NO, SIPHO PITYANA HAS NOT COMMITTED TREASON
Mzwanele Manyi, head of the Mzwanele Manyi Decolonisation Foundation, has laid treason charges against Sipho Pityana, ANC stalwart and chairperson of AngloGold Ashanti. According to Mr Manyi, Mr Pityana has been ‘promoting anarchy’ and ‘planting the seeds of regime change’. These are grave accusations. They are also patently ridiculous. Mr Pityana is not guilty of treason or any of the other crimes Mr Manyi has accused him of.
What has Mr Pityana done to attract these charges? Three things. First, at the funeral of Reverend Makhenkesi Stofile, Mr Pityana called for President Zuma to step down. He has since repeated this call. Secondly, he has pleaded with South Africans in general, and business in particular, to take action to get the President to step down. Finally, he has called on businesses to pull out of investor roadshows at which they claim that government is dealing with the country’s problems. This is because, according to Mr Pityana, government is not fulfilling ‘its side of the bargain’ and is led by a person who has ‘no integrity’.
Mr Manyi claims that this is treason. He also claims that it violates ‘several clauses’ of the Protection of Constitutional Democracy against Terrorist and Related Activities Act (let’s call it the Terrorism Act) because it is ‘economic terrorism’. Why do Mr Pityana’s actions amount to these crimes? First, because he is ‘mobilising business’ to ‘basically remove the state … to do a regime change by means that are unconstitutional’. Secondly, because what he is doing ‘can result in both local and international business disinvesting from South Africa and therefore plunging the Rand and also ensuring that we get a junk status’.
Much of this is hyperbole. Mr Pityana is not advocating an unconstitutional ‘regime change’. The law permits Mr Zuma to step down. And when he calls on South Africans to put pressure on the President to resign, he has emphasised that this be done ‘within the framework of the law and the Constitution’.
So, given all of this, has Mr Pityana committed a crime? Definitely not.