It proved a day short on time in court and big on political posturing and speeches. The former president of South Africa Jacob Zuma’s appearance lasted a mere 10 minutes, on April 6, and the trial postponed until June 8 – yet he managed to make political capital out of his day in court in Durban.
On a bright sunny day in the coastal city of Durban in the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) Province of South Africa, the former head of state stood trial in his own court. Almost 10 years ago, 10 days after this day, 18 charges on 783 counts of fraud, corruption, money laundering and racketeering were dropped against Jacob Zuma by former National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) boss Mokotedi Mpshe.
This decision was said to have been based on the recordings of the so-called ‘spy tapes’, which were presented to Mpshe by Zuma&#8217;s legal team. And almost a decade later, Zuma stands trial in the same court for the same charges which were reinstated by now NPA boss Shaun Abrahams.
The court was packed to full capacity with only 25 journalist allowed inside. Media came from all over the country, the continent and the world. Night vigils and pickets were held outside the night before the court case and on the day the case took place, led by different organizations supporting the former president. These organizations included Transform RSA, Black First Land First led by Andile Mngxitama, student groups from various KZN universities and members of the African National Congress (ANC) ruling party who claimed not to be operating under the party’s name.
The National Executive Committee (NEC) of the ANC made an announcement a week before the trial that members of the party who liked to support Msholozi, as Zuma is affectionately called, could do so in their own personal capacity and not wear any party regalia. However, ANC members who attended actually did the opposite and when asked if they were defying their own party, countered “you cannot have an ANC without Jacob Zuma”.
Thousands of supporters in front of the Durban High Court chanted struggle songs and praised Zuma.
Zuma addressed the crowds after spending close to 15 minutes inside the court room.
“I keep asking them what have I done for them to keep trying to bring me down but they have no answers but one day they will,” he said.
Among the top-ranking ANC officials in KZN was the province’s MEC for Economic Development and Tourism Sihle Zikalala who vowed to aid in defending the former president.
What is clear is that the ANC in KZN is still divided, with its members committing to prove Zuma’s innocence and unseating current president Ramaphosa before the 2019 elections. On the other hand, some others are calling for his prosecution by the court of law.
This case may take years to be concluded and political wars in the province may not augur well for the ANC.

