One of South Africa's challenges appears to be the casual broadcast of blatant falsehoods for self-serving agendas and purposes.
Recent comments about the ANC by itinerant political entrepreneur Prince Mashele, made in an interview with podcaster Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, fit hand in glove with this tiresome and odious pattern.
“I mean, they (ANC) were running drug cartels in exile,” Mashele says. “We know this stuff; I mean, it’s out there.” As if that was not enough, “Not only were they selling drugs, but they were actually murdering each other. I mean the killings that were happening in the ANC in exile; I mean, this stuff is real. So, the ANC ... its DNA is that of criminality.”
The issue is not that Mashele is decidedly anti-ANC. After all, the objective historical reality is that the ANC fought for a South Africa in which everyone, Mashele included, has complete freedom of association. And like every party, the ANC is not beyond reproach either. The trouble is Mashele’s lies and the vulgarity with which he shamelessly peddles them, hiding his partialities and entrepreneurial interests behind a pretence of objective analysis.
Give us the evidence, please.
It is simply untrue that the ANC was a drug den in exile. Or that we killed one another for sport. Of course, Mashele does not present any evidence for these wild claims. Such evidence does not exist because those things simply never occurred. So, he resorts to theatrical pomposity: “We know this stuff; I mean, it's out there.”
His is a cocktail of pavement gossip and anti-ANC propaganda, not the reflections of a respectable public intellectual marshalling facts, logic, and rationality. But it is not too late for Mashele to provide evidence for his claims. In fact, many of us eagerly await it.
The struggle is still the subject of much discussion and debate on questions of war and peace globally, with the ANC’s policy against targeting civilians in the conduct of armed action and its fidelity to the principle of non-racialism, constitutionalism, and reconciliation and nation-building among the prominent highlights.
Throughout its three decades in exile, the ANC led the struggle against apartheid on a moral basis, earning the respect and admiration of friends and foes at home and around the world.
The struggle is still the subject of much discussion and debate on questions of war and peace globally, with the ANC’s policy against targeting civilians in the conduct of armed action and its fidelity to the principle of nonracialism, constitutionalism, and reconciliation and nation-building among the prominent highlights.
The apartheid regime and its international allies worked tirelessly to portray the ANC in the most negative light imaginable, including by exaggerating internal organisational challenges and problems as well as manufacturing blatant lies.
The facts were irrelevant as long as the goal of tarnishing the image of the ANC was met. Thirty years after its demise, the apartheid regime’s bad habits appear to linger on in Mashele's head, polluting the public discourse.
A faithful apartheid apologist
Mashele also conjures an imaginary and delusional vision of townships and rural communities, which he claims “used to be proper” in the apartheid years but were destroyed by the ANC after 1994.
This is a shocking example of his faithful devotion to the apartheid project. One wonders which townships and rural areas Mashele is referring to. Could they be the same ones that had no water and sanitation, electricity, paved roads and other basic amenities before 1994?
Whatever Mashele means by “proper” townships and rural areas does not correspond with the lived experience of his contemporaries in apartheid-era Bushbuckridge, where he grew up, nor is it reflective of the experiences of millions of other South Africans across the country.
A superficial understanding of South Africa’s dynamics
Another of Mashele’s anti-ANC tirades concerns employment. The apartheid era was supposedly a time of plenty — “We would find jobs” — but now, the “ANC destroyed the backbone of the economy,” he says.
Nobody disputes that South Africa has an unemployment problem. However, one expects some rigour from a public intellectual. So, let us consider the question of unemployment. In 1994, South Africa had 8.9-million employed people — excluding those in the Bantustans — out of a working-age population of 18.8-million. With an estimated working-age population of 41-million people today — a 40% increase in the population since 1994 — employment stands at 16.79-million, an 88% growth in employed individuals.
While it is far from adequate, the economy has nonetheless absorbed a substantial portion of the expanding labour force, reflecting a notable increase in formal employment opportunities over the past three decades.
In 1992, GDP was about $146.96bn (R2.6-trillion). Today, GDP is three times higher, at $405.06bn (R7.2-trillion). If the ANC has destroyed the backbone of the economy, as Mashele alleges, how has the economy risen threefold?
