Africa-Press – South-Africa. After News24’s exposé on the president-in-waiting, South Africans are fully justified in asking who is the real Paul Mashatile and who are the people behind him pushing him in this game of thrones.
Last week, a year after he handed his final reports on state capture to President Cyril Ramaphosa, Chief Justice Raymond Zondo challenged South Africans.
Could state capture happen again? Today? And would Parliament be able to stop it? Zondo’s answers to his own questions didn’t inspire much-needed hope.
Yes, state capture could happen again, and no, it’s unlikely the ANC majority in Parliament would prevent it from happening, he said.
Who can blame him when a year after handing his reports to Ramaphosa, neither former president Jacob Zuma nor the Guptas – the main architects of state capture – are behind bars?
Add to that the fact the “new Scorpions”, the Investigating Directorate, remains a temporary structure, and Zondo’s bleak outlook is justified.
Mashatile’s benefactors
The one thing we learnt from the Zuma/Gupta state capture years is just how insidious the capture of Zuma and his family started. A directorship for his daughter here; a house for his son there.
When Zuma actively intervened to divert public funding to the Gupta companies, it was too late. Which brings us to the subject of today’s hard-hitting lead story on News24: Deputy President Paul Mashatile and his expanding coterie of benefactors.
Mashatile and his advisors have been hard at work to tell leaders in business, the media and, of course, the ANC he would be president way before the end of Ramaphosa’s second term as ANC president in 2027.
The story goes something like this: Mashatile is already 61, he cannot wait another full term, Ramaphosa is asleep at the wheel and has lost his chutzpah to govern, and Mashatile would do a much better job of fixing South Africa’s immediate problems. It’s a beautiful story if it was true.
After today’s exposé on the president-in-waiting – the first in a series – South Africans are fully justified in asking who is the real Paul Mashatile and who are the people behind him, pushing him in this game of thrones.
The beginning of unmasking the real Mashatile
What are the motives of people like corruption-accused Edwin Sodi, who makes millions from bungling government tenders meant to uplift the poor and faces serious corruption charges alongside Ace Magashule?
Why would he bend backwards to entertain Mashatile and his liaisons at his palatial residences? And what about Ndavhe Mareda, the coal miner who ironically bought a Gupta-owned coal mine to supply Eskom?
Why is he allowing Mashatile to treat his Fresnaye mansion, a few houses away from Ramaphosa’s private house, as his own?
Stories of innocent friendships and camaraderie won’t cut it after we lost our naivety between 2009 and 2018.
This is just the beginning of the unmasking of Mashatile’s vast network of benefactors who sponsor him to live like a king. It is clear from our investigations his so-called Alex Mafia had expanded rapidly since he became a prominent player on the national political scene.
For a man who wants to become president as soon as after next year’s general elections if his spin doctors are to be believed, he deserves any bit of scrutiny coming his way.
South Africa simply cannot afford another era of compromised politicians and a captured state. It will be the end of us.
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