By Sipho Singiswa
It has come to this. The prophecy of betrayal is being fulfilled. What I warned about in 2022 has unfolded before our eyes.
The African National Congress (ANC), the grand old movement that was once the torch bearer of African liberation, has been hollowed out and handed over to the very forces that once stood in opposition to everything it represented.
The final insult? A coalition with the Democratic Alliance (DA)—the party that embodies the enduring legacy of colonialism and racial privilege. The ANC is no more; what we see today is but a ghost, haunted by the betrayal of those who claimed to lead us.
To be clear, this betrayal did not spring up overnight. No, it was planned, orchestrated, and executed with cold calculation over many decades.
To truly understand how we got here, we must return to the roots of this conspiracy, to the1970s, when the white business elite realised that apartheid, in its most blatant form,was becoming untenable. They did not repent; they merely retooled their strategy.
They prepared for a future where they could maintain control under the guise of reform. And that is where the story of the Urban Foundation begins.
The Urban Foundation: Engineered to Protect White Power
The year was 1976, December. The memory of the 1976 nation-wide Student Uprising was still fresh, the smoke from burning barricades still lingering in the air.
Black youth had risen with uncontainable rage, armed with nothing but their courage, their stones, and their demand for freedom.
The white establishment was shaken,and among those watching with growing concern were Harry Oppenheimer, head of Anglo American, Clive Menell of Aglovaal and Anton Rupert, the face of Afrikaner capital.
They saw the tide turning against them and realised that the days of overt white supremacy were numbered. But they were not about to relinquish their grip on power.
Oppenheimer and Rupert understood that a new strategy was needed—one that would preserve their economic dominance under a different guise. So they created the Urban Foundation, ostensibly as a think tank for urban development and social reform.
However, this was not an act of goodwill; it was a tactical manoeuvre designed to secure white monopoly capital’s interests well into the future.
The manoeuvre resembled the CIA’s strategy of re-branding its covert operations—encompassing political interference, assassinations, and regime changes across Africa, the Middle East, and South America—as initiatives to promote democracy, human rights, and freedom of speech, all in service of preserving the global West’s dominance and safeguarding its economic interests.
Under this guise of social upliftment, the Urban Foundation’s real mission was to groom a new cadre of black leaders who could be relied upon to help maintain White privilege and to promote “business-friendly” policies in a future democratic South Africa.
These leaders were not chosen for their revolutionary fervour or their commitment to the liberation struggle; they were chosen for their willingness to collaborate, to compromise, and ultimately to uphold the economic status quo that kept the black majority in poverty while protecting white wealth.
From the outset, the Urban Foundation served as a cover for a far more insidious agenda. It was, in effect, a white intelligence think tank, functioning to undermine true economic freedom while creating the illusion of reform.
But most notably, against the backdrop of the 1976 nationwide Student Uprising, what forced the foundation’s founders and supporters to reconsider the apartheid government’s policies and the private sector’s attitude towards the majority indigenous South African community and working class was the decision by then US Republican president, Gerald R. Ford, to curtail overt relations with the apartheid government.
However, the Ford administration’s decision to distance itself from apartheid South Africa was not driven by a genuine desire to see an end to apartheid policies.
In reality, much like the Urban Foundation masked its true agenda with a public facade of urban development, housing, and education in black townships, the US government’s primary concern was that the lack of reform, combined with the white government’s brutal response to the 1976 Uprising, would make Black South Africans more susceptible to Soviet Marxist influence.
The US government viewed the 1976 Uprising as an additional complication to its already tenuous influence in the Southern African region, particularly in resource-rich Angola, which became a battleground for Cold War geo-economic politics between the US and the USSR.
In Angola, the US, in alliance with the apartheid government, sought regime change by supporting the rebel militia UNITA, led by Jonas Savimbi, in an effort to overthrow the democratically elected government.
Conversely, the Marxist MPLA government, led by José Eduardo dos Santos, was backed by the USSR and Cuba, who defended its socialist agenda against US interests and CIA covert operations.
Influenced in part by Henry Kissinger, former US National Security Advisor to President Nixon and later Secretary of State under President Ford, the Foundation’s supporters recognised the necessity of using black representatives to market their agenda to the masses, to international investors, and to a global community increasingly disillusioned with apartheid.
Just as the US government conceals its true objectives of regime change through CIA covert operations labelled as efforts to ‘advance and strengthen democracy, human rights, and freedom of speech,’ the Foundation’s real agenda also had to be disguised with a public image of urban development, housing, and education in the black townships.
