While the Commission of Inquiry is investigating the tragic deaths of 34 miners killed by the police at Marikana, senior ANC politicians are fuelling unrest in the Western Cape fully cognisant that the same tragedies can occur here.
Burning down farms, setting tractors alight, overturning cars are hardly ways to negotiate for an increase in farm worker wages. For that we have all kinds of mechanisms within the trade union movement. But that is not what ANC Western Cape leader Marius Fransman is about.
He wants to destabilise the government in the Western Cape and injured protestors are the casualties of a higher ambition - his limitless quest for power. Fransman should be held to account for all the violent unrest caused and the loss of millions to farmers. Increasingly constitutional means do not appeal to a party that fails to win votes through the ballot. The ‘bullet' is far more effective.
For years now he has worked behind the scenes to incite poor people to protest so that he can be promoted to even higher office as a coloured person within an African nationalist party. That people endanger their lives using illegal means to strike is of no consequence to him. He must deliver the Western Cape to the ANC regardless.
Already two have died and several people injured in violent protests in De Doorns, Wolseley, Ceres, Bonnievale and Robertson. And so Fransman, the ringleader, irresponsibly exploits the poor to achieve his narcissistic ambitions.
There are legal ways to negotiate wage increases and the destruction of farmlands and tractors are counter-productive. Farmers can so easily make workers redundant with more mechanisation and the sooner they realise that Fransman does not give an iota about their wages, the better. When he was MEC for Transport he squandered millions and they should not forget his track record under Premier Ebrahim Rasool.
When DA MEC Robin Carlisle took over from Fransman he found a trail of irregular expenditure and in February 2011 Carlise complained vociferously in the Legislature about the (Politicsweb Feb 2011) ‘plunder' on a ‘massive scale' which he uncovered:
"Treasury investigated over R500m of consultancy procurement, much of it highly irregular. In a much more detailed investigation, the Auditor General highlighted 18 consultancies and companies procured by Fransman`s Department. The AG noted that these consultancies had been paid R197m in the financial year 2008/09, an increase of 81% on the previous year...
The plundering of the department that now ensued touched every branch. Tracking and ticketing systems were installed at a cost of over R60m and never functionally used. I have now closed this department down. American consultants were hired for 2010 at a cost of R90m despite the department having a very small role to play, and in the end it only spent some R2m on 2010. About 1500 learners were recruited and offered training in chaotic circumstances. At the end of two years, not one learner had been certified. The cost to the department was R60m.
Properties were sold for over R200m under very favourable circumstances to the buyer. Despite every effort, only one has been paid, and the rest are protected by sweetheart clauses negotiated directly with Fransman and inserted despite the objections of his staff.
In addition, Fransman was fully involved in the Somerset debacle, visiting Dubai and arranging special briefing sessions by his staff for the preferred bidders.
he most serious irregularities occurred in respect of Hip Hop and Brand Talk. These two events and media companies were procured in bizarre fashion to service the entire administration. Their final cost to the administration was R107m. Their cost to Fransman's department was R26m."
This article first appeared in Die Burger.
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