Say anything to bring Gordhan down. Lie away

The women's league of the ANC is a curious beast. Once proud, and with reason, it has been slowly reduced to babbling incoherence under the party leadership of President Jacob Zuma. Its current "leader", for want of a more appropriate term, is Bathabile Dlamini, the minister of social development.

Dlamini is responsible for imperilling the payments of welfare to 17 million citizens come the end of March because she's failed to follow a court ruling and find and legally appoint an agency to do it.

She is the one who, despite public calls from Zuma for ANC leaders not to start endorsing candidates for December's elective conference, consistently endorses Zuma's ex-wife, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.

She failed to attend a parliamentary committee hearing recently, deciding instead to fly to Addis Ababa for Dlamini-Zuma's farewell from the AU Commission.

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In other words, Dlamini is incapable of doing her job properly or of taking instruction, but is utterly confident the president will protect her whatever she says or does. She was also one of a handful of Zuma ultra-loyalists who declined to stand and applaud Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan when he delivered the budget on Wednesday.

On Thursday the ANC Women's League published its response to the budget.

I swear, in my life I have never read such uncouth and ignorant rubbish. That it could spew from the pen of people who will help choose the next president of this country is petrifying.

"Regrettably there are incoherences [sic] between the SONA by the President and the budget speech by the Minister," it begins, "and we are hoping that this incoherence will not trickle down to various departments who [sic] are responsible for implementation of government programmes.

"Very disappointing that the minister did not delve deeper into the corruption of the banking cartels. The (guilty) banks ... must have their operating licences revoked, criminal charges laid against their boards and executives and be fined 100% of commission earned out of the corrupt acts. Government must stop with immediate [sic] doing business with banks charged with corruption with immediate effect.

"As the womens' [sic] league we are deeply disappointed that government has set aside only 30% for black business and 70% will be for white owned [sic] business.

"The ANCWL applauds the ANC led [sic] government with its good tax administration ... under the leadership of Commissioner Tom Moyane and his collective SARS has been performing exceptionally well and that is applauded."

In other words, say anything to bring Gordhan down. Distort and lie away. SARS is R30-billion behind target because Moyane has lost all its experienced people. Oh, yes, and do close down Standard Bank, Absa and Investec.

You idiots. Who is going to tell the Chinese government its 20% investment in Standard Bank has, sadly but of necessity, been extinguished? Perhaps Dlamini could make the call herself.

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And duh! The "commission earned" in the forex rigging was much smaller than the fines the law allows. The banks would be happy to pay that instead.

The terrifying thing is that this is all done not so much for Zuma any more, but for Dlamini-Zuma. From her we hear nothing and so must presume she rather approves of all the poor behaviour propelling her to power.

She'll soon be in cabinet, along no doubt with Brian Molefe, blathering on about white monopoly capital and radical economic transformation, both of which are intended to translate into enough votes to continue being able to feed Zuma's small but hungry band of political and business cronies.

Poor Gordhan tried his best on Wednesday to nod to Zuma's new love affair with radical transformation, but it just isn't in him. You can be as radical as you like, but you still have to pay for it. Gordhan leans, rather, towards radical transformation's more mature cousin, inclusive growth.

Inclusive growth is a radical prospect if only we had the space to talk about it constructively. Business, labour and the government all have contributions to make to a brand-new economy, transformed and inclusive, for all South Africans.

A stakeholder market economy, with economic rights written into its core, guaranteeing every South African a decent start in life, is doable in South Africa. But when the ANC is this close to a leadership election the skies go dark, reason vanishes, and nothing good can happen.