Gangster State
Page 4
But their contact with these leaders was infrequent. My source admitted that they only met with the top leadership on about two occasions at the ANC’s Zambian headquarters in Lusaka. He said their unit’s main task was ‘coordination’, which included facilitating
communication between active underground units and helping to establish new structures. ‘We communicated with actual operatives who were sent into South Africa from Lusaka, we were their contact point,’ he elaborated. But he scoffed at Magashule’s attempts to paint himself as the struggle’s James Bond. ‘I don’t know why he is doing that,’ he shrugged.
The group did make use of fake passports to travel overseas, but nobody smuggled cash into the country using children’s toys. ‘We were idle for the most part,’ my source said, ‘like a sleeper cell, but we needed to keep on moving around because we were being watched or chased around by the security police.’
On one occasion, around 1986, Magashule and some other members of the Hillbrow group flew to Stockholm, Sweden, to meet with several anti-apartheid organisations. A Swedish group funded the trip, and Magashule and his comrades used the opportunity to raise money for the Tumahole Civic Association. When they returned to South Africa, they once again melted into Hillbrow’s busy streets. One of the places the group used as a base was the Fontana Inn, an apartment block and hotel in the heart of Hillbrow.
Magashule’s time in Hillbrow coincided with a second stint at Wits, where he enrolled for a law degree in 1987. Once again, he did not finish his studies, opting instead to do a marketing course through the University of South Africa (UNISA). 5
It was during this time that Magashule became known as someone with access to money and who liked flaunting cash. ‘At university, Ace got all the girls and he had lots of money with him,’ recalled one of his former comrades from the Free State. ‘Questions were raised about where the money had come from.’
One of the people Magashule looked out for during this time was Hantsi Mayeza, a younger girl from Parys who was getting her high-school education at a small college in Braamfontein in Johannesburg.
According to several sources, Mayeza and Magashule are extremely close. A source who knows both individuals said that her family sheltered Magashule from time to time when he was on the run in the 1980s, and that he helped pay for Mayeza’s living expenses. Mayeza, who has since taken the surname Matseke, would later become a business partner to one of Magashule’s children. She also became the chairperson of the Free State Development Corporation (FDC), a state-owned entity that has been at the centre of some of the dodgiest financial dealings involving Magashule and his family.
Dennis Bloem remembered the UDF leadership asking how Magashule and the Hillbrow group could afford to stay at the Fontana Inn. ‘They were there for a long time,’ Bloem said. ‘They bought food and paid their rent. The question is how they had funded all of that.’
His suspicions are rooted in a long-standing rift between the group from Tumahole and the Free State power bloc centred on Mosiuoa Lekota and his allies. Although Lekota and Bloem were both born in the northern Free State town of Kroonstad, they would later align with the southern Free State faction in Bloemfontein and its surrounds, while Magashule and his allies from Parys and other towns near the Vaal River would form the nucleus of what became known as the northern Free State faction.
The Lekota bloc has always been deeply critical of the fact that Magashule and his associates remained in Hillbrow, from where they supposedly contributed to the liberation movement’s activities in the Free State. There is consensus among these critics that the Hillbrow
group wasted valuable resources meant for their home province while doing very little to further the cause. ‘We told those guys that the security police wanted them to be in Hillbrow so that they couldn’t do any damage on the ground in the Free State,’ said a former UDF
member from Bloemfontein.
‘Myself and many other comrades who are still alive were very active in the then Orange Free State at that time,’ Bloem said in a public statement after Winnie Madikizela-Mandela passed away in April 2018. ‘We were harassed and tortured by the brutal apartheid police.
All that I know of Ace, is that he was staying in [the] Fontana Inn in Hillbrow, Johannesburg, with a group of youngsters from Parys. ’6
As the struggle against apartheid intensified during the late 1980s, the faction that broadly aligned itself with Lekota wondered whether Magashule and his Hillbrow group were not in fact hampering the liberation movement’s operations.
