On the Brink. Claire Bisseker
practice, the outlines of radical economic transformation were fuzzier. It appeared to encompass the ANC’s existing black-empowerment policies – setting aside 30% of public procurement for black businesses and potentially increasing the black ownership requirement in mining from 26% to 30% – with the supposed added kicker of accelerating land reform by amending the Constitution to allow forced expropriation without fair and just compensation. But in the absence of any policy document spelling out exactly what the phrase meant, it was impossible to decode. Perhaps that was the whole point.
‘There’s a strong argument to be made that [radical economic transformation] is nothing more than propaganda … nothing more than a provocative description for a programme of action whose credibility has collapsed under the weight of its own failure – the last-gasp attempt to inject new life into a dying corpse,’ wrote journalist Gareth van Onselen.3
If so, it had been remarkably successful in allowing Zuma to claim back the stage. It also appeared to have been devised as part of a strategic and well-oiled communications campaign that began in the months leading up to Zuma’s state-of-the-nation address.
During this period there had been a distinct increase in anti-establishment rhetoric, aimed largely at South Africa’s highly concentrated banking sector and the National Treasury. This seemed designed to lay the groundwork for Zuma’s message.
In addition to Zuma’s new slogan ‘radical economic transformation’, the term ‘white monopoly capital’4 started surfacing all over social media where it was wielded mainly by his supporters – or, as the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Anthony Butler put it, ‘the Zuma camp’s social-media prostitutes’5 – to attack big business and challenge the status quo.
British PR firm Bell Pottinger, which was retained by the Guptas to burnish their image after Nenegate, was allegedly the mastermind behind this aggressive social-media campaign, according to numerous media reports.6 The firm reportedly made use of fake bloggers, commentators and Twitter bots to manipulate public opinion and divert outrage away from the Gupta family towards other imagined examples of state capture by white monopoly capital.
Though Bell Pottinger at first denied the charge, Johann Rupert confirmed that his company Richemont had ended its 20-year relationship with the PR firm based on information from ‘impeccable sources’ inside Bell Pottinger that it was indeed behind the campaign.7
Later Bell Pottinger apologised to South Africa and sacked four senior executives over the campaign. Gordhan rejected the apology as a ‘pathetic cover-up’ and an ‘insult’ to South Africans, noting that it vindicated what he’d been saying for almost two years – that the attacks on institutions such as the National Treasury were designed to malign them, distract from the looting of state resources and divide the nation along racial lines.8
Project Spider Web
By advocating policies that placed economic growth front and centre, the National Treasury found itself seemingly at odds with the notion of radical economic transformation, with its implicit focus on faster redress at all costs. In this environment it was easy to paint the Treasury as a stooge of white monopoly capital.
But the campaign to discredit the Treasury had begun much earlier, well before Nenegate. The clearest example of this was the crude smear campaign launched in August 2015 in the form of a leaked, anonymous report, titled Project Spider Web. Purportedly an intelligence document, the report was so replete with bizarre assertions, spelling errors and fanciful code names that then finance minister Nene dismissed it at first as a practical joke.
The report argued that the private sector had captured the Treasury through a cabal of white, mainly Afrikaner interests, centred around Stellenbosch University and funded by the Rupert, Oppenheimer and Rothschild families.
‘The history of this influence dates back during the early ’90s when the ANC and the National Party were negotiating the talks about talks,’ states the report. ‘The white establishment felt it was too risky to leave the running of the government solely in the hands of the ANC.’9
More than a dozen senior Treasury officials, claims the report, were under the influence of ‘the white establishment’, which allowed it to control both monetary and fiscal policy, including the process of developing and adjusting the budget.
Among those singled out were Trevor Manuel, whose code name was apparently the ‘King of Leaves’ and his wife, Maria Ramos, former Treasury director-general and current Barclays Africa Group CEO, the ‘Queen of Leaves’.
Mcebisi Jonas, who was purportedly the chairperson of Project Spider Web, was dubbed ‘the Fox’. The Treasury’s chief procurement officer, Kenneth Brown, was ‘the Tiger’. Andrew Donaldson, the then head of the Government Technical Advisory Centre, was ‘the Emperor’, and Daniel Matjila, a man with a PhD in applied mathematics, was said to be the CEO of the project and codenamed ‘the Iron Master’ – like something straight out of Dungeons and Dragons.
Nene’s director-general, Lungisa Fuzile, recalls how, at around that time, one of his deputy director-generals walked into his office and asked ‘with teary eyes’ whether he was aware that the Treasury was under attack. ‘I tried to play it down because I saw how distressed this colleague was,’ said Fuzile, ‘but it got me to reflect, and even before 9/12,10 I thought maybe there was something in what he was saying.’11
Responding to Project Spider Web in a press statement, the Treasury said that although the document was baseless, it ‘seemed designed to sow seeds of suspicion and may be motivated by an inexplicable desire to undermine and destabilise the institution’.12
It appeared as though the Treasury was going to be the next target of those bent on undermining state institutions. Not four months later, Nene was out of a job.
By 2016, the narrative that the Treasury had too much power to the point that it could frustrate political decisions was well worn – even though the reality is that all fiscal-policy decisions (except perhaps some finer details of tax policy) are taken by executive structures and the budget is signed off by the whole cabinet. Moreover, the president appoints the cabinet ministerial committee, which advises the cabinet on budget allocations, and he chairs the committee when it decides on in-year budget adjustments.
Despite this, there was an increasing tendency by some in government to disown the tough decisions they’d been party to, said Fuzile: ‘So, in a way, an impression was being created that National Treasury or Minister Gordhan was usurping the party or the government … but not everyone bought this story.’
In 2017 the rhetoric was ratcheted up to a higher level. The Treasury, it was said, was now anti-transformation and Gordhan was an ‘impimpi’ (spy) for monopoly capital, according to the ANC Youth League, a dangerous insult in the context of the ANC’s struggle against apartheid.13
But Gordhan and Jonas also had their defenders. According to Fuzile, it was the increasingly vocal support that Gordhan and his team received from various cabinet ministers, other officials in government and the ANC, as well as from ordinary South Africans, that buoyed Gordhan up through his travails, and this was why Treasury officials didn’t quit under the pressure.
‘Gordhan is extraordinarily strong … an activist through and through,’ said Fuzile. ‘He has an amazing ability to focus on the big picture and the higher purpose, and that enables him to see through all the distractions.’
After serving nearly 20 years at the Treasury, what will remain engraved on Fuzile’s memory is how the institution was able to take decisive, bold and even politically unpopular decisions in times of crisis.
He believes that what Manuel, Nene and Gordhan all had in common, apart from being hard-working and their openness to frank debate, was that they were constitutionalists – people whose first point of reference in any decision was the supremacy of the Constitution and, after that, all other laws and prescripts that governed the management of public money.
‘This culture is what has built the Treasury into such a formidable institution,’ Fuzile said. ‘It taught me that when you have to take difficult decisions, you