Lack of political literacy amongst the South African population has resulted in the misconception of political lobbying. The white owned media has capitalized on this and coined the term “State Capture”. This term has propagated a false narrative of a fictional enemy in order to keep the population focused on someone else but the actual enemy.
Professor emeritus at MIT, Noam Chomsky broke down the five filters of the propaganda model in his book “Manufacturing Consent”, a book about the paid corporate media. We will focus on the fifth filter that has to do with the creation of a “Boogie Man” that the population is duped into fearing. It is dependent entirely on the intent of the media ownership.
This projected enemy can take different forms from crime, to terrorism or even communism to list a few examples. In this country it’s the repetition of the government corruption narrative. The faces of this manufactured enemy in South Africa is the Gupta family and the supposed hold they had over the President of the republic. Chomsky states that “the way artificial fears are created with dual purpose… partly to get rid of the people you don’t like but partly to frighten the rest”. South Africans have been misled to fear an imaginary enemy as I will break it down today.
“We are governed, our minds moulded, our tastes formed and ideas suggested”, I am quoting the father of the modern day public relations industry, also known as the father of Propaganda, Edward Bernays. This is a man that was successful at overthrowing a government in South America using propaganda tactics. We know that majority of the mainstream media in this country is owned by white monopoly capital. This is partly the reason why the true corruption taking place in the country committed by these gangsters in designer suits hardly gets any media attention.
When was the last time you read an article in the newspaper that made mention of the R26 billion that was stolen from the South African Reserve Bank (SARB)? What about the collusion of the construction cartel in the world cup stadium corruption that had almost R40 billion robbed from the state? The bread price fixing collusion and the cooking oil collusion that included one of Johann Rupert owned companies, Unilver?
The examples above pale in comparison to the decade long forex collusion between 17 banks that included three local banks and fourteen foreign owned banks that were manipulating our national currency, affecting the prices that we pay for everything. An interesting aspect of the forex corruption is that the economic experts have conveniently ignored informing the population what was the actual cost of this collusion to consumers and businesses alike. It must be in the hundreds of billions if not trillions considering the fact that the opposition parties in parliament made it a point that they inform us that R500 billion was wiped off the books on the weekend that Minister Des Van Rooyen was illegally removed as the Minister of Finance by White Monopoly Capital. Simple question where did the R500 Billion go to? It’s not like the money simply disappeared, who made a profit on that fateful weekend?
Now that we have some context of the enormity of the corruption of WMC, let’s get back to this fear mongering, the so-called State Capture narrative that has been the bread and butter of the white owned media for the past couple of months. The angle taken is that the Gupta family controls the president in order to unfairly benefit from state contracts and this is a lucrative scheme that fills their coffers. This is besides the fact that no substantive proof has been presented in order to support these allegations.
I know what you are probably thinking right now, Thuli Madonsela drafted “the state of capture report” and that is proof. As I stated earlier I’m referring to substantive proof and not additional unsubstantiated allegations that were presented in that poorly written gossip column.
The report had a lot of focus on the testimony of the paid fake whistle-blowers. Firstly, we have the disgraced former Deputy Minister of Finance Mcebisi Jonas. This is a man implicated in the theft of funds allocated to the funeral of the late Nelson Mandela. A man that was fired as the CEO of the Eastern Cape Economic Development Committee for allegations of corruption. I am questioning if this is a man that would turn down R600 million if it was really offered to him as he alleges. One is led to further question how a man with such a checkered past would be appointed to a position where he is just a shoe string away from having the keys to the national kitty, talk about a junkie being locked overnight in the hospital dispensary.
Knowing that up until 15 December 2015 the appointments to such strategic positions were never made by the president rather it was the influence of WMC that was making the appointments, a legacy issue inherited from the Mandela and Mbeki era’s, President Zuma gets a pass on the appointment of Jonas. It only reiterates the corruption of WMC to appoint such an individual to the treasury.
Then of course there is the habitual liar, former MP Vytjie Mentor. “There seems to be no evidence of action taken by anyone to verify Ms. Mentors allegations”, I am quoting the words from page 16 of Thuli Madonsela’s report. Was Thuli referring to other individuals or she actually included herself in this list of individuals that failed to take action in verifying this woman’s allegations? I argue it’s the latter. Mentor has been given a platform where she is allowed to lie and the white owned media publishes the lies as fact from a credible whistle-blower. Remember when she claimed that Minister Van Rooyen signed a nuclear deal with Russia on his weekend long tenure as the minister of Finance and that turned out to be a lie? What about the fact that she did it again when Minister Malusi Gigaba was appointed to the Finance Ministry and white owned media also published this fabrication. The public is now well aware that there was never a nuclear deal to begin with as a result of the recent court ruling.
