MKMVA responds to attacks on President Zuma and the Gupta family

8 February 2016

Umkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans Association (MKMVA) would like to urge the South African society and its various formations and institutions to get on with the business of building and growing our endangered economy, rather than targeting individual businesses, maligning them and inciting racial and xenophobic violence. At this hour of great need, our country needs the unity of all its people, and the concerted effort of all its citizens to see us through these challenging times.

Recently we have been bombarded with lies, dishonesty and malicious propaganda peddled by some sections of the media and opposition political parties to twist the truth and present other enterprises, especially the Gupta family and its company, as the enemy of South Africans. However, the real enemies of our people, are those who are used by big business to scupper our efforts at radical economic transformation, meant to benefit of all the people in the society.

A simple deeper search into the malice of that irresponsible propaganda, is that those who peddle lies about the Gupta family and its supposedly dealings with the President of the ANC and the Republic, Cde Jacob Zuma, and the ANC itself, are most likely bidding the hand of the monopoly and business cartels in our country. They serve the purpose of perpetuating foreign monopoly capital strangle hold on our economy, and deny it the opportunity to grow.

The latest lie peddled to tarnish the name of the ANC and its President, is that the Gupta family twisted the hand of Glencore, to grab its coal company interests and cheat it of its business to supple coal to Eskom. The media know the truth, that the deal was ultimately done after Glencore had opted out of it on a number of occasions, because they thought they had a better deal elsewhere. This was until their better deal elsewhere failed and the Gupta family secured the Glencore interest.

The fight which the small but violently vocal opposition took up is the strangest. They fight the coal mining cartel battles, whose interests are largely owned by foreigners, who expatriate their profits, and hardly show any serious interest in reinvesting their returns, to expand our shrinking economy. Their dangerous populist utterances are in fact in violation of the Constitution of the Republic and the rule of law. They incite violence which will destroy rather than build our economy.

They do the dirty work of the international cartels, and hope to hoodwink the masses to take up the battle against the ANC, its President and indeed the Gupta family, whose model of empowerment costs the state nothing, but challenges the stereotypes of BEE which has benefited the few at our government's expense. Their posture is indeed what many of us suspected, that they serve the hand of counter revolution, using the language of our revolution.

We need to bring to the attention of the masses that the big 5 coal suppliers to Eskom, charges the State Owned Enterprise between R980 to R1346 per ton, while the Tengeta company, which is the majority shareholder in the Gupta family partnership, charges Eskom only about less than R500 per ton. It is also interesting that Tegeta supplies only 1,3% of the total deliveries to Eskom, while the big 5 cartels supply 80%. What the big 5 cartels are doing is ripping off our country, and we are glad that the CEO of Eskom, Brian Molefe, has had the courage to tell them to back off.

In this country, two families residing in Ceres, own 50% of the wealth of South Africa. Those two families dominate the locally owned shares on the JSE, while the Gupta family owns less that 1% on the very same stock market. Our responsibility as the society, in all its formations and institutions, is to urge those two families to come on board and assist radical economic transformation to build and grow our economy along the lines of a capitalist developmental state to the benefit of all South Africans. Not to make noise using illegal inflammatory language, that alienates the society, divide the people and puts our country at a path of racial and xenophobic conflict.

South Africa needs a strong and visionary leadership that the ANC possesses. Not the petty politicking muck rack that thrives on racial and xenophobic conflict. Facts speak for themselves. The media knows these facts. But the media for some reason chooses to put the South African society in conflict, rather than heal the deep wounds of economic oppression which raged alongside colonialism and apartheid for more than 350 years. We call on our people to seek facts, be vigilant and reject falsehoods that are peddled to benefit the rabid revolutionary sounding reactionaries.

Issued by Kebby Maphatsoe, National Chairperson, MKMVA NWC, 8 February 2016