rather be seen as a weak president than to see my party falter.
He doesn’t fire people. The lady who was Minister of Justice, who was implicated in VBS, is still around.
Okay, he just shifted her to the side.
He’s doing exactly the same. Basically, it’s a huge big middle finger to the people of South Africa over and over again. It just makes me so mad. You have no idea.
Chris Steyn (05:39.862)
And then there is his nephew by marriage, as he is fond of reminding us, Hungwani Maumela, allegedly one of the top five king pins, and also allegedly the Tembisa Hospital looting kingpin, still not arrested.
Solly Moeng (05:57.572)
It’s very clear that he’s benefited massively from the events that led to the assassination of Babita Deokaran. But nothing is happening. He’s linked to Ramaphosa. At first Ramaphosa said, no, I don’t know this man. I mean, it was very clear that he knew this man. Ramaphosa is such a disappointment.
So the SIU apparently is trying to create evidence from what they have taken from him that will stand in a court of law. It’s going on forever. If it were you or me who were in that position, I kid you not, we would be in jail today.
So this country has been tanked into some kind of an Orwellian Animal Farm. There’s a law for the general population and the law for the guys at the top.
Assassination after assassination after assassination. People are named as kingpins. There are five people at the top. We never get to know their names because they’re protected.
Chris Steyn (07:02.936)
Hm. Meanwhile, skeleton after skeleton is tumbling out of the cupboard at the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry, relating to testimony centered on Crime Intelligence boss General Feroz Khan. Even the Murray assassinations have now been linked to his associates.
Solly Moeng (07:20.865)
Yeah, are we surprised or are we surprised? Here’s the thing. I’m very keen to know what led to this man being shot under the circumstances that we’ve seen. I mean, questions are being asked. Also, he was very, very, very certain that he didn’t want to appear… there to be questioned there. And he didn’t want his devices to be checked.
And now that our politicians…Malema has been mentioned, God knows who else is going to be mentioned in there. You will see that as higher and higher names placed right above get named or get close to being revealed, suddenly things will stop. That suddenly will be diverted to something else.
And this is a problem because these guys will never get named, including in the ESKOM investigation. Remember, De Ruyter wrote a book and said there’s somebody at the top. That person has still not been named.
OK, so we have these people who keep going on because they keep being protected to keep going on. If none of these big names falls because of what’s going on now, they’re going to keep doing what they’re doing.
Chris Steyn (08:29.07)
Well, he was certainly desperate, General Khan, not to appear before the Madlanga Commission and answer questions relating to what had been retrieved from his devices.
Solly Moeng (08:40.311)
Yeah, he knows where that information is going to lead to. That’s what he’s trying to protect himself. And but it seems like it’s too late. I really hope that the Madlanga Commission continues. And I hope that these people are criminally investigated and it leads to consequences.
South Africans just want consequences. South Africans, no matter who they are, where they sit, they just want to know that they live in a country where the rule of law can still apply – and it would apply without fear, favour or prejudice. And right now, we’re not yet quite there.
Chris Steyn (09:14.602)
Mm, him being shot. There’s such mystery surrounding that. Was it an attempted assassination or did he try to do a Brett Kebble on himself?
Solly Moeng (09:26.393)
I don’t think he wanted to die. I think that if they wanted to kill him, if it was meant to be an assassination, it could have been an assassination.
This man was days before he was to appear in the Madlanga Commission. Of course, there are interests. There would be interests out there that would not want him to appear and be questioned and end up saying things that they wouldn’t want to hear. So wherever he is, of course, he must be protected. We said it last week.
But it must still come out. It’s a good thing that they managed to continue leading the evidence from his affidavit even while he’s lying in hospital. I hope he gets to come out to say, well, here and here and here, these are the truths.
And all these people who are coming forward now, apparently, voluntarily, with condition that they get interviewed in private, it’s good. That information must be put out there. The South African people, again, want to know what is going on, who’s involved.
But we must also take responsibility. We should take responsibility. I mean, if you support a politician, say Malema, for instance, and all these things continue to come out, tobacco connections, VBS connections, all this stuff. Of course you can say, but he has not been charged. But what is ethical leadership? What kind of messages are we sending in terms of becoming a leader in this country to youngsters who want to be in those positions one day?
