The ANC is not enabling syndicates, it is the syndicate

Eyewitness News

5 days ago

Sinawo Thambo 7 July 2025 | 8:57
ANC supporters. Picture: Alpha Ramushwana/EWN
The disturbing revelations made by KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Police Commissioner, Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi recently, have once again confirmed what the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) have long warned this country about: South Africa is not under threat from criminals hiding from the law, the real danger comes from criminals inside the state.
The ruling African National Congress (ANC) does not merely turn a blind eye to criminal syndicates, it is the syndicate, and Minister of Police Senzo Mchunu, has now been directly implicated as one of its key protectors.
Commissioner Mkhwanazi's briefing laid bare the collapse of law enforcement under ANC rule. He detailed how the highly effective Political Killings Task Team, responsible for prosecuting over 600 politically motivated cases and recovering weapons tied to political assassinations, was actively dismantled by political instruction, not because it failed, but because it succeeded too well.
The task team's investigations began uncovering links between organised crime and senior government officials, exposing a vast criminal network involving drug cartels, corrupt police officers, members of the judiciary, business elites, and political figures. Rather than receiving support for his work, Mkhwanazi has been targeted, discredited, and politically isolated.
What he revealed was damning. Minister Mchunu, through Deputy National Commissioner Sibiya, allegedly ordered the withdrawal of over 120 sensitive case dockets and orchestrated the disbandment of the entire Task Team, undermining years of critical investigative work. These instructions are said to have come without authority from either the National or Provincial Commissioners and coincided with the exposure of individuals linked to criminal syndicates who were also deeply connected to the ANC. It has emerged that Vusimuzi 'CAT' Matlala, a businessman facing serious charges, held over R360 million in SAPS contracts and was simultaneously funding political activities of Mchunu and his associate Brown Mogotsi as well as many ANC aligned political events.
This should not surprise any South African. The ANC, since its near defeat of 2024, has shed any previous pretence of governing for the people. It is an organisation desperate to deploy loyalists into state institutions, because its electoral decline means less seats in Parliament and in Cabinet.
It is for this reason that the ANC has gone unhinged and into a cadre deployment frenzy. It has now fully transformed into a mafia network that loots, recycles, and protects its own.
This is evident not only in Mchunu's alleged sabotage of SAPS investigations but across the appointments and patronage-based deployments we have seen this year alone. It has become characteristic of every government department at the behest of the ANC and its ministers.
Take for example the recent appointment of former Gauteng Premier, David Makhura, as a non-executive Director at the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA). This is the same Makhura who presided over, and was found liable for the infamous R42,8 million PPE looting during the COVID-19 pandemic and who failed dismally to combat corruption in his administration.
Now, instead of being prosecuted, he is rewarded with a seat on one of the country's key development finance institutions, where he will have influence over billions of rands in funding and infrastructure projects. This is the ANC's idea of accountability: recycling failure into privilege.
At the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), the pattern continues. Two ANC stalwarts, former Minister of State Security Ayanda Dlodlo and former KZN Premier Nomusa Dube-Ncube, were appointed to the board. These are not individuals with clean hands. Ayanda Dlodlo oversaw a collapse in the intelligence sector during her time in office and was central to the failure of foreseeing and preventing the 2021 unrest in KZN.
Nomusa Dube-Ncube, whose name keeps reappearing in suspect appointments, was Premier while state resources were quietly redirected to ANC-aligned networks. Their appointments serve no developmental purpose; they exist only to keep the syndicate well-fed.
Perhaps the most brazen example of the ANC's recent criminal consolidation is the awarding of the National Lottery operating licence, a contract worth R180 billion, to Sizekhaya Holdings, majorly owned by Goldrush Consortium led by ANC allies Sandile Zungu and KZN businessman Moses Tembe. Additionally, the award was not without conflicts of interests between the selection committee and the awardees, to which Minister Parks Tau has defied several calls to account before Parliament.
In fact, this deal has since been linked to the twin sister of Deputy President Paul Mashatile's wife Khumo Bogatsu who is the co-owner of Bellamont Gaming, also a shareholder in Sizekhaya Holdings. The National Lottery is meant to serve the interests of the poor and vulnerable, not to fund political agendas and enrich the families of ANC leaders. Yet here we are, watching billions of public money handed over to a closed circle of insiders without shame or resistance.
Even skills development institutions, which should be preparing the youth of this country for a productive future, are not spared despite youth unemployment well over 45%, and students continuing to struggle to get their dues from NSFAS. The ANC recently attempted to appoint Gwede Mantashe's son and once again Nomusa Dube-Ncube to chair key Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs).
These are not technocrats or experts. These are political royalty being planted in strategic positions to guarantee the continued extraction of wealth from the state, far away from public scrutiny. At this point, every institution that should serve the people is being turned into a front for family enrichment, and this is more than worrying.
Furthermore, while the country battles hunger, rising levels of the cost of living due to increasing prices of service delivery and taxes, unemployment, and violence, the ANC is further preparing to burn R700 million on a so-called National Dialogue. This unnecessary dialogue is an evident exercise in futility designed to create salaries for unemployed ANC cronies and political veterans who offer nothing. They have recruited 'eminent persons' such as longtime ANC allies Manne Dipico, Bhuti Ntshalintshali, Ela Ghandi, and Nomphendulo Mkhatshwa, not to mention former racist National Party minister Roelf Meyer, and mining executive Bobby Godsell.
This is not a dialogue for the future; it is a last supper for a dying elite desperate to eat what remains before they are permanently removed.
Lieutenant General Mkhwanazi's revelations are, therefore, not an isolated incident, they are the blueprint. The ANC has no interest in good governance, justice, or economic freedom for the majority. Its leadership is entangled in a web of dirty money, state capture, and violent suppression of dissent. This is highlighted even by their behaviour in Parliament which should be the platform of democratic accountability but has been transformed into a hostile battlefield where the ANC enforces silence through intimidation, arrogance, and even physical violence.
Their Portfolio Committee Chairpersons behave like gatekeepers of corruption every time a department of government is called in to account. They are unwilling to entertain scrutiny, allergic to transparency, and openly hostile to any input that challenges their collapsing departments.
When cornered by facts, they resort to silencing opposition through procedural manipulation or outright force. We have witnessed EFF MPs violently removed from sittings simply for demanding accountability.
This was clear during the many tablings of the national budget and the debates on the fiscal framework and monetary policy, where meaningful debate was bulldozed to rubber-stamp decisions that serve elite interests, only to be reversed by appeals to the courts. The ANC has essentially turned Parliament into a syndicate safehouse, where oversight is treated as sabotage and the truth is met with aggression.
This is not a political party managing a government, it is a criminal syndicate in possession of the state. Therefore, South Africans must understand: if we do not act now, there will be no institutions left to protect. We are watching the final decay of a liberation movement that has lost its moral centre and long replaced it with greed. The only way to cleanse the state is to remove the ANC.
Sinawo Thambo is the EFF National Spokesperson and a Member of Parliament