Pick of the week's articles

[Daily Maverick] Sunday, 3 December 2017 STORY OF THE WEEK [amaBhungane: Dodgy World Cup deal comes back to bite Free State premier Ace Magashule]( By Tabelo Timse for AMABHUNGANE While South Africa was caught up in the 2010 World Cup frenzy, Free State premier Ace Magashule was allegedly pulling the strings behind a multimillion-rand tender to provide soccer-related regalia. Seven years later, the contract has come back to haunt the premier, as the businessman at the centre of the deal has claimed that his company was used as a front for an entity allegedly close to Magashule. [ANC Leadership Race: Ramaphosa bags the Eastern Cape but branches choose Zweli Mkhize and David Mabuza over Naledi Pandor]( In the Eastern Cape on Thursday, the ANC overwhelmingly nominated Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa for president. It’s the first of the big provinces to nominate, and so far Ramaphosa is doing better than pundits had expected. The rest of his list also tells an interesting story about the branches. By CARIEN DU PLESSIS. [Analysis: Sita/SAPS Capture – Scopa hearing marks a turning point as massive fraud uncovered]( Wednesday’s Scopa hearing, supposedly into the South African Police Service’s (SAPS) irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure, will go down as a turning point in the public exposure of the deep and disturbing extent of the rot in two of the country’s key institutions, SAPS and the State Information Technology Agency (SITA). It was also a surreal experience as Keith Keating, a former cop and the man at the centre of SAPS/SITA capture allegations, pitched up to sit in on the hearing. It was a day of shocking revelations of death threats to senior SITA officials, collapsed financial controls as well as industrial-scale corruption amounting to billions of rand which, suggested the new National Police Commissioner, Khehla Sitole, posed a threat to national security. After the four-hour grilling, SAPS and SITA vowed to stop or reverse irregular procurements awarded to Keating. It all turned into accountability on steroids. By MARIANNE THAMM. [The hollowing out of Julius Malema]( About 18 months ago I saw Julius Malema address a sceptical crowd at Daily Maverick’s The Gathering at Vodacom World. My previous exposure to Malema had been minimal, and I was impressed. Here was an astute and ambitious young politician skilfully deploying the fiery oratory of leadership in the service of his cause. As I wrote at the time, he was incisive, funny, authoritative, scary and quick on his feet at question time. But alas, I saw something else at the recent The Gathering at the Sandton Convention Centre. [Breaking: Supplier and SAPS supply chain management team on 2011 Old Trafford jaunt]( DA Scopa member, Tim Brauteseth, dropped a bombshell at Wednesday’s committee meeting with SAPS and SITA when he provided photographic evidence that SAPS Supply Chain Management members had in 2011 been accompanied by Keith Keating, director of Forensic Data Analysts, on a visit to Old Trafford, home of Manchester United, six months after Keating had sold forensic camera equipment worth an undisclosed sum to SAPS through Unisys Africa. Keating has been a sole supplier to SAPS – through SITA – of a firearm permit system and software as well as forensic equipment worth billions. By MARIANNE THAMM. [Op-Ed: Mnangagwa and the Gukurahundi – fact and fiction]( As journalists and a veritable army of newfound Zimbabwe “experts” join the bun rush to describe the history of Robert Mugabe’s replacement, Emmerson Mnangagwa, there has been much talk about his role in the Gukurahundi killings of the 1980s. Some have said his part in the massacres is “shrouded in mystery”, others that he was the “architect” or “mastermind”. Still others seem to have bought Mnangagwa’s line that his participation is a myth – or that it has, at least, been wildly exaggerated. All of them are wrong. By STUART DORAN. [TRAINSPOTTER: Ramaphosaism — life under the next Fearless Leader]( Only one African National Congress frontrunner has a comprehensive economic policy. Call it Ramaphosaism. This is a story about what it means. By RICHARD POPLAK. [Reserve Bank accuses Public Protector of dishonesty – pity her lawyers]( The manner in which Public Protector, Busisiwe Mkhwebane, has responded in legal papers to the judicial review of her report on the “lifeboat” granted by the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) to Bankorp in the late 1980s and early 1990s raises serious questions about her abilities as a lawyer as well as her honesty. The SARB, among others, is so disturbed by her conduct that it is asking the court to make a declaratory order that she had abused her office. [Reporter's Parliamentary Notebook: ANC's ‘Group of 10’ puts spokes in the wheels of State Capture inquiries]( Parliament’s public enterprises committee inquiry into State Capture at Eskom continues next week, MPs decided on Wednesday in behind-closed-doors discussions, which included various threats made against it. But Mineral Resources Minister Mosebenzi Zwane’s sick note scuppered that parliamentary committee’s second State Capture date, now postponed to late January. In the last days of the 2017 parliamentary calendar, various efforts to come to grips with State Capture at the national legislature have highlighted ANC parliamentary caucus divisions in the run-up to the governing party’s December elective national conference – not only in committees, but also in the DA-sponsored State Capture discussion in the House. By MARIANNE MERTEN. 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