President Cyril Ramaphosa’s latest newsletter on fighting corruption reads like a masterclass in denial and euphemism, claiming South Africa must “build a society in which corruption cannot take root” while keeping Zondo Commission-implicated ministers in his Cabinet and failing to prosecute a single politician, despite overwhelming evidence of state capture, argues Tony Leon.

On August 15, 1945, Emperor Hirohito announced on radio Japan’s unconditional surrender after the US dropped its second atom bomb on the country, in Nagasaki. Thus ended the Second World War.

However, Hirohito could not utter the fateful word “ surrender”. Instead, he said: “The war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage.” The Economist later described this as “ containing the greatest understatement in history”.

Back here on Monday on planet South Africa where, unlike wartime Japan, the head of state claims no divine powers, the president published his weekly newsletter.

Cyril Ramaphosa’s latest scribblings on the fight against corruption are, in their claims, evidence and omissions, a great example of complacent thinking. And while it does not touch Hirohito’s heights in the euphemism stakes, it barely mentions the unmentionables, or several of them.

Ramaphosa writes: “We must build a society in which corruption cannot take root.”

Good morning, Mr President, do you not have eyes to see and ears to listen?

Listening even casually these days reveals that the once quiet termites burrowing away and eating away the infrastructure and the very foundations of the state are no longer hidden away.

They are in plain sight and everywhere. Lawyers, liquidators and whistleblowers assassinated; hundreds of councillors and municipal officials murdered over a decade in KwaZulu-Natal. Millions looted from practically every state scheme and enterprise. Tenders tethered to corrupt entities, party loyalists and skimmers and grifters. Never mind the mafias that have mushroomed, unindicted though lethal, in so many sectors, from taxis to construction, water boards and hospitals. And a recent survey on perceptions of corruption found that 83% of South Africans believe graft here has increased; three-quarters of respondents believe (with very good cause) that reporting corrupt acts comes with risk of retaliation.

All this dutifully revealed, reported and published. Though, like the tragedy of Macbeth, where the tide of blood and body parts becomes so great that the audience loses count of who is still standing, the everyday nature of graft and corruption here literally dulls the sense of outrage and anger. You lose count.

Progress?

Yet Ramaphosa reassures us that if not quite won, the battle against corruption is properly joined. “Welcome progress” is cited in investigations into the post office, Postbank, Sassa, and municipalities. “ A number of arrests” are claimed for those linked to Eskom, SAPS, Transnet, and municipalities (again).

And while the president acknowledges “justifiable public expectation” for convictions for the state capturers, he immediately advises “fighting corruption extends way beyond putting culprits in the dock”.

Excuse us, the taxpayer, but that is precisely where it begins even if that starting point is not the end destination.

Unimpressed by this counsel of complacency, Hendrik du Toit, CEO of Ninety One, SA’s largest asset manager, took to social media on Monday to call out crime, corruption and the enfeebled presidential response to it all.

Du Toit called matters as they are and placed the blame directly in the lap of government. He wrote:

“We cannot and we should not remain silent on this crisis. Neither should our leaders be indecisive on the course of action we need to follow to stop this rot.”

Likewise, no less an expert on Zuma’s state capture, former chief Justice Ray Zondo was quite explicit about where the rot sits and how it still festers. In simple terms, in composing his current Cabinet, Ramaphosa is in the dock for ignoring the findings of the commission that bears Zondo’s name.

Zondo told an interviewer in late July, that it was “ painful and heartbreaking” to swear into office, ministers who were caught up in state capture. Zondo advised the Sunday Times that Ramaphosa was effectively saying: “I do not care what you have found about these people, I think they are good enough to be promoted.”

Even the worst offenders, he observed, when removed from one ministry, either get “put on leave or are moved to another department”.

Not a single politician has been convicted in court, let alone imprisoned, despite the four-year, billion-rand Zondo probe, which reported its findings more than three and a half years ago.

