Mandela Money Scandal

Dear Poor People of South Africa,

         You may not know it but you are very much in the majority in this once first world country that your African National Congress Government has stuffed almost out of sight in just 18 years. So voting them out is the only way to improve your lot.

         All your leaders are good at is feathering their own nests and promising you houses and all kinds of services when they know they have no intention of providing them.

         It’s obvious to everyone except the fat cats in your Government that you have now had enough of broken promises, not to mention all the corruption that has seen the money that should have been spent on uplifting you being stolen on a massive scale.

         At various places all over the country you are trashing the place; setting fire to Government buildings and rampaging through the streets because you are so sick and tired of having your pleas for basic services ignored.

Monument to waste

         But still your blinkered Government won’t see or listen.

         It has just announced a new series of bank notes, none of which will do you any good. They have Nelson Mandela’s head on them which the Governor of the Reserve Bank, Gill Marcus claimed reflects South Africa’s pride as a nation and pays tribute to a much loved icon.

         What utter rubbish. They don’t pay tribute to him at all. They merely remind us of how his ANC Party has, in the 13 years since he stepped down as the country’s first black president, destroyed all that he stood for. 

         Even something as mundane as the issuing of these notes was a slap in the face for you poor people because the Reserve Bank decided to waste R32-million on a communications campaign for them.

         Yes that’s right R32-million. That could have built 700 or more decent houses for you people currently living in tin shacks, or it could have been used in other ways to better your lives.

         Had Nelson Mandela still been President instead of an ailing 94 year old do you think he would have wasted money like this on notes that everybody will have to use anyway, when so many of you are starving, without homes or jobs.

         And to mock Mandela’s legacy even further who do you think the Reserve Bank had posing for pictures to promote this icon’s image? None other than our current President Jacob Zuma and Mandela’s ex-wife Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, both of whom have a record of appalling morality that is the very antithesis of what Mandela stood for.

         The two of them could not have done more to destroy everything that Nelson Mandela stood for.

Zuma a man to bank on

         Zuma, who became President in 2009, has the following achievements to put beside Mandela’s. He was acquitted of rape in 2005 and in the same year he was sacked as Deputy President by his predecessor after corruption allegations surfaced in connection with the country’s $5-billion weapons acquisition deal. Charges were dropped just in time for him to become president on the grounds that there had been political interference.

         Winnie’s CV sinks even deeper into the mire.  In 1991 she was convicted of kidnapping and assault after one of her apartheid activist, associates was murdered. On appeal her six year jail sentence was reduced to a fine and a two year suspended jail term. The 1997 Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that the abduction and murder by her body guards had been carried out on her instructions and that she had initiated and participated in assaults. But as far as the murder was concerned she had merely been negligent.

Gill Marcus & Winnie in the money

In 1994 she became Deputy Minister of Arts and Culture in the country’s first black government. Just 11 months later corruption allegations surfaced and she was dismissed. In 2003 she was convicted of 43 counts of fraud and 25 of theft and sentenced to five years in jail. She escaped being locked up once again on appeal when a Judge decided she should only get a three year suspended prison sentence because her crimes were not for personal gain.

 As a current ANC member of Parliament she earns nearly R800 000 a year, but is notorious for hardly ever attending Parliament. The Independent Electoral Commission allowed her to run in the 2009 general election despite her fraud conviction.

 Of course it had nothing to do with the fact that she had such a large following among you poor people that she was known as the Mother of the Nation and the ANC needed her vote catching ability.

It’s time you understood that South Africa has nothing to be proud of if these two are the best roll models the Reserve Bank could muster to launch the face of  Nelson Mandela.

Just what the R32-million will be spent on remains to be seen. But if history is anything to go by a lot of it could end up in the pockets of rich ANC big-wigs.

As sure as hell none of your protesting masses will see a cent of it.

Regards,

Jon, who intends sticking up one of the notes as a reminder of how not to run a country.