This was essential to legitimise its chosen black representatives and gain acceptance for its operations in the townships.
And so, the Urban Foundation’s founders and supporters set about head-hunting and grooming the likes of Cyril Ramaphosa and Gwede Mantashe—men who would rise within the ranks of the ANC only to betray it from within.
In 1978, when he was only in his early twenties and ambitious, Ramaphosa was brought into the fold and appointed onto the Board of the Urban Foundation itself to serve alongside and under the mentorship of figures like Clive Menell of AngloVaal.
These early relationships were no coincidence; they were part of a deliberate strategy by white monopoly capital to create and groom a network of influential black leaders who would serve as intermediaries between themselves and an increasingly discontent black majority.
Ramaphosa and Mantashe: The Cultivation of Compromise
Ramaphosa and Mantashe did not emerge from the same revolutionary roots as their predecessors.
They were cultivated in a different soil—one fertilised by the largesse of white capital. Mantashe’s political journey began in the mines, not in the trenches of the armed struggle.
In 1975, he started his career as a Recreational Officer at Western Deep Levels Mines and later became a Welfare Officer at Prieska Copper Mines. His real political career began when he co-founded the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in 1982, alongside Cyril Ramaphosa, a man who, like him, was destined to play a pivotal role in the betrayal of the ANC’s original mission.
Ramaphosa’s early political involvement was first shaped by Christian student politics and later Black Consciousness movements. But his trajectory soon intersected with the interests of South Africa’s corporate elite.
As a co-founder and later Secretary-General of NUM, he wielded significant power over the country’s labour movement. It is clear that the mine bosses nurtured his role as their future inside man while he was in the Urban Foundation.
NUM itself was a creation to tame and control the mine workers due to the volatile political landscape at the time.
The grooming continued. From the early days, both Ramaphosa and Mantashe were strategically placed in positions of influence, bringing them into close contact with the very forces that aimed to neutralise the push for genuine economic transformation.
Mantashe, for example, became the first trade unionist to be co-opted onto the Board of Directors of SA Manganese and African Metals Corporation Limited (SAMANCOR), a minerals extraction company listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. This was a clear signal that the boundaries between labour and capital were being deliberately blurred.
The objective was straightforward: to ensure that any transition to democracy would be tightly controlled, maintaining the existing structures of economic power, while presenting black faces to front an agenda that ultimately served white interests.
The plan succeeded. Over the years, Mantashe and Ramaphosa rose through the ranks of the ANC, steadily consolidating power and influence. Yet, as they ascended, the cracks within the ANC deepened. Factionalism took hold, and the party began to fracture.
The Death of the ANC and the Rise of a Whitewashed Agenda
As Mantashe himself would later boast, there was an “unbroken chain” of former NUM leaders who ascended to the position of ANC Secretary-General. But what he did not say is that this was no accident.
It was part of a long-term plan to place former labour leaders, especially from the extraction industry, now comfortably aligned with white capital, in positions of power within the ANC and its Alliance.
Under their leadership, the ANC’s traditional support base began to erode. Four significant breakaways—UDM, COPE, EFF and recently the MK party—marked the fracturing of a once-united movement.
Each of these splits was a direct result of the growing disillusionment within the ANC’s rank and file, who watched as their leaders increasingly turned their backs on the ideals of the liberation struggle.
Many comrades saw through the façade, recognising that the leadership had been co-opted, and that their loyalty was no longer to the people but to the purse strings of white monopoly capital.
The culmination of this betrayal came with the Marikana massacre in 2012. The massacre was the ultimate expression of how far the ANC had drifted from its roots.
Thirty-four striking mineworkers were gunned down by police at the behest of LONMIN—a London-based mining company where Ramaphosa held significant interests.
It was Ramaphosa, with Mantashe’s tacit support, who used his political clout to pressure the police to act with brutality to protect corporate interests. This was not just a betrayal of the mineworkers; it was a betrayal of the ANC’s very soul.
State Capture and Hypocrisy: The Double Standards of Ramaphosa and Mantashe
Ramaphosa and Mantashe presented themselves as champions of the ANC’s “Step Aside” rule, which mandates that any member implicated in wrongdoing should immediately step down.
Yet, their hypocrisy knows no bounds. Both men have been implicated in scandals involving corruption and misconduct, most notably with the infamous Bosasa case.
Ramaphosa, portrayed by the white-owned media as “Mr. Clean,” was found to have abused his political position, lied, and misled Parliament regarding his relationship with Bosasa, a company that made a financial donation to his presidential campaign.
