Water issues continue to anger communities of Bronkhorstspruit and Ekangala
Things reached a boiling point in Ekangala this week. Concerned residents from wards 103 and 104 informed their councillors of their intent to protest on May 21 until their issues about the poor water supply are heard.
A letter sent to the two ward councillors notified them that the wards' communities had had enough of the ongoing water shortages and that residents were left with no alternative but to protest.
The residents indicated that an organised protest would begin early on Wednesday and continue daily until the city's mayoral committee gave the community a 'clear and actionable plan for its immediate and long-term resolution'.
In their letter, the residents said public transport and local businesses might be affected by protest activities.
'We reiterate that this protest will be peaceful, but firm in its objective to draw attention to our desperate situation. The well-being of wards 103 and 104 hinges on a swift and effective resolution to this water crisis.'
A local bedridden individual on life support, Nomvuyo Mashele, also expressed frustration and concern about the prolonged water supply issues.
'We had intermittent water supply for two weeks, and the recent outage left us without running water for days.'
As a bedridden person on life support, struggling with multiple chronic illnesses, this situation is not just inconvenient; it is a serious health risk.
'The lack of water makes it impossible for me to maintain basic hygiene, which is crucial for my well-being. I urge you to take immediate action to restore a consistent water supply to our area. This isn't just a matter of comfort; it is a matter of urgent necessity,' said Mashele.
ALSO CHECK: Plant refurbishment will alleviate water shortages in Standerton
Things would worsen very soon, is the consensus among residents.
'We are being deprived of a basic right to access to water,' declared an angry resident from Rethabiseng.
Two faulty pumps at the water treatment plant are said to have caused the latest water outage.
A delegation from the CoT, including the MMC for Region 7, the regional head and the ward councillors, visited the plant on Tuesday and offered an explanation and apology via video to the wards 103 and 104 residents.
Jabu Mabona, the regional head, asked the residents to use the supplied water tankers until the water was restored. The delegation believed this would happen before Friday.
ALSO CHECK: Sewage threatens health of cancer-stricken twins from eMzinoni
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TimesLIVE
3 days ago
- TimesLIVE
Beware the prince of egotistical grandeur and armchair purveyor
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.
IOL News
19-07-2025
- IOL News
How apartheid nostalgia betrays South Africa's unfinished liberation
To compare the pothole-free roads of white Pretoria in the 1980s to ANC-run municipalities in Limpopo today, without examining these spatial legacies, is disingenuous. Image: Karen Singh/Screengrab THE narrative that dominates discussions of South Africa's post-apartheid journey often converges on a single, critical point: the perceived failure of the ANC to deliver on its grand promises. This critique, amplified by commentators like Prince Mashele, frequently contrasts the present with a romanticised past, suggesting an era of pristine infrastructure and efficient governance under apartheid. But this flawed comparison does more than obscure the truth—it actively distorts it. In a widely circulated interview on the SMWX podcast, Mashele claimed that under apartheid, 'there were no potholes on tar roads,' and that traffic lights always 'worked.' He continued, asserting that infrastructural decay, non-functional robots and crumbling roads, is uniquely 'an ANC thing.' This dangerously reductive view demonstrates selective amnesia. It is not merely a critique of governance, but a subtle sanitisation of apartheid's spatial and racial architecture. Undeniably, Mahmood Mamdani's analysis in Neither Settler nor Native illuminates why apartheid's geography persists under ANC rule. Mashele's statements reflect what Frantz Fanon called the 'Manichaean world' of the colonial order, where two towns existed: one of order and excess, and the other of filth and want. The black township continued to be 'a place of ill fame, peopled by men of ill repute.' The apartheid state maintained clean roads and working traffic lights in white areas not as a national standard, but as a function of racial privilege and spatial control. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Next Stay Close ✕ What Mashele conveniently ignores is that infrastructure under apartheid was race-coded. Paved roads, water services, and electricity were concentrated in white suburbs, while black townships and rural areas were systematically underdeveloped. In my own experience, growing up and living in places like Ntabamhlophe (western KwaZulu-Natal) or Ngobi (North West), traffic lights were non-existent—and still are, three decades into democratic rule under the ANC. These areas were not marginalised by accident but were designed to be so. Their underdevelopment was deliberate and institutionalised. To recall apartheid's so-called efficiency without context is to ignore its structural violence. Mashele's nostalgia constructs a binary: ANC equals decay; apartheid equals order. This formulation is historically inaccurate and morally indefensible. It is akin to praising the punctuality of trains under fascist regimes while ignoring the concentration camps they served. As Walter Rodney warned, colonial systems did not merely 'fail' to develop Africa, they underdeveloped it by design. Apartheid was no different. Mashele's technological nostalgia exemplifies what Jacob Dlamini identifies as 'restorative nostalgia', a desire to recover a mythical past cleansed of its oppressive foundations. This mode of nostalgia sanitises apartheid's brutality by fixating on its superficial order. In contrast, Dlamini's notion of 'reflective nostalgia' offers a more honest reckoning: a mourning of apartheid-era community networks or certainties that were fractured not by freedom itself, but by democracy's failure to fulfil its emancipatory promise. Therefore, true memory must confront, not conceal, the violence that underwrote apartheid's oppressive order. Mamdani's concept of 'decentralised despotism' in colonial governance is particularly instructive here. The apartheid state was a textbook case of bifurcated rule, where civil rights and services were afforded to whites. Meanwhile, black South Africans were governed through tribal authorities and customary law in the Bantustans. Infrastructure was not neutral but was weaponised to entrench spatial exclusion. This remains evident today, where apartheid's geography persists under a different political dispensation. To compare the pothole-free roads of white Pretoria in the 1980s to ANC-run municipalities in Limpopo today, without examining these spatial legacies, is disingenuous. The real question Mashele should be asking is why the ANC has failed to transform places like Ngobi, not why Sandton looks better maintained. What Mashele should be saying is that the ANC has not changed much in these places, because it inherited and perpetuated apartheid's geography. Indeed, the ANC has betrayed many of its foundational promises. Its 1994 Ready to Govern manifesto envisioned one million homes, 2.5 million electrified households, and a comprehensive public works programme to redress historical inequality. Instead, the neoliberal turn, engineered in part with the guidance of apartheid-era finance figures like Derek Keys and 'new' South Africa economic policy czars (Trevor Manuel, Thabo Mbeki, and Tito Mboweni), saw the abandonment of redistributive infrastructure plans in favour of market-led growth. This ideological surrender created the vacuum now filled by elite corruption and administrative collapse. Auditor-General reports confirm the rot: only three of 35 national departments received clean audits in recent years. Provinces like Limpopo have required constitutional interventions due to a total failure in service delivery. In this context, Mashele's outrage is justified. But to project this dysfunction onto a narrative that vindicates apartheid's design is intellectually dishonest. Fanon, in Black Skin, White Masks, explains this internalisation of colonial values as part of a broader inferiority complex. The formerly oppressed, he warns, may begin to admire the coloniser's systems, not because they were just, but because they were stable. Mashele's obsession with working traffic lights is a symptom of this pathology, a longing for colonial order dressed as political critique. This is not speaking truth to power, but speaking comfort to whiteness. The rise of self-proclaimed political analysts who gain traction through unchecked criticism of the ANC is not unexpected. It is part of South Africa's vibrant democratic culture. Such voices are indispensable. But they must be rooted in historical truth. As Edward Said argued in Representations of the Intellectual, the true public intellectual must interrogate power without becoming its tool. In contrast, Mashele's commentary risks becoming a performance of analysis, divorced from the very people it purports to represent. The danger lies not in criticism of the ANC, that is both necessary and overdue, but in what is lost when such critique adopts the language and assumptions of apartheid's defenders. Mashele's claim that the ANC 'broke the robots' implies that apartheid had a universal standard of governance. It did not. It had a racially exclusive logic. If the robots worked in town, it is because they were not meant to work in Seshego or Ntabankulu. Who, then, does Mashele speak for? Not the residents of Ntabamhlophe or Mogwase, who still wait for paved roads and functioning clinics. Not the youth of Nkowankowa, who must walk kilometres for access to water or schooling. He speaks not from the margins, but from a middle-class, or 'Grand Estate', vantage point that measures progress in suburban conveniences, rather than in structural transformation. Mashele's comments also obscure the ANC's complicity in failing