You know, there’s a point at which we have to be able, and the president must say, this doesn’t stand for the kind of government that you want. You need to step aside. And he is not doing that. That’s, so the message we’re sending to people is, yeah, I want to get into politics because it’s cool. When you get in there, you get close to the food, to the money, and to the control, to the power. So people will go into those spaces for all the wrong reasons, not to save this amazing, beautiful country that is South Africa. And that has so much potential, but it cannot realise that potential, Chris, it cannot. while we keep putting into positions of importance, I almost said schmucks, but I didn’t say, but people who should not be in those positions.
Chris Steyn (11:30.541)
And another member of the alleged top five, Cat Matlala, almost pulling off a plea deal that would have seen him serve just a few years in prison.
Solly Moeng (11:40.728)
Yeah, look, I know that the story of Matlala from an SIU criminal investigation perspective is about whom he could lead to, who are the people hiding. But he must give us something. You can’t just go in there and come out three years later out of good behaviour in prison and then enjoy the millions that ended into his bank accounts and with people being assassinated…
The judge did the right thing to say, okay, yeah, I see we need a plea deal here, but it must be penance. He must lead us to the serious stuff. And if he gets to give them the names and every name, including the names in politics, yeah, they should consider a deal, but they should also take the money away.
I met a dude one day, I didn’t meet him, I was in a place and he was talking, that all you need to do is give them a deal, go to jail for three years, they don’t take the money you’ve stolen. You come back after three years, you live like a millionaire.
We must not forget the Babita Deokaran and all those people who’ve been killed, the Cloetes, everybody who’s been killed because of this criminality. Their families are watching, South Africans are watching. They should not have died for nothing. General Kinnear and all these people who are killed for standing in the path of corruption, criminality, drug trafficking, all these things.
South Africa must know that we are a country of consequence. For now, we are not a country of consequence. It depends who you are. So I really hope that Madlanga will give the criminal justice system something that will lead to the fall of the big names hidden in there. But he must also go to jail and he mustn’t come again in three years time to enjoy the money. He mustn’t.
Chris Steyn (13:31.629)
Well I’m sure he’s fully aware of the fact that if he named somebody he shouldn’t name, that he will not leave prison alive.
Solly Moeng (13:39.621)
Well, he should have known that getting into that kind of space, that kind of level of criminality would end up with incarceration…You know what? I’m not worried about people like those. I just worry that we have created democratic institutions which are meant to be independent, to govern, to lead this fabulous, what was meant to be followed by democracy, as far away from Apartheid pain into a future that is so beautifully described in the preamble to the Constitution of South Africa.
But we can’t just walk that journey without doing the right things. And that journey cannot work itself. So there are some things that are not acceptable. This country should be clear that those things are not acceptable, irrespective of who the authors are of those things. We should not worry about them. We should extract all the truth from these people and ensure that we keep and protect the integrity of South Africa and its institutions into perpetuity.
Chris Steyn
Over to the Democratic Alliance, Solly, what did you make of former leader Tony Leon’s response to the allegations made by the last former leader, Mr. John Steenhuisen?
Solly Moeng
It is very fascinating. He came out fighting. I mean, Tony Leone is a fighter. He’s always been a fighter. I remember his days facing Thabo Mbeki, who almost didn’t stand him in Parliament.
Look, he came out saying, look, first of all, two things. One, I’m going to defend the Resolve Communications. I’m the chairman, and this is what we do. And he went on about people accusing him of State Capture. This is not capture. This is the opposite of State Capture. And he went against John Steenuisen… has he bigger things to worry about, mentioned his credit card things. He mentioned it at a high level, but I tried to help him. You know, he’s got stuff that’s negative, that’s very negative, that’s toxic that he should be dealing with.
And of course, in the middle of all this is poor Geordin Hill-Lewis, who is worried, who has got to keep an eye on: What is the impact on the political party? How are we positioned ahead of the next Local Government Elections? How are we positioned at the GNU? Because we are also a partner in the governing coalition. So he’s like, I’m not trying to be part of this. I don’t want to be part of this mud pit. And all these guys go on for each other.
