EPA Opinion Corruption is in the ANC’s DNA The flight from Pretoria of Sudan’s al-Bashir is but one example of a blatant disregard of the law.

CAPE TOWN — The departure of Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir from South Africa before he could be arrested for alleged genocide didn’t come as too much of a surprise — laughter and knowing sniggers from the Pretoria High Court’s public gallery clearly attested to this. South Africans have, after all, become accustomed to the ruling ANC steadily undermining the rule of law, which already started under the country’s former president, Thabo Mbeki.

What might have shocked even the most cynical observers, however, was the brazen way the world’s most wanted war criminal and mass murderer — in South Africa to attend an African Union summit — was whisked away by a Sudanese plane on Monday, taking off from Waterkloof Air Force Base near Pretoria. But then, the ANC’s National Executive Committee had declared in a statement the previous day that it “holds a view that the International Criminal Court [ICC] is no longer useful for the purposes for which it was intended.”

Siphosezwe Masango, chairman of Parliament’s portfolio committee on international relations, called the Southern African Litigation Centre’s application to have al-Bashir arrested “an opportunistic act only meant to pit African leaders against each other in the name of international law...” (This African sentiment is of course nothing new.) But as signatory of the Rome Statute and ICC Act of 2002, the ANC government not only scorned its ICC obligations, Pretoria’s High Court has also ruled the failure to detain him to be unconstitutional.

At the close of the summit Robert Mugabe at a media conference close to midnight said Zuma had given the AU summit assurances that al-Bashir would not be arrested. NGO’s were going to court to try force his arrest, Mugabe said. Then on Tuesday, it was reported by Media24 that the Sudanese government had held “about 1 400 South African troops hostage” when the drama around al-Bashir’s arrest in South Africa escalated. “The Sudanese government of president Omar al-Bashir literally held a gun to South Africa’s head to secure his safe return to Khartoum,” according to the report.

The report quotes a South African soldier in Dafur: “We were so scared — we were surrounded by soldiers.” The South African soldiers, serving in Darfur as part of a combined African Union/United Nations peace mission (Unamid), were allegedly “released” after al-Bashar had landed in Sudan.

Revolutions do not occur through supernatural forces. On the contrary, human beings make revolutions, albeit under material conditions, what is called objective conditions.

This very much smacks of a joint damage control attempt by the South African government and al-Bashir; what, after all, would he have to lose by this? Certainly not his “reputation.” And the South African government urgently needs some form of justification for allowing al-Bashir to escape arrest; now faced with legal action by the SALC.

Keep in mind that these are the same ANC rulers who denied the Dalai Lama a visa three times in five years: once to celebrate Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s birthday and the third time to attend the 14th World summit of Nobel Peace Laureates, which was then held elsewhere. Kowtowing to the Chinese, a livid Tutu called it. “Lickspittle…”

But back to al-Bashir. One would have expected him to exit South Africa the night before his actual departure, after the Pretoria High Court had banned his leaving the country until an application calling for his arrest had been heard. Most likely then followed by a South African government spokesman shrugging his shoulder and saying, Aw, shucks… Not our fault the bird has flown.

Waterkloof Air Force Base has made headlines before in South Africa. In April 2013, a scandal involving President Zuma erupted when a commercial aircraft carrying 200 largely Indian wedding guests landed at this “national strategic key point.” The occasion: the wedding of Vega Gupta and Aakash Jahajgarhia, moneyed friends of the president. Zuma naturally denied ever having given permission for the plane landing, with his long-standing buddies, the super-wealthy Guptas, on board. The media soon dubbed the scandal Guptagate.

The long and the short of it is that after a number of military officers and officials were scapegoated and arrested, most charges were eventually withdrawn. Bruce Koloane, chief of state protocol, was demoted to “liaison officer.” And after that — in classic ANC “cadre redeployment” style — Comrade Koloane was appointed as ambassador in The Hague.

By the time Zuma, by manipulating the legal system, managed to have 783 charges of corruption, racketeering, money laundering and bribery against him withdrawn in 2009, the country had lurched further down the slippery slope. The slope led, among other things, to the ongoing Nkandla scandal, in which millions of dollars in taxpayers’ money was spent on Zuma’s private estate in KwaZulu-Natal. A swimming pool costing $325,000 was officially explained to be a “fire pool’’ and a “vital security feature.” Police minister Nathi Nhleko recently went so far as to on demonstrate on TV how to use the “fire pool.”

Corruption is now part of the ANC’s DNA. But how did we ever get to this point? I’m sure Nelson Mandela must be spinning in his grave. By 2004, the ANC’s annoyance at — even hostility toward — the liberal ideals underpinning the South African Constitution had become more or less clear. As the then Democratic Party MP Douglas Gibson put it at the time, “…in 2003 the ANC showed itself perfectly willing to change the Constitution out of short-term political considerations.” The ANC under Mbeki, said Gibson, had in the past five years “aggressively centralized power and sought to slip out of the constitutional restraints on its actions.”

The ANC under Mbeki, said Gibson, had in the past five years “aggressively centralized power and sought to slip out of the constitutional restraints on its actions.

In South Africa today, the ANC is the state. Some commentators have referred to it as “creeping communism.” If that sounds rather dramatic, how does “National Democratic Revolution” sound? That is the phrase used by the ANC to describe what they’re doing to South Africa. On its website, the ruling party explains it like this: “Revolutions do not occur through supernatural forces. On the contrary, human beings make revolutions, albeit under material conditions, what is called objective conditions. These are conditions that are independent of individuals [sic] wishes, but are changeable through human intervention arising out of self-activity and capacity, including organizing and leadership, which are referred to as subjective conditions…”

Yup. Readers in need of further confusion (or mirth) can google “NDR ANC 2012.”

Unfortunately, for those of us extremely worried by the country’s steadily worsening economic situation, comic relief turns to fear on reading about “the existence of capitalist exploitation’’ being an “objective condition for the working class.” Nor does what the ANC terms the elimination of “apartheid property relations” and a “programme for national emancipation” inspire much confidence. Especially not in white South Africans, whom Zuma in a speech recently referred to as “the others.” Neatly fitting in with a stated policy of the “deracialization of ownership and control of wealth.”

Nobody in his right mind would have questioned the need for affirmative action — Black Economic Empowerment. Sadly, BEE has been a dismal failure, to the detriment of millions of impoverished black South Africans. The ruling elite, including “cadres,” connected ANC cronies, and their extended families, have been the main beneficiaries of the BEE gravy train. Many have literally become multi-millionaires overnight.

This is the country that let Omar al-Bashir slip away back to Sudan. Are we surprised?

Ingo Capraro is the founding editor of Son, an Afrikaans-language tabloid newspaper. He was formerly, among other posts, the London correspondent of Die Burger.