A source sympathetic to the Hillbrow group’s struggle legacy said Magashule and his comrades had little choice but to go into hiding in Hillbrow. He used the Free State Youth Congress as a case in point.
The UDF-aligned Free State Youth Congress was established primarily to mobilise non-student youths in the Free State, but circumstances forced its leadership to begin operating from Johannesburg in the period after the first states of emergency. ‘One of the [Free State Youth Congress] leaders was arrested near Sasolburg, which showed that it was necessary to move the whole operation to Johannesburg,’ this source told me. ‘It was just easier to blend in and disappear in Hillbrow.’
Two sources from his Hillbrow days explained where at least some of Magashule’s cash came from: fundraising. ‘Ace was very good at
tapping into sources of funding,’ said one of the sources. ‘He got money from the South African Council of Churches [SACC] and even from Beyers Naudé, whom he was very close to. He also continued to get money from Swedish donors.’
There was considerable unhappiness among some Free State UDF
members about this money, which was meant to assist activists and help fund struggle activities in the Free State. As Magashule and the Hillbrow group amassed more money, rumours and suspicions started to circulate within the broader UDF environment that some of these funds were being misappropriated.
According to one former UDF leader, the late Eric Molobi once accused Magashule of abusing liberation funds. Molobi had been the chairperson of the National Education Crisis Committee (NECC) and apparently somehow got wind of Magashule’s alleged transgressions.
‘We knew Ace was a fellow that we had to treat with a degree of caution, because there were issues over money that were never resolved,’ this source explained. ‘This made us wary of him.’
A former struggle activist who later became a senior political leader in the Free State, and one of Magashule’s many enemies after 1994, described one particular instance where Magashule was allegedly
‘caught’ with a bag stuffed with cash. ‘During their Hillbrow days Ace stole money that was meant for the liberation movement, so it never surprised me when he started looting the Free State’s coffers,’ claimed this person.
It is almost impossible to verify whether Magashule stole money meant for the liberation movement. After the banning of the UDF and its affiliate organisations in 1987, these structures could no longer receive donations in their official bank accounts. Therefore,
contributions during this period were received in cash. Moreover, when donors gave money for the cause, they generally remained anonymous and hardly demanded accountability or transparency with regards to how the funds were being spent. Sources who were active in the underground movement described how they literally received suitcases and bags stuffed with cash. There were directives as to how the money needed to be spent, but there were no auditors, accountants or other watchdogs to keep track of what the struggle operatives were doing with the cash.
Azhar Cachalia, the UDF’s treasurer during the last few years of the organisation’s existence, recalled how difficult it was to manage the movement’s finances around the time of the states of emergency.
‘Money was literally being passed around in shoeboxes, so things were difficult in terms of accountability,’ he said.
While we will probably never know whether Magashule stole money meant for the liberation of his people, his reactio
n to one such accusation in the 1980s is indicative of his disdain for anyone who questions him when it comes to matters involving money. The episode also highlights the more thuggish tactics Magashule is willing to employ to silence those who dare to look into his financial conduct.
In January 1987, struggle activist Zingile Dingane was released from Grootvlei Prison outside Bloemfontein. Dingane, a UDF member from the southern Free State region, had been arrested on the eve of the second state of emergency announced in June the previous year.
After spending more than 200 days in prison, Dingane re-entered society at the height of the government’s harsh crackdown on the UDF
and the broader struggle movement. But he was eager to start rebuilding some of the activist structures that had been dismantled
during the states of emergency, especially in the sphere of education.
Dingane had been a member of the Free State branch of the UDF-aligned National Union of South African Students (NUSAS), which provided bursaries to poor students, among other activities. When Dingane approached the UDF’s interim leadership for funding, he was told that Magashule had already taken money on behalf of the Free State. Like Molobi, Dingane started to ask questions on UDF platforms about what Magashule and his Hillbrow crew were doing with the cash that they had been collecting for the struggle.