I would also be a liar if I didn’t acknowledge the fact that this state capture narrative has been highly successful as a propaganda filter. The art of repetition has hypnotised the population to the point where they take it as literal fact and anyone who challenges it is vilified and labelled a supporter of corruption. We are told that the Guptas pull the strings and they want the keys to the treasury. In Thuli’s report Jonas is quoted stating that Atul Gupta told him that his family makes R6 billion from the state and they want to boost this figure to R8 billion with his help as the new minister of finance, should he accept their offer to take up the position (please take note of this figures for later). This is an allegation whose notion is enough to get any law abiding concerned citizen extremely irate and fearful for the safety of the national coffers, this is up until you apply some simple logic to these allegations, as you will see below.
In September 2016 the Gupta owned holding Company Oakbay Holdings, released its annual financial statements as this is a requirement for all publicly listed companies. They have done this Bi-annually every single year that the company has been listed on the JSE. These financial statements have to be audited as a requirement for JSE Listing. This report of the financial performance of the company detailed that Oakbay Holdings made a total revenue f R2.6 billion in the financial year of 2015-2016. Remember earlier I mentioned that Jonas claimed that he was told by Guptas that they make in excess of R6 billion from the state, well these numbers don’t add up, let’s move along. R233 Million of that R2.6 billion came from government contracts. That is only 8.9% of their total revenue that is derived from business with the state. It is clear that Jonas made up these figures and he was completely lying.
We need to question if making R233 million from government contracts means that you’ve captured the state. Let’s use simple math to debunk this lie. The Director General of the National Treasury Lungisa Fuzile under the leadership of Pravin Gordhan released the National Budget review for 2016 on the 24th of February 2016. The budget review details that the total state expenditure for 2016 was R1 380.9 trillion. Let’s take a look at that R233 million that the Guptas made from the state in relation to the total state expenditure. R233 million of R 1 380.9 trillion = 0.016%. So you mean to tell me that people that don’t even make 0.1% of the total state expenditure have captured the state?
What if there was someone else that makes money from the state compared to the Gupta family. Would this also mean that they have captured the state and possibly have more influence than the Guptas? I remember the Sunday Times awards of 2016 when Johann Rupert was quoted on Fin24, stating that he does not do business with the state because he doesn’t trust it. This was before the white media would score an own goal when the Daily Maverick reported that Grindon, another one of the Rupert owned companies was the bank of choice for CPS in relation to SASSA grant payments and that this company made R10 billion from banking SASSA grant money and issuing out the SASSA bank cards. Let’s apply the same simple mathematical logic that we used earlier, R10 billion of R 1 380.9 trillion = 0.72% of the total state expenditure (R10billion > R233 million, 0.72% > 0.016%) does that mean that Johann Rupert is reigning champion of State Capture? Isn’t it ironic that the richest man in the country is single biggest benefactor of the state funded social grants, a benefit designed to help the poor that can’t afford to even buy food?
In 2006 billionaire Zionist George Soros funded the Study of Corruption from the Pre-democratic era of South Africa, through his Open Society Foundation, I can’t begin to fathom what his desired result was. A document titled “Apartheid-Grand-Corruption-2006” was published by the Institute of Security Studies in Cape Town. It exposed billions of rands that dwarf the R26 billion mentioned on the CIEX Report of 1997. It outlined that the white led South Africa was a cesspool of corruption. But don’t take my word for it, just source the publicly available document on the internet.
The likes of the Ruperts and Oppenheimers exited this era with the largest amount of personal wealth ever amassed in the history of this country. A position that they still hold today. We can deduce from that knowledge that they thrived from the corrupt system that they participated in. It goes without saying that a leopard never changes its spots. They are still the corrupt criminals that they were in the old regime, with a personally owned media cartel to deflect attention from the fact that they captured the state many generations ago. Their greed will not allow them to share the wealth of this country with anyone else especially the indigenous people of the country. That is why they have made it their mission to crush anyone that will dare challenge their ownership of this country, the Guptas are only guilty of ruffling the feathers of the true State Capturers, White Monopoly Capital.