As the leading political party since 1994, the ANC surely shares the blame for unemployment. But the fact that the private sector controls slightly more than 70% of the South African economy is not an inconsequential fact. No serious analysis about unemployment can exonerate the private sector from the problem.
According to a 2024 working paper published by the SA Reserve Bank, local banks generally hold excess liquidity, with their Net Stable Funding Ratio (NSFR) consistently exceeding the 100% minimum even before it became a regulatory requirement in 2018.
This reflects a high-risk aversion to lending and investment. While it provides financial stability, it limits the availability of credit, particularly for small businesses, which require higher-risk investments. It also reduces the funding available for expansion, especially in manufacturing and infrastructure, which are critical for economic growth and labour absorption.
Understandably, Mashele will not so much as whisper this for fear of causing a drought in his paid speaking opportunities. Like other entrepreneurs, Mashele has searched for and discovered his niche and has done exceptionally well. As a professional anti-ANC entrepreneur, he is carrying on a long tradition, dating back to the colonial era, of people willing to be conveyor belts of ideas that feathered their nests, even if they contradicted the facts or the interests of much of society.
Purveyor of egotistical drivel
Mashele is dismissive of newly appointed acting minister of safety and security Firoz Cachalia’s credentials: “By the way, this chap was supposed to retire. He is old; he has no energy. There is nothing outstanding that this professor has done. All he has done is that he is an ANC-linked professor.
“By the way, I have been in academia myself, so I can say what I am saying. There are competent and incompetent academics. This professor, by the way, I wouldn’t count among the competent academics. What is it that he has done outstandingly that qualifies him to come and manage a crisis like this? Absolutely nothing!”
Cachalia is a respected anti-apartheid activist who made a significant contribution to the liberation of South Africa and the post-1994 democratic order. He was tortured by apartheid securocrats while Mashele was still wiping snot from his cheek.
An accomplished legal academic who thinks more, speaks less, and does a lot more, Cachalia is also a former MEC of safety and security in Gauteng. Surely, he is worthier of the ear than Mashele, the prince of egotistical grandeur and armchair purveyor of crude opinions of little practical value.
To assert that Cachalia’s only claim to fame is his membership of the ANC is the zenith of vulgarity. It is the same churlishness and platitudinal mindset that drove Mashele, with characteristic theatrical performance for pleasing his audience, to insult Eric Nkovani, aka Papa Penny, calling him “an idiot” on the grounds that “the guy has not been to school”.
True to his egoistical character, Mashele could not resist contrasting himself with Nkovani: “I have a master's degree,” he declared. It must follow that in Mashele’s book, millions of other people who did not have the opportunity to go to school are just as idiotic.
The absolute necessity of formal education is unquestionable, but when the educated — or is it certificated? — equate a lack of it with idiocy, it underscores the need for an educated discourse about education covering such issues as the history of Black people’s access to education in South Africa, the political economy of knowledge production, and the ends to which it can be put, especially in a postcolonial developing country context.
If Mashele had a grain of humility or bothered to research his subjects, he would understand that he is neither worthy to validate nor sit in judgment over Cachalia. He would also appreciate that abusing Nkovani, whose lack of formal education is one of the multiple negatives of our history of disenfranchisement, is a grave insult to millions of people. It reveals more about him than his target of derision.
Be transparent about your allegiances.
Mashele also expresses his support of Helen Zille’s bid for mayorship of the City of Johannesburg. He stated, “I am not a supporter of the DA. I am very clear. If Helen Zille wins the contest to become mayoral candidate of Johannesburg, I am going to do something I have never done in my life. I am going to publicly endorse her.” With his signature bravado, he added, “Did you hear that? This is big. I am going to do something I have never done in my life, with a heavy heart.”
Leaving aside the vainglorious oath, the plain truth is that Mashele has no political stature that would make his support of Zille or any candidate across the party-political divide a matter of any significance. Another important truth he omits or deliberately conceals is that he has been a supporter of the DA or harboured aspirations in that direction for well over a decade.
In her 2016 autobiography, Zille disclosed that Mashele was part of an Agang South Africa team that negotiated the ephemeral merger of Mamphela Ramphele’s now-defunct party and the DA four years previously.