to reverse apartheid's spatial logic. Post-1994 housing developments were often built on peripheral land, perpetuating apartheid's spatial exclusions. As urban scholar Neil Klug notes, these areas were poorly serviced and isolated, replicating the 40-40-40 rule: 40 km from the city, 40-square-metre homes, requiring 40% of income for commuting. This is not liberation but stagnation under new management. Patrick Bond's analyses of post-apartheid neoliberalism highlight how state-led, investor-friendly policies replaced development. The result: infrastructure for the elite, neglect for the majority. While 4.7 million 'housing opportunities' were created, 2.4 million families remain without homes. The state has effectively become a site of accumulation for a political class, rather than a vehicle for redistribution. Fanon warned that a national bourgeoisie that mimics colonial forms without dismantling them will eventually become 'the transmission belt between the nation and international capital.' This prophecy now defines the ANC's trajectory. However, even as we confront this reality, we must not let nostalgia obscure the past. 'There were no potholes' is not an argument but a mirage. Infrastructure that excludes cannot be glorified simply because it functioned for some. South Africa's future demands a radical reorientation. Mamdani speaks of the need to 'unmake permanent minorities' — to reverse spatial, economic, and legal segregation through systemic reform. That means reparative urban planning, land reform, and dignified service delivery — not superficial comparisons between the towns that excluded us and the municipalities that now ignore us. It means remembering that functioning infrastructure for the few is not a standard, but a sign of inequality. Again, the freedom the black majority wants is not material excess or socioeconomic rights alone, but more. Liberation is not measured by traffic lights alone, but by dignity, equity, and memory. The robots in white suburbs worked because the state ensured they would, at the expense of the black majority's humanity. To forget that is to betray those still waiting for the freedom promised at dusty crossroads where robots never gleamed. Potholes are real, but so is the history that built them—and the future we owe to those still left behind. Siyayibanga le economy! * Siyabonga Hadebe is an independent commentator based in Geneva on socio-economic, political and global matters. ** The views expressed here do not reflect those of the Sunday Independent, Independent Media, or IOL. Get the real story on the go: Follow the Sunday Independent on WhatsApp.
IOL News
17-07-2025
- IOL News
'Ramaphosa will die in jail if he lives to 80,' says Political Analyst Prince Mashele
Political analyst Prince Mashele says President Ramaphosa's corruption and failure to act show he leads a criminal network and will ultimately die in jail if he lives long enough. Political analyst Prince Mashele says President Cyril Ramaphosa will be remembered as one of the most ineffectual presidents in post-apartheid South Africa. He predicts that if the president lives long enough, 'say he touches 80,' he will die in jail. In an interview on the Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh podcast, Mashele expressed criticism of Ramaphosa, calling him the "criminal in chief" at the head of a 'criminal organisation,' namely the African National Congress (ANC). 'Cyril Ramaphosa will go down in history as one of the most useless presidents we have had after 1994. And I don't mince my words, useless. Zuma will go down in history as the most criminal. But let's park that, we've dealt with Zuma many times. There is a criminal organisation, the criminal in chief, it's president Ramaphosa himself,' Mashele said. Referring to Ramaphosa's handling of the revelations and allegations made by KZN police commissioner Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi in a press briefing on July 6, 2025, Mashele accused the president of deliberately failing to act in the face of damning intelligence. 'You see, there is a moment for a leader of a country to show leadership, to lead his nation. Cyril Ramaphosa missed the moment. He did not act like a leader. He has completely forgotten his responsibilities.' Mashele argued that Ramaphosa, as president, receives daily intelligence briefings and cannot plead ignorance. 'A president is client number one of our intelligence services. They report to the president. There is absolutely nothing that Mkhwanazi knows that Cyril Ramaphosa does not know. So this idea that there must be a commission of enquiry is absolute nonsense. In fact, it's insulting our intelligence as a society. He knows,'' said Mashele. Central to Mashele's argument is what he sees as a mutually compromising relationship between Ramaphosa and Police Minister Senzo Mchunu. 'He [Ramaphosa] cannot act sternly against Mchunu. Why? Because he and Mchunu are partners in crime,' said Mashele. He accused Ramaphosa of being unable to act against Mchunu due to their shared involvement in the CR17 campaign, where, according to Mashele, 'all the dirty money' flowed.