G20 Nations Hold Hamburg Summit

Prosecution And Praise For Jacob Zuma

It was an eventful rainy Thursday afternoon. Workers left their desks to watch the action through their office windows. It was one of the many marches against state capture. On this day, civil society organizations were picketing outside the office of global consultancy McKinsey, right opposite the FORBES AFRICA headquarters in Sandton, South Africa.
McKinsey is one of the many companies, in the country, implicated in alleged corrupt dealings between state-owned power utility Eskom and consultancy firm Trillian. McKinsey and Trillian stood to earn more than $490 million from Eskom.
It has been a year of drama in corporate South Africa. As strange as it may sound, a lot of South Africa’s protests, like this, have one family as the common cause.
Weak-kneed politicians allegedly allowed members of the Indian-born Gupta family to wield undue influence. This influence has gone from meddling with the state’s top jobs to conniving with private and public companies to act in their favor.
Another company in hot water is Bell Pottinger, a British public-relations firm connected to the Guptas by a $130,000-a-month contract. It was stripped of its membership in the Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA) in the UK, after it was found that the PR agency deliberately fanned racial tensions, with creations like &#8216;white monopoly capital&#8217;, in South Africa, in favor of Zuma, while it worked for the Gupta-owned Oakbay Capital.
“We took this decision because we were not satisfied by the explanations given. We have never passed down such a damning indictment,” says Nicholas Dunn-McAfee, Head of Public Affairs, Policy and Research at PRCA.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/billionaires/2017/12/08/south-african-billionaires-fortune-plunges-2-billion-day-amid-accounting-scandal/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: South African Billionaire&#8217;s Fortune Plunges More Than $2 Billion In A Day Amid Accounting Scandal</a>
It gets worse.
For years KPMG South Africa has said it stands for integrity. Instead, the tax, advisory and auditing firm now stands alleged of giving advice so that money can be taken to Dubai to avoid tax payments. They also turned a blind eye to several conflicts of interest while auditing 36 Gupta-linked companies and compiled the so-called South African Revenue Services (SARS) rogue spy unit report which was used as part of the smear campaign against former Finance Minister, Pravin Gordhan.
There are consequences.
For KPMG, for example, pressure has been piling. The firm withdrew all its findings in the ‘rogue unit’ report; senior executives, including CEO Trevor Hoole, resigned; and it has been dumped by major clients, among them, Sasfin Bank, Sygnia Asset Management, the energy investment company Hulisani, and the University of the Witwatersrand.
Like the protesters in Sandton, Magda Wierzycka, Chief Executive Officer at Sygnia Group, an asset management company, says all involved should be held accountable, stripped of their licenses, fined and even jailed.
“There are no excuses. They did what they did for money. They were not ignorant of what they were doing,” she says.
Opposition political parties, rights groups and private citizens are playing their part to make sure unethical companies are punished. The problem is corporate misgovernance affects the whole country.
<div id="attachment_34798" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-34798" class=" wp-image-34798" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Alastair-Macduff-Chairman-and-Chief-Executive-Officer-of-the-Turnaround-Management-Association-Southern-Africa.-copy-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="451" />Alastair Macduff, the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Turnaround Management Association Southern Africa. (Photo supplied)</div>
South Africa was downgraded to junk status and went into a recession. At the time of writing this article, $1 was equivalent to R14.16 at its worst, it went to about R17 to the dollar. It means business confidence is at an all-time low.
“Businesses are feeling the impact of low investor confidence, weakening exchange rates and high fiscal uncertainty,” says Alastair Macduff, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Turnaround Management Association Southern Africa.
“Restoring investor, business and consumer confidence will require a concerted effort to address these pressing issues – and address them in the best interests of the country as a whole,” he says.