One day, not long thereafter, a convoy of five cars filled with people stopped outside Dingane’s house in the Bloemfontein township of Rocklands. It was Magashule and his group from Hillbrow. They had come to confront Dingane about the questions he was asking.
According to sources from both sides of the Free State divide, Magashule, who apparently led the Hillbrow group, was particularly aggressive towards Dingane. ‘Things got very heated,’ recounted one source. ‘Ace was putting his finger right in Dingane’s face. I think there would have been violence that day if it weren’t for the fact that Dingane also had quite a lot of people with him.’
Those familiar with the saga recalled that Magashule’s message to Dingane was clear: if you question how we use our struggle resources, we will come and deal with you. Dingane, who later became secretary to Parliament before a stint as an MEC in Magashule’s provincial government, did not deny the incident, but said that he did not want to discuss the matter.
3
Exile
Of the late 1980s, Magashule had this to say: ‘I was a high profile person during those times in the UDF. In ’86, ’87 I was part when other leaders were arrested and became part of the National Executive Committee [NEC] of the UDF. ’1
The term ‘high profile’ may be a bit of a stretch. While it is true that Magashule did begin to take a more active leadership role in the UDF
in the second half of the decade, his ascendancy needs to be assessed against the backdrop of the crises facing the organisation after 1985.
After Mosiuoa Lekota, Popo Molefe and other members of the core leadership were detained, the UDF was forced to form interim leadership structures. ‘Ace only rose in the UDF ranks after the second state of emergency [in June 1986] and after the UDF was listed as an affected organisation,’ said one of Magashule’s struggle-era contemporaries from the Free State. ‘There were coordinators from the various provinces who formed something like an NEC, but unlike the earlier NEC, the leaders weren’t elected to this structure.’
There may have been some resentment in the Lekota camp about the fact that Magashule’s group had wriggled into more prominent positions within the movement while the likes of Lekota had been rendered politically inactive because of the Delmas Treason Trial.
In his comprehensive book on the UDF, Jeremy Seekings details the historic rift between the Free State UDF’s southern and northern factions. Seekings notes that ‘a regional committee was eventually elected in April 1986 but apparently excluded activists from the
southern Free State’. 2
Azhar Cachalia, the organisation’s former treasurer, said that whatever leadership structure Magashule had formed a part of would have been an interim arrangement. Before the states of emergency in 1985 and 1986, the UDF held elective conferences where its members elected formal NECs. But this practice was halted when the UDF was banned.
Magashule was therefore most likely not officially elected to any leadership position in the UDF.
‘I cannot recall how many meetings he attended but it would not have been often,’ said Cachalia. ‘I also do not know whether he was formally elected to attend. He was not, however, a central figure in the UDF’s national decision-making structures.’ This is glaringly at odds with Magashule’s own portrayal of himself as a top leader.
Apart from his role as a point of contact for incoming underground operatives, Magashule has also claimed that he helped to take MK
recruits out of the country. ‘We made sure that a lot of people leave after ’84 … up to ’90,’ he said in his ANC Oral History Project interview. ‘We were actually in charge of ensuring that people leave the country … others who were already really targeted by police would be the type of people we would want to take out of the country, because they were hunted day in and day out. A lot of people in the [Free State]
province were taken out … As I say, eh, they were networks throughout the country, there were people in charge of those networks.
The likes of Winnie Mandela and the others played a very important role, particularly in the Free State in terms of this type of coordination.’
The former MK member from around Parys claimed this was an
‘absolute lie’. ‘There is no one who would be able to corroborate that claim,’ he insisted.
After Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s death, Magashule visited the mother of slain struggle activist Stompie Seipei, who also hailed from Tumahole. The event received a fair amount of media coverage, and Magashule spoke about his involvement with Madikizela-Mandela during the late 1980s.
