Hitler as model: Who is the Public Protector protecting?

GEOFF SIFRIN

Her punting of someone like him, has led outraged Jewish leaders to demand she distance herself from him.

We live in complicated times in a country struggling to find its way, where important debates are often stifled by people shouting each other down. Mkhwebane is particularly unpopular when compared to her predecessor Thuli Madonsela, who won the hearts of South Africans by confronting the country’s most powerful people on the issue of state capture.

For Jews, it is alarming that Mkhwebane seems to be oblivious to the inflammatory implications of aligning herself with somebody like Goodson – a sinister sign for someone occupying so politically sensitive a position.

She has referred positively to a Goodson book entitled A History of Central Banking (and the Enslavement of Mankind). Adolf Hitler and former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi appear on its cover.

She needs to be educated to the fact that the moment the word Hitler or Nazi is mentioned, rational debate is shut down by images of Auschwitz. It is strange that she seems not to know that – or to be ignoring it. Where is she taking instructions from?

Anti-Semitism in South Africa has remained consistently low compared to many other countries worldwide. Mkhwebane threatens this by injecting suspicion towards Jews into the public arena through association with the likes of Goodson.

The important role of Jewish businesspeople, professionals and others in the South African economy, could be exploited by populist politicians with mischievous agendas. In our convoluted political environment, this is extremely dangerous

Her recommendation, apparently based partly on her reading of Goodson, that parliament initiate a process to change the Constitution’s definition of the Reserve Bank’s mandate – its inflation targeting framework – has been slammed across the political spectrum, including by ANC heavyweights insisting that she has over-reached her constitutional powers.

Her task is to do what the Constitution demands of her, not attempt to change it. The Reserve Bank’s independence is crucial, particularly in an environment where our democratic institutions are all under attack.

Mkhwebane has earned many times over the distrust she is now subject to. But not everything she has uttered about governance is unworthy of discussion – including the Reserve Bank’s mandate. However, it would be taken more seriously if it came from someone with credibility.

This country desperately needs to extract itself from the hole of low growth, poverty and inequality into which it has sunk. Other successful countries have adopted different models for the role of banks in economic growth, while retaining their independence.

Goodson joined the SA Reserve Bank in 2003 as a director and in May 2012 resigned under public pressure because of his anti-Semitic views. He has expressed admiration for Hitler’s economic policies and said international bankers (read: Jews) financed and manipulated the Second World War against Germany because its leader’s model of state capitalism threatened them.

In an interview in 2011 with American talk show host Deanna Spingola on Republic Broadcasting Network – a radical right-wing radio station – he said the Holocaust was a “huge lie” with the objective “to extract enormous sums of money from the Germans as compensation”.

International bankers, he added, “tarnished that whole period as being one of great evil in order to keep you blind to what is possible”. He praised the social achievements during the Third Reich.

Is Mkhwebane captured by the Zuma-Gupta self-enrichment project? Does her association with characters like Goodson serve their agenda? Jews and other South Africans are correct in being seriously alarmed. 

Read Geoff Sifrin’s regular columns on his blog sifrintakingissue.wordpress.com