Wierzycka agrees.
“In a funny way, what has happened to KPMG and McKinsey is actually very positive… Positive in terms of waking corporate South Africa to what is happening and to the fact that they can no longer sit on the fence and stay silent,” she says.
According to Wierzycka, South Africa’s corporate sector is suffering from a moral crisis.
“The dilemma is, do you change providers based on the fact of they are implicated in state capture even when it’s inconvenient to do so?”
<div id="attachment_34795" style="width: 510px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-34795" class=" wp-image-34795" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Mckinsey-strike-501-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="333" />People protests against corruption outside the McKinsey office in Sandton, Johannesburg. (Photo by Motlabana Monnakgotla)</div>
Wierzycka has lived it. She offered Bianca Goodson, former Trillian CEO turned whistle-blower, a job. This after Goodson’s new employer, Sage, accepted her resignation after she told them she was blowing the whistle on her previous employer. Goodson provided documented evidence that the Gupta-linked firm swindled hundreds of millions from state-owned enterprises Transnet and Eskom. Wierzycka called Goodson, and all whistle-blowers, heroes.
“When I heard what Sage did, I was actually breathless. The true heroes of the story of South Africa are the belittled whistle-blowers… Bianca took tremendous risks in disclosing the information she disclosed on Trillian, McKinsey, Eskom and a number of others. It seemed a completely natural thing to reach out to her, if anything else, to reassure her that she is not alone in this fight. When I did, I met a lady who is incredibly competent. So let’s be clear, I gave her a job, not because she is a Trillian whistle-blower but because I encountered a woman of tremendous bravery with a strong moral compass and qualifications that are arms long,” says Wierzycka.
<div id="attachment_34797" style="width: 311px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-34797" class=" wp-image-34797" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Magda-Wierzycka-Chief-Executive-Officer-at-Sygnia-Group-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="301" height="452" />Magda Wierzycka, Chief Executive Officer at Sygnia Group. (Photo supplied)</div>
Goodson has a five-year-old daughter and, according to Wierzycka, she was petrified.
“My biggest concern was her personal safety. If she had died in a random hijacking, no one would think because no one knew her name. So, what I thought was that the most important thing that needed to happen was to get her name out there in the headlines.”
Wierzycka’s good fight doesn’t end there.
Earlier this year, Sygnia started a new money market unit trust and the firm said it will donate 100% of the management fees, earned on the fund, to non-political organizations fighting corruption. Sygnia also fired KPMG when news on state capture allegations broke.
“At the end of the day, I think it’s up to each company to make a choice. In the instance of KPMG, their board of directors make up their own minds as to whether what they’re seeing is what they expect to be seeing from their service provider and how serious they view what the company has done. In the instance of McKinsey, do you honestly want to do business with a company that has robbed South African taxpayers while we have a tiny taxpayer base supporting such vast percentages of the South African population which is living in inequality… Are you happy, morally, to do business with a business like that? That’s a question each board of directors has to ask,” says Wierzycka.
Another problem with some corporate companies is that they use denial as a first response when they are embroiled in a crisis. It creates a bigger mess.
KPMG South Africa, as an example, hired Nhlamu Dlomu, previously Head for People and Change, to clean up the mess as their new CEO. She couldn’t answer many questions posed to her, probably because she wasn’t prepared to be the CEO of one of the four top audit companies in the country that was facing its greatest crisis.
Women CEOs in times of corporate crisis may be a global trend.
A PwC report found that 38% of female CEOs are forced out of the office; compared to 27% of male CEOs. Another study, by Utah State University researchers, found boards are more likely to promote women and minorities to top leadership roles when an organization is in crisis.
