Defuse this Gupta-guided missile

The Gupta-guided missile which is our Mineral Resources Minister Mosebenzi Zwane needs to be defused urgently before his mission to destroy the South African mining sector succeeds.

His latest lunacy is an attempt to halt all new prospecting rights, effectively bringing the beleaguered industry to a grinding halt and which he announced without even bothering to tell his Deputy Minister Godfrey Oliphant.

The Chamber of Mines has already put him on notice that it will legally challenge this move, as it did successfully with Zwane's attempt to impose a damaging new mining charter recently.

In the past few months Zwane's policy decisions have wiped more than R50-billion off the value of mining stocks. That's not only hitting the wallets of wealthy investors, it's hitting the pockets of people like you who are likely exposed via your pension fund.

In the process Zwane is also - in defiance of his own party - sending an industry already shedding thousands of jobs by the month into a kamikaze death spiral.

This is not entirely unexpected. Among the cabal of cabinet ministers who have been captured and corrupted, Zwane leads the way by a country mile.

The affidavit this week by the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse in support of its laying criminal charges, including fraud and treason, against him is a chilling distillation of the
evidence.

It correctly paints Zwane as a key Gupta stooge acting in their interests in the heist of Optimum Coal, the Free State dairy scam, and helping them spark a national scandal by landing their plane at Waterkloof Air Force Base, among other outrages.

Let's not mince our words. Zwane is an incompetent minister and an accomplished crook who has no place in running our public affairs. And if you disagree, minister, sue us.