Just when South Africa\u2019s ruling party thought it was on the way to rebuilding its image before this year\u2019s election, along came Angelo Agrizzi.<\/p>\n
A former executive at services company Bosasa, Agrizzi has captivated the nation with televised testimony at a judicial panel probing graft during Jacob Zuma\u2019s presidency about how the firm won state contracts worth billions of rand by bribing top African National Congress officials.<\/p>\n
He also said the company helped the party divert taxpayer money to fund election campaigns.<\/p>\n
Agrizzi\u2019s revelations will make it harder for the ANC to prove it\u2019s committed to stamping out the graft that marred Zuma\u2019s almost nine-year rule — especially since several of those implicated remain in their posts.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ANC as a party is a shadow of its former self,\u201d said Sethulego Matebesi, a political analyst at the University of the Free State. \u201cThe information coming out could affect how the middle class decide how to vote. The party can never be the same after all of this exposure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whether that will translate into a reduced share of the ANC\u2019s vote in elections expected in May is less certain because its main rivals, the Democratic Alliance and Economic Freedom Fighters, are facing their own problems. The DA has been beset by infighting while EFF officials have been linked to payouts from a collapsed bank.<\/p>\n
Zuma Scandals<\/strong><\/p>\n Opinion polls conducted before Agrizzi testified showed the ANC on course to win about 60 percent of the national vote. That would be an improvement on the record low of 54 percent in 2016 municipal elections, when disgruntlement with Zuma\u2019s immersion in a string of scandals sapped support.<\/p>\n Ultimately the party forced him from office in February last year and appointed his deputy – and new ANC leader – Cyril Ramaphosa in his place.<\/p>\n While Zuma has been accused of allowing members of the Gupta family, who were his son\u2019s business partners, to influence cabinet appointments and state contract awards, a number of other of politicians and officials are now also alleged to have been on the take.<\/p>\n Bosasa, renamed African Global Operations, paid out R4 million ($256,000) to R6 million\u00a0 in bribes each month, according to Agrizzi, who was the company\u2019s chief operating officer from 1999 to 2016 and claims to have handled many of the cash payments.<\/p>\n High-Profile Recipients<\/strong><\/p>\n He named Zuma, Environmental Affairs Minister Nomvula Mokonyane and prominent lawmaker Vincent Smith among 38 high-profile recipients. Zuma, Mokonyane, Smith and the Guptas all deny wrongdoing.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is not easy for us as young people to listen to how a single company can pay so much money to a few politically connected people,\u201d said Lesiba Ngwenya 35, an unemployed resident of Kagiso, a township near Krugersdorp, west of Johannesburg. \u201cI haven\u2019t joined the EFF, but I will certainly vote for them just so that I can contribute to stopping the top politicians from eating, while watching us suffer.\u201d<\/p>\n The ANC has said the judicial panel headed by deputy chief justice Raymond Zondo has its full support, but the testimony is untested and legal processes must run their course before it acts against implicated officials. Ramaphosa insists the revelations won\u2019t badly affect support for the ANC and that the party will win a decisive election victory.<\/p>\n \u201cThe past few years, we lost our way. We have found our way back,\u201d he said in a speech during a visit to India. \u201cWe are cleansing our country and our institutions.\u201d<\/p>\n While the ANC\u2019s support for Zondo\u2019s panel could demonstrate it\u2019s serious about tackling corruption, it needs to show the culprits will be held accountable and the proceeds of crime will be confiscated, according to Mcebisi Ndletyana, a political science professor at the University of Johannesburg.<\/p>\n Credibility At Stake<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cThe credibility of the party is at stake,\u201d Ndletyana said by phone. \u201cThey need to make sure they disapprove of and distance themselves from those implicated.\u201d<\/p>\n Thembeka Khuzwayo, 66, who sells meat and corn porridge from a roadside stall in Kagiso, is undecided whether she will vote.<\/p>\n \u201cYou see change around you but it\u2019s the councilors and the politicians whose lives are changing,\u201d she said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t surprise me that they ate all that money with Bosasa.\u201d<\/p>\n
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