“To me, that was a typical response of an international company that thinks  putting a fairly attractive female in front of clients is going to solve the problem… I think that the reason they are losing the battle in the court of public opinion is because they’re arrogant,” says Wierzycka.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2017/04/01/give-us-water-not-statues/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Give Us Water Not Statues</a>
Before firing KPMG, Wierzycka says she advised the audit firm to withdraw the entire ‘rogue unit’ report and they refused.
“I said, ‘let’s talk about the money then, because we know that this is blood money, whether it’s stolen from taxpayers or the farming community in the Eastern Cape. R63 million ($4.43 million) will go a long way towards fighting corruption. So donate all this money to organizations which are fighting corruption in South African courts. At least try to redeem yourself in the eyes of the South African public.’ I was told no…,” recalls Wierzycka.
KPMG only withdrew sections of the report, under questioning in parliament, admitting that it was wrong about the SARS report and that their conclusions and recommendations were incorrect.
Clearly, it will take more than marches in Sandton to bring about change.
<div id="attachment_34801" style="width: 360px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-34801" class=" wp-image-34801" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Sylvester-Chauke-Founder-DNA-Brand-Architects-300x277.jpg" alt="" width="350" height="323" />Sylvester Chauke, Founder DNA Brand Architects (Photo supplied)</div>
<h1>How To Weather A Corporate Storm</h1>
Sylvester Chauke loves to communicate. We meet him in his well-decorated office in Fourways, Johannesburg. As we enter, we are welcomed by multiple awards on the walls behind and in front of his desk. It is like we have entered a trophy factory.
“I don’t know how many awards I have. Not all of them are here but this is all inspiration and it is kudos to the hard work we do,” he says.
This is a world away from where it all started.
At 12 years old he went for a TV commercial audition. He loved it. Since then, he knew he wanted to work in the media industry.
There was research and soul searching. It ushered in a marketing and advertising communications degree, from the University of Johannesburg, and an internship. He never looked back.
Five years ago, he founded DNA Brand Architects; a marketing and brand consultancy company that advises people on how to avoid or deal with corporate crisis. He employs 34 people and counts Vodacom, Edgars, Bonang Matheba, Steers and Wimpy among his clients.
“It is all about taking all these fields of communication, whether it’s broadcasting, advertising, and brand communication, into one space,” says the 36-year-old.
According to Chauke, it is very obvious that there is a corporate communication crisis in South Africa. He says in most businesses, communication is just seen as PR. They send press releases and hope for the best. They don’t plan for a crisis.
“Most businesses don’t think that they have to think and plan for it, they just become overly confident, to some extent quite arrogant, to think that they are such great brands that can sort of overcome anything. We are seeing it right now with the likes of Bell Pottinger, KPMG and McKinsey. It is indicative of that communication is a ‘by the way’ thing,” says Chauke.
It is dangerous. When companies say the wrong thing, they risk losing their clients, or worse, the company. According to Chauke, planning for a crisis isn’t rocket science.
“Most of the time you can anticipate issues. For example, when your financial results come out and they are not good, you should plan what you are going to be saying to the stakeholders about the performance. It is the same if you are going to be retrenching 2,000 people, you need to be prepared.”
Chauke says every business needs a crisis management plan, reviewed annually, for crises they can’t anticipate.
“The biggest challenge that we have is people think because you are a CEO, and you speak to a crowd of 1,000 in a conference, you can handle media. That is so not true. You need an experienced spokesperson to handle that.”
He says Africans should inspire the world.
“I think that if the way that we do business is given a chance and doesn’t get distracted by all the corruption, scandals and corporate blunders, the way we do business would inspire others because we push regardless,” he says.
Maybe this is just the kind of inspiration corporate South Africa needs.

