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ANC supporters in the Bloemfontein court: "Hands off Ace Magashule"
Photo: SIPHIWE SIBEKO / REUTERS
The police pulled up in a crew van on Friday morning and rolled out barbed wire in the streets around the Bloemfontein courthouse.
The crowd surmounts behind it: chants from the time of the struggle against apartheid, T-shirts in the colors of the African National Congress (ANC), and banners with the words "Hands off Ace Magashule".
A young man with Rasta braids shouts into the camera of the eNCA: "Anyone who arrests him, arrests the ANC."
They worship him, and Ace Magashule is accused.
He is the highest-ranking member of the ruling party to date for whom an arrest warrant has been issued for corruption.
61 years old, as Secretary General of the ANC, he is one of the most powerful men in the country.
He was imprisoned under the white regime, fought alongside Nelson Mandela against racial segregation - and has held important positions in the state and party for decades.
He is said to have made millions in a network of nepotism and abuse of power.
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ANC General Secretary Ace Magashule: He is accused of corrupt machinations
Photo: JAMES OATWAY / REUTERS
Is the ANC finally starting the fight against endemic corruption by indicting him?
"State capture" is what experts call the system that the ANC has imposed on South Africa: in it, "fat cats" like Magashule use their influence to enrich themselves and to pass government contracts on to friends and relatives.
The judiciary and the police are largely paralyzed.
President Cyril Ramaphosa had promised to clean up this proliferation when he took office two years ago.
But little has happened - at least so far.
State mandate for the son
One of the last big coups by Ace Magashule was the number with the corona protective suits: He pushed a multi-million dollar procurement order to one of his sons.
Other fathers would do the same for their children, he is supposed to have said.
But that's not why he's going to court now.
He is alleged to be involved in a corrupt scheme for an anti-asbestos program for 300,000 homes in the Free State province, where Magashule was head of government back in 2014.
Hardly anything of the order was implemented - but the equivalent of 12.5 million euros has disappeared.
"I haven't done anything wrong," he asserts.
On Friday morning Elias Sekgobelo Magashule faced the anti-corruption unit "Hawks".
Magashule owes his nickname "Ace" - "Ass" not to his political achievements, but to his football skills.
Born in 1959 in the Orange Free State, he proved this primarily as a student.
He founded a human rights organization at the University of Fort Hare.
The white rulers sentenced him to prison several times, he spent years in solitary confinement, the charge was high treason.
After the end of the apartheid regime, Magashule made a quick career in the ANC, which overnight turned from a fighting organization into a ruling party and has governed South Africa ever since.
There are quite a few biographies like his in South Africa: From hero to thief.
"I haven't done anything wrong."
Ace Magashule, ANC General Secretary
Today Magashule belongs to the parliamentary group around the former President Jacob Zuma.
Zuma ruled from 2009 to 2018 and earned an inglorious reputation as the godfather of ANC corruption.
Eighteen lawsuits are pending against him alone, and 700 cases of fraud are still being investigated.
Very own conception of redistribution
The amazing thing about it: The people around Zuma are hardly aware of any guilt.
You've come up with amazing justification strategies.
Tenor: Our historical merits are so great, we deserve it.
Those who contradict are dismissed as polluting the net, investigations and proceedings as intrigues of political competitors.
Politicians like Zuma and Magashule still succeed in portraying themselves as "leftists" within the ANC, who rebel against the "liberal" forces around Ramaphosa in the name of justice - but obviously they have their very own conception of redistribution: staring spellbound the land on the television pictures of luxury villas, which the authorities are increasingly digging.
In the garages there you will regularly find Porsche cars, Bentleys and, in October, even a Ferrari FF F151.
This is the prey of those crooks and businessmen who have formed a bad alliance with parts of the ANC.
Nowhere in the world is the gap between rich and poor as wide as in South Africa, as shown by the Gini coefficient, which measures inequality.
The country on the Cape achieved a record figure of almost 60 percent in 2018.
Unemployment is around 40 percent and around a fifth of South Africans live in absolute poverty.
The blacks are worst affected.
For their equality, the ANC was founded 108 years ago - in Bloemfontein, where Magashule is on trial.
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