Jacques Pauw cooks up food for thought at WIZO ladies’ day

GILLIAM KLAWANSKY

Pauw is also the author of the recently released bestseller The President’s Keepers, in which he reveals the hidden depths of corruption that festered during Jacob Zuma’s presidency.

He began his address to those attending the WIZO event at Mushie and Issie Kirsch’s Oaklands home last week by speaking about his mother.  

Pauw, who now runs a guest house, restaurant and bar in Riebeek-Kasteel in the Western Cape, said: “She was the dearest woman in my life, but she was a terribly bad cook. She wasn’t interested in food, which was unique for an Afrikaner mother in Pretoria! I had to bake my own cakes and make my own lunch. I would start writing down the recipes I used and I’d innovate with other ingredients.

“My cooking was far better than mother’s and I would add funny things to my food, like fresh herbs – quite unknown in Afrikaans cooking. And my mother would say to me: ‘You’re a real troublemaker.’ Those words never stopped leaving her lips until she died a few years ago.”

Pauw retired from journalism at the end of 2014, but followed the news with keen interest. “A retired journalist is like a rehabilitated drug addict,” he said. “You never quite get over it – there’s always something of it in you. I was very happily cooking in Riebeek-Kasteel when in December 2016 I received a call from someone I used to know when I was still a journalist. He said he had information for me.”

Although Pauw protested, saying he was out of the game, his interest was piqued when his contact said it concerned corruption in the State Security Agency, a very secret organisation. “He said, ‘I’ve got documents detailing corruption amounting to about R1 billion. And the person who did the investigation will talk to you.’ And so, the seeds for The President’s Keepers were planted – and, in the four months since the book’s launch, the country has undergone fascinating change.

Still, the corruption that Pauw uncovered for the book was staggering. “As we stand here today, the SA Revenue Service (SARS) doesn’t have an investigative capacity, which must make it the only revenue service in the world that doesn’t have the capacity to investigate the ‘informal’ economy,” said Pauw. “Within the first year of SARS head Tom Moyane’s leadership, 56 senior managers left. This institution has to be rebuilt.”

Crime intelligence has a huge budget and a lucrative secret fund of about R700 million a year, Pauw continued. “Since 2010 this fund has been looted by crime intelligence officers as this isn’t audited by the Auditor-General. The head of crime intelligence, Richard Mdluli, was suspended because of his complicity in this looting… He’s turning 60 soon and he’s retiring with full benefits. Crime intelligence means nothing – if it’s ever been safe to be a criminal in this country, it’s now.”

And, at the National Prosecuting Authority, people like Glynnis Breytenbach, who tried to prosecute Mdluli for fraud, are simply worked out of there, said Pauw. The same thing happened at the Hawks, with its KwaZulu-Natal head Major General Johan Booysen having been suspended after he investigated Zuma cronies in Durban. “The head of the Hawks when Zuma came to power was Anwa Dramat, a very credible man who was worked out of the police when he authorised the investigation into Mdluli.”

As we know, the newly elected President Cyril Ramaphosa has quite a task ahead of him. “When Ramaphosa became president, he inherited a hollowed-out law enforcement cluster,” said Pauw. “I’ve always said that the secret to Ramaphosa’s success is going to be his ability to bring back those officials who were worked out. There’s no time to train people. He needs to get people back and they’ve all been approached. If he can get these people back, we might see some justice at least.”

Saying he’s being asked a lot about Ramaphosa, Pauw painted a largely positive picture. “There is lots of optimism around the country at the moment, justifiably so,” he said. “Look at his track record, where he came from, the fact that he was Nelson Mandela’s chosen person to become president. He’s very skilled and clever and he has enough money so he doesn’t need to steal any!”

Yet Pauw cautioned against complacency. “Ramaphosa also comes with his baggage. Never forget that he was appointed deputy president in May 2014 and for three and a half years, he held Zuma’s hand and praised him in Parliament for his leadership.

“While he was sitting there, he knew the corruption that was going on and he did very little. Of course, his supporters will argue that if he wasn’t in the Cabinet, he wouldn’t have been able to become ANC president; he had to do it from the inside and get the support he needed. Let’s hope that’s true.”

Pauw thinks that Ramaphosa’s role in the Marikana massacre has been greatly exaggerated. “There’s so much about him we don’t know, though. His State of the Nation Address was wide and, on some points, very non-committal. Every president around the world promises jobs, but how is he going to create jobs and how is he going to get us out of junk status? All of that, he has to spell out.

“After I launched The President’s Keepers, I said that under Zuma, there were really only three pillars that separated South Africa from becoming a mafia state,” said Pauw. “The one is the courts, which have been doing a superb job. Then the media, specifically investigative journalists, have really stood up. And the third pillar is civil society, people like me and you. We’ve played an incredible role in the past two years: organisations have gone to court, organised marches and so on. It’s not always easy for people to speak out against their own. It was painful for ANC members to go against Zuma.”

Wrapping up, Pauw suggested cautious optimisim. “I think all we can hope for is that we’ve been through a very hard learning curve. We sometimes elect the wrong leaders in a democracy and you sit with them for years.

“If you look back, it’s incredible that the ANC could have elected a man like Zuma as president. It’s very much up to civil society to march, to speak up, to write letters to newspapers if they aren’t happy with their leaders. I think South Africans have an incredible ability to stand up and do the right thing. Let’s not suddenly sit back and let Ramaphosa have his own way. Don’t trust politicians!”