Anger At The Corporate Slippery Slope

Five years ago this week 44 people were killed in the course of an industrial dispute at a platinum mine in South Africa’s North West Province owned by Lonmin. It became known as the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/marikana-massacre-16-august-2012" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Marikana massacre</a>.
For many observers, Marikana was a turning point in the presidency of Jacob Zuma – who came to power in 2009 – and in the history of democratic South Africa. Even more so, it gave an early indication of the abuse of state power that’s been the hallmark of the Zuma government.
Thirty-four miners were shot dead by members of the South African Police Service in a single day, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/marikana-massacre-16-august-2012" target="_blank" rel="noopener">16 August 2012</a>. Seventeen were gunned down by heavily armed members of police tactical response teams as they left the <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03057070.2016.1223477?scroll=top&amp;needAccess=true" target="_blank" rel="noopener">small hill (or koppie)</a> they’d been occupying. Others died at the hands of the police in the course of a brutal mopping up operation that followed.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2017/08/16/marikana-promise-kept-tears-grief/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Marikana: A Promise Kept Through Tears Of Grief</a>
Five years on, and two years after the official <a href="http://www.marikanacomm.org.za/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Farlam Commission of Inquiry</a> into the Marikana tragedy, <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/08/south-africa-five-years-on-marikana-victims-still-wait-for-justice/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">no-one has been held to account</a>. Ministers have moved to new portfolios, police commanders have retired on ample pensions, or been <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/riah-phiyega-leaves-the-police-today-glad-she-ran-the-course-9708513" target="_blank" rel="noopener">replaced </a> in a blaze of litigation.
<h2>Lack of accountability</h2>
Only last week Zuma survived a vote of no confidence in parliament in the wake of a series of scandals. These included compelling evidence that he and his government are in thrall to the influential <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2016-03-24-00-the-gupta-owned-state-enterprises" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Gupta family</a>.
Zuma’s reputation as the <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-08-08-motion-of-no-confidence-teflon-zuma-survives-but-vote-closer-than-expected/#.WZK6fraQy70" target="_blank" rel="noopener">“Teflon President”</a> – able to shrug off charges of everything from bribery to rape and allowing the South African state to be <a href="http://pari.org.za/betrayal-promise-report/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">“captured” by the Guptas and their acolytes</a> – dates back well beyond 2012. But, when it comes to Marikana, Zuma is not the only one with non-stick credentials.
In March this year, the country’s <a href="https://nationalgovernment.co.za/units/view/20/Department-Independent-Police-Investigative-Directorate-IPID" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Independent Police Investigative Directorate</a>, the police oversight body, announced that it had identified <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/72-cops-to-be-charged-over-marikana-20170319-2" target="_blank" rel="noopener">72 police officers to face charges</a>. These ranged from murder to perjury and defeating the ends of justice. Since then, no further action has been taken.
Important though this is, the responsibility for the massacre doesn’t stop at those who pulled the triggers. At the outset of the Farlam Commission’s public hearings, <a href="http://www.incwajana.com/dali-mpofu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dali Mpofu</a>, counsel for the miners injured at Marikana, blamed many of the deaths on <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2014-07-30-toxic-lonmin-police-collusion-blamed-for-marikana-massacre" target="_blank" rel="noopener">‘toxic collusion’</a>between the police and the mining company Lonmin.
As the inquiry progressed, Mpofu and others made strenuous efforts to blame Cyril Ramaphosa, deputy president of South Africa for the bloody denouement of 16 August. At the time Ramaphosa was a shareholder and non-executive director of Lonmin as well as a member of the ruling <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/officials/national-executive-committee-0" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ANC’s National Executive Committee</a>.
The commission itself uncovered evidence that collusion went some way beyond the police commanders and Lonmin executives on the ground. At a special briefing two days before the massacre the police commissioner for the North West province, Lieutenant General Miriam Mbombo, told a senior Lonmin executive that police were planning to move in to “kill” the strikers’ protest.
Mbombo revealed that she was acutely aware of the influence wielded by Ramaphosa. She also admitted being alive to the risk of allowing Julius Malema, who had been expelled as leader of the ANC’s Youth League, to make political capital out of the dispute.
Based on the transcript of this briefing, the Commission found that both Mbombo and the then National Commissioner of police, General Riah Phiyega, were complicit in raising political factors in their discussions about <a href="http://www.gov.za/sites/www.gov.za/files/marikana-report-1.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">policing in Marikana</a>. It found these discussions to be “inappropriate” and inconsistent with the constitutional requirement that policing should be conducted in an impartial and unbiased manner.
The Commission also determined that the fatal decision to forcibly remove the striking miners from the koppie they were occupying was taken by Mbombo and not by tactical commanders with expertise in public order policing. It was then endorsed at an extraordinary session of the South African Police Service’s national management forum late on 15 August.
The commission did not find a direct link between anyone in political authority having ordered the police to take action. It did, however, conclude that the decision to remove the strikers from the koppie was at least partly the consequence of the senior police officials feeling the need to act and to be seen to act.
This idea that the police commanders at Marikana did not need to be told what to do, or how to do it, is consistent with the social theorist Steven Lukes’ three-dimensional view of power and the ability of the powerful to secure the compliance of those they dominate without either making decisions or giving orders. The generals knew what had to be done to end a costly and politically damaging protest. They knew that it had to be done without further delay, and, if necessary, with the use of force. The result, as we now know, was the loss of 34 lives.
The way in which power, subtly but with far reaching consequences, was used at Marikana may also tell us something about how it’s used in contemporary South Africa more generally to control, perhaps even to capture, not just the police but other state institutions far beyond the criminal justice system. &#8211; Written by <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/bill-dixon-137304" rel="author">Bill Dixon, </a>Professor of Criminology, University of Nottingham
Originally published in <a href="https://theconversation.com/africa" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Conversation</a>
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Tag: Zuma

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

Prosecution And Praise For Jacob Zuma

Anger At The Corporate Slippery Slope

What the lack of accountability for Marikana says about Zuma’s government