When confronted with this, he attempted to cover it up, suggesting ignorance about the source of the money. Meanwhile, Mantashe also denied knowledge of costly upgrades and security installations at his properties, all funded by Bosasa.
Yet, when it was their turn to apply the “Step Aside” rule to themselves, both men conveniently developed selective amnesia. Mantashe went so far as to threaten to challenge the Zondo Commission’s findings in court, accusing it of factionalism.
He even closed ranks with Ramaphosa to push for the removal of Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane, whose investigations were getting too close to home.
And throw into the mix the saga of the undeclared millions of US dollars found hidden at Ramaphosa’s private game park and the persistent allegations of cross- border tax evasion, racketeering, money laundering and bribes of provincial ANC leaders to win support that continue to dog Ramaphosa’s administration and in his personal capacity.
Leaked recordings further expose how state resources have been exploited to protect Ramaphosa’s position, not for the good of the country, but to safeguard the continued enrichment of a select few.
The coalition with the DA is but the latest manifestation of this agenda—a marriage of convenience between a compromised ANC and a DA desperate to impose its neoliberal blueprint on South Africa.
This was further confirmed by Helen Zille, the federal executive leader of the DA’s revelation that Ramaphosa had advocated for the coalition between the ANC and DA to be disguised as a Government of National Unity (GNU) that includes the creation of a proliferation of smaller, but parties that don’t really hold any significant political sway to the South African indigenous majority.
According to Zille, Ramaphosa had argued that the illusion of a GNU rather than the reality of an exclusive ANC and DA coalition would be an easy idea for him to sell and thus eliminate opposition within the ANC and its Tripartite Alliance partners.
Meanwhile, Mantashe is currently central in providing government support to the oil and gas extraction industry, such as Shell, Total and Astron Energies to explore and extract gas and oil despite significant opposition by communities who will be negatively and irreversibly impacted by such industry actions.
Under their leadership, gross corruption, factionalism, killings, conflicts of interest, negligence and broken promises have become the norm.
The leadership of Ramaphosa and Mantashe has not consolidated or unified the ANC; it has fragmented it further, leaving it a shadow of its former self.
And now, the final insult: a coalition with the DA, a party that has always represented the interests of the white minority, now legitimised as the ANC’s partner in government.
Comrades, I will be writing a series of articles that expand further on what went wrong with the ANC and Ramaphosa’s history of corporate corruption. For now I will conclude with a clarion call to save our country – the land of our ancient ancestors –our birth right.
The Time to Reclaim South Africa Has Come
We must confront the reality that the ANC, under the leadership of Ramaphosa and Mantashe, has become a hollow shell, a puppet of the very forces it once sought to overthrow.
The coalition with the DA far from being just a political manoeuvre is the culmination of decades of calculated betrayal, a final act in the long play of deception that has been unfolding since the Urban Foundation first set its sights on co-opting the liberation struggle.
But we cannot simply lament this state of affairs. We must understand that this betrayal is not the end of our struggle, but a call to resistence. The ANC, as it stands, no longer represents the aspirations of the people.
It has become a vehicle for the preservation of white monopoly capital, a tool in the hands of those who have no interest in the true liberation of the African majority.
It is time to forge a new path, to build a movement that is true to the principles of economic and social justice, one that does not compromise the dignity and aspirations of the oppressed for the comfort of the privileged few.
This means going beyond the rhetoric of the past and creating a new vision for South Africa—a vision that is rooted in the realities of our people and that refuses to be dictated by those who have profited from our suffering.
We must reject the narrative that there is no alternative to the current political dispensation.
The idea that the only choices available to us are a corrupt and compromised ANC or a DA that represents the interests of the white elite is a false dichotomy.
We can and must build a new political force, one that is uncompromised, unbought, and unafraid to speak the truth.
This new movement must be driven by the grassroots, by the communities that have been neglected and betrayed. It must be a movement that listens to the people, that is accountable to them, and that fights for their rights without compromise.
It must be a movement that is not afraid to challenge the entrenched power structures that have kept our people in bondage, both economic and political.
This will not be easy. The forces aligned against us are powerful and well-entrenched. They will use every tool at their disposal to crush any attempt to build an alternative to their rule. But we must not be deterred. We have faced greater challenges before, and we have overcome them. We can do so again.
*Sipho Singiswa is a social justice rights activist filmmaker, political analyst and co- founder of Media For Justice. He is also a former 1976 student leader, ex-Robben Island political prisoner and MK underground operative.
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.
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