Dennis Bloem took umbrage at Magashule’s claims. ‘Yesterday I listened … while he [Magashule] sat with Stompie Seipei’s mother, telling the nation how he took more than 100 young comrades out of the country for military training with Mama Winnie,’ an angry Bloem said in a statement. ‘He knows that he did not do this, only Mama Winnie did. ’3
According to one of Magashule’s former associates from the time of their ‘internal exile’ in Hillbrow, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
‘Our unit in Johannesburg did assist people to get out of the country, and Winnie did help us to get people out, but it wasn’t anywhere near a hundred people,’ said this source. ‘I can only think of about twenty people that we helped to get out.’
In an apparent attempt to latch on to the renewed popularity of Madikizela-Mandela in the days after her death, Magashule used his visit with Seipei’s mother to reiterate a widely circulated view that Madikizela-Mandela had not been responsible for Seipei’s death in the late 1980s, and that the apartheid government’s security and intelligence apparatus had instead fabricated her involvement as part of a smear campaign. In doing so, he made claims about his activities during the struggle that appear to be untrue.
‘We knew [she did not kill Seipei], because we had been working with Mama Winnie, we have been there all the time,’ Magashule told journalists. ‘We all ran away from the Free State and we were there, we
trained Stompie and the others how to use an AK-47, how to use a hand grenade, at Mama Winnie’s place. ’4
Two of Magashule’s struggle compatriots from the Hillbrow days, one former MK operative from the Free State and a former UDF leader all said Magashule was talking nonsense. ‘Is he saying he trained a child to be a soldier? If that is the case, whatever they were doing there was not an MK operation,’ said the former UDF leader, whose proximity to Madikizela-Mandela was such that she visited the hospital when one of his children was born.
Previously, Magashule claimed to have received his own military training ‘inside the country’. ‘When I left [South Africa] I had already receive
d a lot of thorough training,’ he said. 5 But the former MK
member from the Parys area insisted that Magashule was not trained by anyone from MK. ‘If he learnt how to use an assault rifle or hand grenades, he needs to tell us who taught him that.’
One of the sources from the Hillbrow crew said Magashule never underwent any military training and that he was in no way capable of handling an AK-47 or a hand grenade, never mind instructing anyone else on how to use them. ‘We once received a bag full of firearms and ammunition that we needed to get to actual MK operatives, and Ace wanted to check them out and handle them,’ recalled this source. ‘We were in a hotel, and I told him to leave the things, he was going to get himself killed or he was going to expose us.’
In his public statement, Bloem accused Magashule of abusing Madikizela-Mandela’s legacy for his own political gain. ‘It is very painful for me to see and listen [to] how some people are using Mama Winnie’s passing to promote their own names and egos,’ he fumed. ‘It is very sad that people such as Mr Ace Magashule can stoop so low.’
The statement tied into a broader public spat over Magashule’s relationship with Madikizela-Mandela and his provincial government’s apparent disregard for her legacy. At one of the struggle icon’s memorial services, former finance minister Trevor Manuel lambasted Magashule because the Free State government had failed to restore a house in the town of Brandfort where Madikizela-Mandela had lived under banning orders during the 1980s. There were also indications that millions of rands earmarked for the restoration had gone missing, an issue that had deeply upset Manuel. 6
Magashule was not going to take this beating on the chin. He was quick to accuse Manuel of sowing disunity in the ruling party, and careful to sidestep the issue of the Brandfort house and the missing money. ‘When you talk about unity of the movement, don’t use memorial services of revolutionaries to attack other leaders,’ Magashule fired back. ‘When you don’t attack other leaders, you are not a coward.
You are a disciplined member of the movement … Inside internal meetings of the ANC, we talk. We can criticize you but, when I attack and criticize another leader, I am weakening the movement and this is the culture we must understand – we must nurture it.’7 Curiously, Magashule chose to ignore Bloem’s comments about his struggle history.