Ramaphosa blithely ignores the remarks of his hand-picked chief justice, or indeed Du Toit, the country’s top asset manager, and the mediatisation of corruption across the whole of the state and much of society. He cheerily suggests this is but a potential problem for the future.

He writes, “[Corruption] can become (my emphasis) embedded in state institutions…the success of our efforts relies on our ability to prevent corruption in the first place in state institutions, business enterprises, or organs of civil society.”

Hello, Mr President, where have you been and what are you doing about it is the best if not most exasperated and futile response? Not much is the answer.

In January 2025, on these pages, News24 editor-in-chief Adriaan Basson highlighted four of Ramaphosa’s hand-picked Cabinet members who were in the crosshairs of various criminal probes by state law enforcement agencies, the very same agencies that Ramaphosa lauds in his newsletter.

All four currently remain in office. Not one has been prosecuted, and while we might cheer the looming departure of the entirely useless head of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), less cheering is that the president has yet to even consider her successor.

One of the ministers, Gwede Manatashe who has been around since the days of Zondo and long before, was directly named by the commission for unjustified enrichment from the tender-milking entity Bosasa (He is challenging those findings in court). Ditto for the Minister in the Presidency, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, fingered by Zondo for wrongdoing at Denel.

No consequences 

So, if it was assumed that Ramaphosa’s ascent to the Presidency seven years ago was a turning point from the looting and scandals of the Jacob Zuma era, we can now conclude that, sadly, the wheel never turned. Only, to mix metaphors, the spigots of plunder and scot-free consequences opened even wider.

Commentator, William Saunderson-Meyer, described on Politicsweb the continuance between the Zuma and Ramaphosa presidencies thus:

“Corruption was not uprooted, but turned into a national franchise, with outlets in every province and at every tier of government. The business model, however, remains the same: exploit political connections to extract rents and count on a culture of impunity to keep the tills open…the bit players of yesterday are the big players of today. They have set up shop independently, each with their own turf, contracts and patrons.“

Ramaphosa is entirely silent (except to affirm its continuance in other forums) on how cadre deployment has poisoned the wells of ethical governance. Though he does remark that the fight against corruption requires a whole-of-society approach.

The president writes:

“We all need to work together to build a society characterised by responsibility and integrity.”

Fine words belie feeble (or worse) actions. And as Saunderson-Meyer scathingly, though accurately, noted, “ [O]rdinary South Africans, not just those in government but also in commerce, ask themselves: ‘If everyone else gets away with it, why shouldn’t I?’”

A killer question to which the president offers no reply.

Out of the blue (or so it seemed at first blush), the National Treasury issued a statement recently stating that there was “little to no risk of SA losing SWIFT access”.

SWIFT is the international payments system that is the lifeblood for international commerce and exporting, and our exclusion from it would in the words of one key economist, “deindustrialise South Africa because if you can’t trade, you can’t export when manufacturing companies close down, it’s gone”.

Unexplained by Treasury, their “reassurance” is in fact coupled to the passage through the US Congress of legislation to review US relations with South Africa, which contains a clause proposing the imposition of sanctions against individual ANC leaders (named, for example, in the Zondo report). If among those targeted are serving Cabinet ministers or deputies, the implications for our continued participation in the international payments system, such as SWIFT, move from “little to no risk” to red alert territory.

Meanwhile, in Britain, the number two Cabinet minister in the troubled government of Sir Keir Starmer resigned from all her offices after an investigation by the prime minister’s ethics advisor found that Angela Rayner underpaid transfer (stamp) duty on an apartment. Her fault was not one of dishonesty or corruption, according to the investigation, completed in just three days, but “for not seeking specific tax advice” for the property transaction when told to do so by her lawyers.

In corruption-soaked South Africa, such an investigation here and its conclusion would battle to make page 10 of a local newspaper. But at least our complacent president earns entry into the dictionary of political euphemisms for masterful understatement and impressive inactivity.