But I think what really happens is happening here is that Tony Leon should be more upfront with South Africans. Because he is a very important former leader of the Democratic Alliance, I think he should be… I would not be comfortable…I run a communications company, I work for the political party: I would be uncomfortable to play that role because that link, that line that probably I shouldn’t cross, if I did, I would probably have to tell South Africans, this is what…I mean they would know but I would still be very make it very obvious because the way it seemed is sometimes almost like he was he was trying to lobby on behalf of groups that are not very… for many South Africans politically speaking. I’m not saying it’s wrong but it’s just the ethical position of himself given his history with the political party that has continued to be worrisome.
I don’t think he’s the only…
Solly Moeng
…communications group that is doing what he does. Lobbying is fine. It’s just that the way it came out has been wrong. I would be very uncomfortable to be in his position.
But in the end, I think that the whole thing, whether Geordin Hill-Lewis wants to be part of the conversation or not, it’s hurting the political party. This DA, this is the DA that has always been positioned as morally higher, holier than thou kind of party, maybe for right reasons in some areas, maybe not for the right reasons, but they have also shown to be politicians.
They were just ahead of the 2024 elections, clear that they would not go after Ramaphosa or Phala Phala because they would deal with him to become ministers and get their own share of Blue Lights and overseas travel and that sort of thing.
Now the Constitutional Court pronounced itself on it, the Parliament and now the DA are saying, well, we will look at the facts and we will act on the facts. We’re still going to see what role they’re going to play there in terms of the role that they will play in the Section 89 committee that’s looking at impeachment for Ramaphosa.
So I think that the big problem in the end is about how politicians…position themselves vis-a-vis their country and vis-a-vis South Africans. So most of us South Africans, are just observers. We’re not prioritised in terms of ethical conduct by political parties.
So the Tony Leon thing is just throwing a very dirty petard at the DA and everybody is now like, oh, you see, they too, they too, they’re doing it too. It’s being repeated and we live in a country where it’s something over and over repeated, even if it’s not true, becomes true for many, you know.
So it’s pushing the DA morally, ethically on the back foot. So it’s going to be interesting to see how they survive this.
But Tony Leon is going to be, have to be very clear about, you know, this sort of thing, especially because he seems to have been lobbying almost primarily DA people, the people of his previous, of the party that he led previously.
Chris Steyn
All the drama in the African National Congress and the Democratic Alliance might be a big boon for the smaller parties come the Local Government Elections in November, Solly.
Solly Moeng
Yeah, indeed. I’m still of the view, Chris, that elections in South Africa shouldn’t just be for the dominant political parties to lose. They should be for someone to win with a programme that speaks to what worries South Africans, to South Africans, to what South Africans aspire to, what our country aspires to as a democracy. We’re not just a Southern African rooted democracy. We have a big voice in the global arena in Africa, in the middle, in the global south, et cetera.
So we need, and hence the importance of being careful about whom we position as diplomat in some of these big capitals. It shouldn’t be just a friend of the president who has no weight.
So I think that political parties are going to, they need to really think about what’s good for South Africa. And South Africans need to be very clear about what country they want to live in. They need to be clear about raising their voice to say, we want you politicians to do this for us instead of politicians saying, we will vote for you, we will do this for you. It should be a, we will serve you because this is what you want.
So of course a lot of small political parties are going to try and reap the rewards of everything that’s going on here, but they still must think of South Africa as their country….
Opportunists that will come in with good or bad intentions. It’s up to South Africans to raise their voice, to raise their stance, to be more clear about what they want and to demand what they want. We’ve given too much power in this country to political parties and to politicians. We must stop treating people, these people like heroes, wanting to be on Instagram with them even when they come out very badly in criminal investigations and stuff.
We are the biggest, the worst enemies of our country. If you think about even these immigration stories, the worst people are the ones who are employed by Home Affairs and customs officials, border officials, people who either demand or accept bribes from foreigners. Those are the worst enemies of South Africa. But we don’t mention them enough. We don’t.
Chris Steyn
Indeed. Thank you. That was Political Commentator Solly Moeng speaking to me, Chris Steyn, for BizNews. Thank you, Solly
Leave a Reply