EFF CONDEMNS APPOINTMENT OF MARIA RAMOS TO THE INTERIM BOARD OF PIC.
Wednesday, 10 July, 2019
The EFF condemns the appointment of Maria Ramos to the interim board of the PIC and the exclusion of the Deputy Minister of Finance with the contempt it deserves.
We have long warned the people of South Africa that Zuma was just a small irritation and disturbance of the larger interest of white monopoly capital. Now that he is gone, white capital is no longer hiding its direct control of the state.
Ramos is the blue eyed child of South Africa's greedy, exploitative, racist, and historically murderous capital. She, Trevor Manuel, Cyril Ramaphosa, and Tito Mboweni are direct deployees of White Monopoly Capital; which is the number one enemy of the Emancipation aspirations of the poor, working class, and black people in general.
Maria Ramos was in the recent past a Board Member of Remgro, an investment holdings company chaired by Johan Rupert, which has shares in a lot of company that has the PIC as shareholders. Amongst these companies are RMH & FIRSTRAND, the owners of FNB and Wesbank; MEDICLINIC, eMedia which owns eTV and eNCA; DISTELL, RCL Foods and many other companies which the PIC has direct or indirect interests. Maria Ramos will unavoidably be conflicted and will certainly not defend the interests of Government Employees on the PIC Board, as she has direct relationships with the companies she served as a Director in.
Are there really no capable men and women, black women in particular, who could have been put in the place of Maria Ramos? It is not a speculation that Ramos presided over one of the banking institutions that racially discriminate against poor black people by charging them more interest. It is also no secret that as head of ABSA, she connived to fix the Rand in order to pursue greed of capitalists.
These above facts means that she has no interest of the people at heart. She is going to the PIC to ensure that it continues to invest in white business which she has always served.
The deliberate exclusion of the Deputy Minister from the PIC Board is also a capitalist plan to remove political oversight over the looting of assets under the management of the PIC. Government underwrites almost all assets that are invested by the PIC, on behalf of the Government Employees Pension Fund, so it is logical that a Deputy Minister is directly involved in the deployment of key resources to various sectors of the economy.
The 5th Parliament's National Assembly already passed a bill legislation that set parameters on appointment of PIC Board and amongst other things, specified that
Deputy Minister of Finance should be chairperson of the PIC Board. Tito Mboweni seems to be deliberately disregarding the legislative guidance from the NA in favour of his capitalist friends.
White monopoly capital is reclaiming all the spaces and institutions Zuma had kicked them from, although for narrow nepotistic and corrupt ends.
The EFF rejects Ramos as a perfect sign that the Ramaphosa administration has no interest in the change of status-quo. The Ramaphosa administration is committed to ensure that the economy remains in the hands and control of white monopoly capital.
Statement issued by the Economic Freedom Fighters, 10 July 2019
