South Africa is being ruled by a ‘bunch of thieves’ and, as a consequence, the country is being ‘throttled by corruption’, according to ANC veteran Mathews Phosa.
He said politicians were ‘stealing like hell from taxpayers’, News24 reports.
Phosa was speaking at the Nedbank Top Empowerment Conference in Johannesburg on Wednesday.
According to News24, he said that not only were African leaders stealing from the people, but they were also handing over the continent’s wealth and assets like mines to foreign companies. Colonisation has been replaced by ‘theft at a state level’.
‘We steal like hell from taxpayers. Our country is throttled by corruption. There are always unaccountable billions of rands at the municipal level. We are not accountable. We’ve got a bunch of thieves ruling us,’ he said.
Phosa singled out President Cyril Ramaphosa’s ‘indecision’ as a problem.
‘Our president is very indecisive. There’s consensus [on that] in the country. You cannot govern by commissions, committees….’
His criticism of the fact that a year after the report of the Zondo Commission into state capture no real action had been taken was echoed at the conference by Business Unity South Africa (BUSA) CEO Cas Coovadia.
Coovadia was quoted as saying: ‘The bottom line is that we have a weak government that is ideologically inclined and doesn’t understand the current situation we are in and the global context in which we work.’
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