Why+Kebble+died,+Gleason+Torque+Special

Gleason Torque Special - Kebble & Politics

 * 29 September 2005**

=**Is this why Kebble died?**=


 * David Gleason**

The disinformation campaign about Brett Kebble’s murder is already in full swing. First, it was a hit job, then perhaps it was hijacking; no, it was hijacking (two witnesses according to Moneyweb); then the witnesses disappeared but now a police spokesman reckons there is a “60% chance” it was a hijacking.

That is one side of it. The other is that, well, he owed the taxman R100m, he stole more than R1bn in Randgold Resources stock and, today in Beeld it is linked to a dispute about a diamond deal gone wrong.

So why was Kebble targeted, whether for a hit or a hijack? It can be argued that it was a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time (hijacking) but I will happily put R10 on a bet that popular opinion (which I haven’t tested) overwhelmingly thinks he was assassinated.

That suggests a conspiracy, and conspiracy theorists (Kebble was one of them) get it wrong more often than not. None of this is especially helpful so it pays to look at Kebble’s political record.

And I need to preface this by repeating that I knew Kebble for 28 years, from the time he was a wet-behind-the-ears schoolboy.

In recent years, Kebble became engrossed in the political agenda which the country is following. He made no apology for this. In his personal political philosophy, with which I frequently disagreed, there is a close nexus between business and politics (I agree with this). He was anxious, he said, to ensure the choices made by politicians would encourage rather than retard business development.

And he expressed a particular anxiety about South Africa’s army of the unemployed and the vast number of poverty-struck communities. He took the view that the rise of the new elitists, many attached or close to the ruling party, would become anathema to the party’s massive grass-roots support base.

What is curious about this is that, though little attention is paid by the press generally to the close ties that exist between the new black, rich, elite and the ANC, when it comes to the linkage between white businessmen (Kebble especially) and the ANC, this is somehow regarded as unacceptable.

Typically, Kebble brushed this aside. His membership of the ANC (his father is also a member) gave him as much – but no more – entitlement as others. It was this, coupled with his strongly-held view that the ANC is paying lip service to its primary support base, that led him into head-on conflicts with powerful opponents.

The factionalism within the ANC and the emergence of power centres concentrated on pushing the agendas of the newly rich, was a matter he viewed with profound concern. His own leanings, increasingly I thought to the left, led him to lend support to deputy president Jacob Zuma. When then national director of public prosecutions, Bulelani Ngcuka, attacked Zuma through a smear campaign rather than a proper prosecution, he smelt another example of a gross abuse of political power.

Kebble’s campaign on this score is by now well-known. It included an appeal to the Public Protector who found that Ngcuka had indeed exceeded his powers and excoriated him publicly.

When I look back on columns I published in Business Day and on discussions inside the informal think-tank I am occasionally invited to attend, I find some remarkable similarities of views and knowledge with those which Kebble enunciated.

For example, I recall that it did not take Kebble long to establish that Ngcuka was intimately connected to an ANC faction (sometimes called a crew). He gave me two names then – Saki Macozoma (Standard and Safika) and his partner in Safika, Moss Ngoasheng, the former economics adviser to Presidents Mandela and Mbeki (and who lost that job after a major German electronics group protested about his actions, it is alleged seeking personal gain).

Well-placed and credible sources also told me that Khaya Ngqula, CE now of SAA but then MD of the IDC and an Alec Erwin favourite; and Mzi Khumalo, more recently famous for the way he made off with something north of R1bn on a deal involving Harmony, executed it is said with help from Ngqula were not only unusually close but were similarly involved with Ngcuka and with Macozoma and Ngoasheng.

These are names seen often in the new BEE deals that many companies feel obliged to transact. Nor does it pass notice that Ngqula and Khumalo are owners of houses close to one another on the French Riviera or that a Khumalo henchman is Andile Reve, alleged to have been closely involved when he worked for the IDC in that Simane/Harmony deal, and now chairman of Khumalo’s Metallon Gold.

Kebble’s opposition to the crew – and others in the ANC he thought acting in their own rather than the national interest – earned their vigorous anger. For Kebble the “they” in his conversations embraced all these. Nor did he hide his views – they were well-known to many who talked to him.

His support for the grass roots took form through his sponsorship of the ANC Youth League which he saw as the best hope for the future. He kept the League’s lights burning and ushered it into business opportunities he hoped would give it the financial muscle to stand alone.

His support for Zuma, now facing corruption charges, took the form of active advice. Whether he contributed financial help is something I don’t know but would not be surprised about.

Kebble’s opposition to those who he saw as being out to enrich themselves at the expense of the greater good was, I was told by the think-tank, formidable, and elicited fear and anger in the circles he targeted. And his refusal to back off must have produced a deep sense of concern and frustration.

Given Kebble’s espousal of the social democracy norm, a philosophy I am wary of when taken too far, it was not unnatural for him to take the view that what South Africa needed was a populist leader, able to command the respect and affection of the great majority, and whose primary motivation is delivery and the amelioration of poverty.

That is fine as far as it goes. The cautionary is that it also requires in the same man the proper care that ensures rapid economic growth. I have no doubt, in retrospect, that it was Kebble’s belief that Zuma would be able to combine both.

This does not, of course, suit the ambitions of many others. It is for this reason, when it became clear some years ago, that Zuma would be slated to become the next state president, they resolved, as I wrote frequently, to hamstring him. Zuma wasn’t helped by shady financial advisers and was led into the morass we know as the arms deal scandal.

In one way or another, Zuma’s opponents have succeeded to the extent of removing him from government. He remains, however, a potent threat, best exemplified by the overwhelming show of support he received at the July meeting of the ANC’s general congress. Many whites see Zuma as having been tarnished beyond redemption. Blacks may think differently.

While those anxious to hobble Zuma’s hopes of becoming the next president may have thought they were on a winning streak, they did not count on Thabo Mbeki’s concern about his own position. He has a deserved reputation for paranoia relating to the security of his presidency and seems, in any event, to want to choose his own successor.

I have little doubt – and I am sure Kebble would agree – that this is why such a campaign has been launched to promote Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the new deputy president.

I last saw Kebble over lunch on the day he died. He said then that he couldn’t understand why Mbeki had persisted in attacking him and over such a long period. He clearly felt this keenly. It made no sense to him that, considering all he was doing was embracing the very policies the ANC had evolved over the long years in the wilderness, he had been singled out as a pariah.

The answer, of course, was his espousal of the Zuma cause. This is not exactly popular among those in power, anxious to hold onto the important levers. Whether it led to his death is something we do not yet know.

In recent months Kebble clearly had a premonition. He was much taken with the role the so-called “old order” functionaries, men who had occupied high positions in the apartheid regime’s security apparatus, continued to play in events. After he expressed this, I checked around and found that an international agency has indeed provided “training” in this country, though to whom, when and for what purpose I don’t know.

His last words when I left him that day were an admonition that I should take care, in retrospect ironic and sad.

From: http://www.gleasontorque.com/gleasonTorque.co.za/ArticleDetails.aspx?ArID=172