The Economic Freedom Fighters’ Floyd Shivambu recently allocated him a seat alongside the other Gupta puppets like Des van Rooyen and Brian Molefe. Hence it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Jimmy Manyi laid treason charges against Anglogold Ashanti’s chair Sipho Pityana. Pityana’s stakes rose after the late sports minister Makhenkesi Stofile’s funeral. Pityana literally skewered President Jacob Zuma, explaining why he is no longer “honourable” and why he should resign his office and depart forthwith. Pityana has since been joined by fellow gold miners, with Sibanye’s Neal Froneman joining the call. Manyi says Pityana is promoting anarchy, and one has to question if others who speak up will face the same fate? Helen Suzman Foundation’s legal researcher Piet Olivier explains in three simple steps why the trumped up charges against Pityana hold no merit. A must read as the walls close in. The article was first published on the Helen Suzman foundation website. – Stuart Lowman
By Piet Olivier*
Mzwanele Manyi, head of the Mzwanele Manyi Decolonisation Foundation, has laid treason charges against Sipho Pityana, ANC stalwart and chairperson of AngloGold Ashanti. According to Mr Manyi, Mr Pityana has been ‘promoting anarchy’ and ‘planting the seeds of regime change’. These are grave accusations. They are also patently ridiculous. Mr Pityana is not guilty of treason or any of the other crimes Mr Manyi has accused him of.
What has Mr Pityana done to attract these charges? Three things. First, at the funeral of Reverend Makhenkesi Stofile, Mr Pityana called for President Zuma to step down. He has since repeated this call. Secondly, he has pleaded with South Africans in general, and business in particular, to take action to get the President to step down. Finally, he has called on businesses to pull out of investor roadshows at which they claim that government is dealing with the country’s problems. This is because, according to Mr Pityana, government is not fulfilling ‘its side of the bargain’ and is led by a person who has ‘no integrity’.
Piet Olivier, legal researcher, Helen Suzman Foundation.
Mr Manyi claims that this is treason. He also claims that it violates ‘several clauses’ of the Protection of Constitutional Democracy against Terrorist and Related Activities Act (let’s call it the Terrorism Act) because it is ‘economic terrorism’. Why do Mr Pityana’s actions amount to these crimes? First, because he is ‘mobilising business’ to ‘basically remove the state … to do a regime change by means that are unconstitutional’. Secondly, because what he is doing ‘can result in both local and international business disinvesting from South Africa and therefore plunging the Rand and also ensuring that we get a junk status’.
Much of this is hyperbole. Mr Pityana is not advocating an unconstitutional ‘regime change’. The law permits Mr Zuma to step down. And when he calls on South Africans to put pressure on the President to resign, he has emphasised that this be done ‘within the framework of the law and the Constitution’.
So, given all of this, has Mr Pityana committed a crime? Definitely not.
First, let’s look at treason. For this charge to stick, Mr Pityana must have acted with the intention to overthrow the government or to change its constitutional structure, both through unlawful means. Mr Pityana clearly has not done this. For the President to step down is perfectly lawful. As is putting pressure on him to resign. And business is not required to participate in investor roadshows.
Treason is fighting for the enemy in wartime, or taking part in an armed revolt, or planning an unlawful secession, or plotting the President’s assassination. It is not criticising the government of the day. In Mr Manyi’s universe, a vote of no confidence is treasonous, and Musi Maimane commits several acts of treason before breakfast. We do not live in such a universe.
What about ‘economic terrorism’? The Terrorism Act was passed in 2005 to, unsurprisingly, combat terrorism. Most of the Act deals with what one would conventionally understand terrorism to be – the use of violence for an ideological purpose, planting a bomb, hijacking a plane, taking hostages and so on. Unless there is something very wrong with AngloGold Ashanti’s vetting process, Mr Pityana is not doing any of these things.
However, under section 1(1)(xxv)(a)(vii) of the Act, terrorism includes any act which ‘causes any major economic loss or extensive destabilisation of an economic system or substantial devastation of the national economy of a country’. This might be the ‘economic terrorism’ Mr Manyi is referring to. So is Mr Pityana an ‘economic terrorist’? No.
So, Mzwanele Manyi intends laying a charge of "terrorism" against Sipho Pityana. Isn't it a crime to waste the police's time?
— John Webb (@journojohn) September 14, 2016