The talks were held “at a beautiful old-world guest house with high ceilings in Oranjezicht, Cape Town” under an “atmosphere [that] could not have been more convivial.” To cap it all off, the guest house staff “kept us well nourished for our task, with lovely home-bakes at tea and delicious plates of home-cooked food at mealtimes.”
As it happened, “Prince Mashele drafted the first position paper. He titled it ‘Strategic Perspective for South Africa: Repositioning the DA for greater leadership responsibility'” and “Ryan [Coetzee] shortened it and gave it the title 'The DA’s Path to the Future'.”
Evidently, Mashele’s stake in Zille’s political trajectory is nothing new. In August 2019, the media also published reports about “an application form that Mashele allegedly completed on June 30 [2018] to be a DA 2019 candidate to the provincial legislature and national parliament.” So, even the most politically naive will regard Mashele’s claim to endorse Zille “with a heavy heart” with a shovel of salt.
Doctrinally, the ANC respects and defends Mashele’s right to associate as he pleases. So, while his nomadic floor-crossing adventures from the ANC to Agang SA, the DA, Herman Mashaba's ActionSA, and back to the DA might attract entertaining and disparaging adjectives, it is multiparty democracy in action.
Doctrinally, the ANC respects and defends Mashele’s right to associate as he pleases. So, while his nomadic floor-crossing adventures from the ANC to Agang SA, the DA, Herman Mashaba's ActionSA, and back to the DA might attract entertaining and disparaging adjectives, it is multiparty democracy in action.
For this reason, Mashele does not need to toil as an underground operative of the DA in a free and democratic country. He just needs to be honest about his political allegiances and to dispel falsehoods like the prevalent urban legend that Mashele served as former president Thabo Mbeki's speech writer when he worked in the presidency. Mbeki’s speech writer was veteran ANC activist and author Magashe Titus Mafolo, who says Mashele did not once contribute a single sentence to the speeches.
Beware the intellectual mercenary.
At the end of the podcast, Mashele discusses the role of public intellectuals, claiming that they should serve as the “conscience of society” by speaking their mind to contribute to political discourse and empowering society.
Yet his own track record is less than stellar. Take, for instance, the scandal surrounding Mashele's 2023 book about Herman Mashaba. It emerged that not only was Mashaba directly involved in shaping the content of the book, but he also financed it to the tune of R12.5m.
The revelation led to Jonathan Ball Publishers withdrawing the book for the author’s failure to disclose the glaring conflict of interest. Mashele — who postures as the guardian of intellectual independence — co-authored and benefited from a vanity project masquerading as impartial political analysis. If this is the “public intellectual” he speaks of, then the category itself is in urgent need of rescue from the commercial exploits of practitioners like Mashele.
As already alluded to, Mashele's problem is not that he has political opinions; everyone does. It is that he cloaks his political entrepreneurship in the language of principle, employing the authority of the “public intellectual” to wage partisan battles and pursue commercial interests while pretending to be above them. In the end, he is less the fearless truth-teller he pretends to be and more a poster boy of intellectual vanity and the profit motive outpacing moral consistency.
This betrays his position as an intellectual mercenary who knows where the bread is buttered. It reminds one of a 19th-century observer who observed that Napoleon Bonaparte was “endowed ... with the most developed antennae for feeling out the weak moments when he might squeeze money from his bourgeois[ie].”
Examine Mashele closely, and you realise that he does not illuminate an intelligent appreciation of the country’s problems and challenges. Rather, he selects national concerns, oversimplifies them into binary opposites if not vulgarises them altogether, and then drowns out everyone while enchanting his audience in theatre. He has the gift of gab too.
Mashele is a performer, and all his public appearances are invariably solo performances. His constant and cherished device is whipping up an emotional frenzy.
This approach does not help us to understand the multiple and layered causes of our daily experiences; by its nature, a small aperture forbids a wider picture. It may appeal to our immediate emotions — “our weak moments” — but it is of little if any strategic value in the search for sustainable answers to national problems and challenges.
So, beware the intellectual mercenary.
Matshediso is a master's graduate in Pan African Development Studies and a Research Associate at the University of Johannesburg's Institute for Pan African Thought and Conversation, Public Relations Officer at Dr Ruth Segomotsi Mompati District Municipality and a member of the ANC.
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