Mbeki's Claims of Deliberate Sabotage of SARS and Eskom

Summary

In a speech, Thabo Mbeki argues that SARS and Eskom's crises, the ANC's 2024 vote collapse and the July 2021 unrest were all deliberately engineered by a counter-revolution, not accidents or spontaneous anger.

What it argues

1. 2024 election and security systemPolitics

   Mbeki says the ANC's 2024 decline and MK Party's gains came from activating a national security management system. He says this system was never dismantled after apartheid, and the TRC tried but failed to resolve the matter. Mbeki attributes the ANC's electoral collapse to a hidden, still-active state security apparatus.

2. IFP hostels switch to MKPolitics

   Mbeki says former IFP hostels, once violent rivals of ANC communities, backed the MK Party in 2024. He says the same person controls the hostels now as controlled them under the IFP, calling this proof of counter-revolution. Mbeki presents the hostels' switch as evidence of a single hidden controller, not genuine political change.

3. July 2021 unrest as testPolitics

   Mbeki rejects the common account that anger over Jacob Zuma's jailing drove the July 2021 unrest, calling it 'a lie, a complete lie'. He says the counter-revolution staged the unrest to test whether it could destabilise the country. He cites General Roland Defris as saying the operation was well planned and showed the state had no capacity to defend itself. Mbeki frames the 2021 unrest as a deliberate dry run for destabilisation, not spontaneous solidarity with Zuma.

4. SARS destructionEconomics

   Mbeki says SARS regularly exceeded its annual revenue targets before its performance reversed around 2014-2016. He says there was no looting; the objective was to destroy SARS so the ANC government could not govern. He cites the Nugent Commission report as calling this destruction a deliberate decision with documented steps. Mbeki casts SARS's decline as a deliberate sabotage of state capacity, backed by the Nugent Commission's findings.

5. Eskom coal shortageEconomics

   Mbeki says Eskom's internal monitoring flagged power stations running low on coal from November 2007, but managers deliberately did not replenish stocks. This caused the January 2008 blackouts and, under Eskom's own emergency rules, doubled coal prices overnight. He says he apologised for the blackouts in February 2008 without knowing this, and the truth emerged years later from a Special Investigation Unit. Mbeki says the 2008 power crisis was deliberately engineered internally, not a genuine supply failure.

Open questions

• The date and occasion of the speech are not given.
• The claims rest on the Nugent Commission report, an SIU finding, TRC records and a Defris interview, none of which are included.
• The transcript is machine-generated and partly unintelligible, so exact wording is uncertain.
• No response from the ANC, MK Party, Eskom or SARS is included.