Anton Alberts – praag.org

SA government pension fund to bail out left-wing media group?

After plundering South Africa’s state-owned companies to the point of bankruptcy, the ANC-Communist Party regime is increasingly turning its attention to the country’s Government Employee Pension Fund as a source of funds. The latest suspicious transaction involves Iqbal Survé, CEO of the Independent Media Group.

Survé plans to list a new media group, Sagarmatha Technologies, which mainly belongs to his family trust.

According to Anton Alberts, an MP of the Freedom Front Plus, the tiny Afrikaner opposition party in the South African parliament, the GEPF is already implicated in Iqbal’s Survés finances.

“Through the Public Investment Corporation (PIC) that manages the pension fund, the GEPF already holds a 25% share in Independent Media,” Alberts said in a statement. “According to media reports in Business Day, Independent Media finds itself in a financial crisis and it is hoped that selling Sagarmatha Technologies shares, after the company is listed on the JSE on Friday, will save Independent Media. It seems as if the plan is to incorporate Independent Media into Sagarmatha Technologies so that the newly-listed company can fund the sinking company.”

Independent Media is one of the mainstream media companies controlling The Star and Cape Argus newspapers, as well as the Independent Online (IOL) website. It regularly publishes anti-white tirades by black columnists as well as anti-Afrikaner propaganda by “Janet Smith” who purports to be a British journalist.

Advocate Alberts is of the opinion that “there is a problem with the listing of Sagarmatha Technologies because, according to reports, the company is technically insolvent and first needs to find private funding before it will be able to comply with the Financial Markets Act. The company must prove that it is capitalised with at least R500 million (about $40 million) and chances are that the PIC was once again approached to invest in yet another Iqbal Survé venture.”

For this reason, the FF Plus yesterday addressed a letter to Mr Deon Botha, the head of corporate affairs at the PIC, asking whether the PIC will indeed buy the said shares. As yet, no response has been received.

“If the PIC is indeed planning on buying Sagarmatha Technologies shares, the FF Plus will advise the GEPF pensioners to immediately obtain an interdict against the transaction,” said Alberts.

The FF Plus MP also gave other examples of how public servants’ pension money was had been misused for suspicious transactions over the last few years. The fund, with assets of R1,87 trillion, is the biggest investor in the country’s economy, which makes it an attractive target for exploitation.

Such examples of financial abuse are:

February 2018: The PIC lends R5 billion to Eskom in the form of bridging finance.
March 2018: The Reserve Bank places VBS Mutual Bank under curatorship. The PIC holds approximately a 30% share in VBS. It is also widely known that VBS gave former President Jacob Zuma a loan of R8 million to cover his Nkandla debt. The FF Plus is of the opinion that the PIC’s acquiring of shares in VBS was not purely motivated by business considerations.
The PIC had an enormous investment in Steinhoff and in December last year, the misgiving that the GEPF could suffer a loss of up to R12 billion with this investment was voiced.
In 2015, the PIC saved Lonmin from ruin by acquiring a further 25% of the platinum producer, on top of its existing shares, through the struggling platinum producer’s rights issue. The investment amount was R1,9 billion. What is important to note, however, is that this was after Lonmin’s share price decreased with 80% in the previous year – from R35 to a mere R3. In terms of market value, it decreased from R29 billion to R3,5 billion in a single year, so this was no more than a blatant bail out.
In 2014, there were reports that the PIC invested nearly R3 billion in an oil company, Camac Energy, which was basically bankrupt. According to the reports, Mr Kase Lawal, an American of Nigerian descent and acquaintance of former President Jacob Zuma, was head of the company. There were no further reports and it is not clear whether the company still exists.
In 2016, there was great dissatisfaction when an economic development plan for Tshwane/Pretoria, with money coming from the PIC, was adopted and it was announced that “only black people” would benefit from it.

In the light of the many examples of poor investment decisions prompted by political intervention, Alberts stated that “it is clear that many of the PIC’s transaction were not driven by healthy business considerations”.

No suspects in SA Police hack attack

No suspects have been identified in connection with the hacking of the SA Police Service website last month, Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa revealed on Wednesday.

Mthethwa said the investigation was still underway and the level of threat to identified whistleblowers was not yet known.

The information was provided in an answer to a parliamentary question by Freedom Front Plus spokesman Anton Alberts.

Alberts asked the minister whether any steps had been taken to safeguard those whose identities were compromised.

Mthethwa replied: “Full implementation of steps will be finalised after the investigation and the threat assessment is completed.”

Alberts said it was concerning that these people appeared to not receive any protection by police.

He feared the hacking incident would be a set-back for crime-fighting because people with information would be too scared to come forward.

“This is negligence on a huge scale and shows the incompetence of the state’s information technology agency which manages the police’s website. The public’s confidence in the police will definitely be harmed by this.”

In May, a State Information Technology Agency (Sita) official said information posted by citizens alerting police about crime had been left on the police site by mistake.

“The data is collected on that public server. There was a little bit of an oversight, because it should have been removed afterwards,” said divisional head responsible for government solutions, Daniel Mashao.

“We increased the functionality [of the police website] to allow people to be able to report further information. When we did that we should have also decided to move it to the secure site.”

The hacker reportedly performed a data dump when complainants and whistle-blowers’ details were downloaded from the SA Police Service website’s e-mail server and uploaded onto another site.

Mashao said at the time that the information obtained by the hacker comprised about 15,000 lines.

“Most of the information was submitted anonymously. We are concerned because there is information [within the 15,000 lines] where people have given [their] further details to say ‘I know about such and such [a crime].”

Mthethwa re-iterated in his reply that nobody in the witness protection programme had been compromised in any way, contrary to media reports.

The hackers used social networking site Twitter to inform the public that the attack was in connection with the lack of arrests for the August 2012 shooting of 34 protesting mineworkers at Marikana mine in Rustenburg.

Public Service Minister Lindiwe Sisulu also answered questions submitted by Alberts.

He had asked her what security measures were in place at the time.

Sisulu replied that the website had a firewall and network intrusion protection, malware inspection and antivirus software.

It also had an inverse proxy, which took requests from the internet and forwarded them to servers in an internal network.

“Those making requests connect to the proxy and may not be aware of the internal network, and it helps to protect the internal network from intrusions,” Sisulu said.

The website application was developed in 2004/05 and there were no external contractors involved in its maintenance.

Sisulu said the increasing sophistication of cyber-criminals had resulted in a race to implement security measures ahead of attacks.

She said Sita had scanned its websites for vulnerabilities and a process had been underway since February this year to address these vulnerabilities.

“This is unfortunately a tedious process as it requires the redevelopment of large portions of the application.” – Sapa

South Africa in breach of its treaty obligations to minorities

by Anton Alberts

I refer to the column “Massacre reveals our deficit in human solidarity” (Business Day, September 18) by Aubrey Matshiqi.

In his introductory remark Mr Matshiqi attacks the Freedom Front Plus (FF Plus) for daring to propose a national department for minorities, to assist in protecting national minorities such as coloured, Indian and white communities.

While I enjoy reading Mr Matshiqi’s insights, this broadside from him is disconcerting.

First, it shows up his prejudices against minorities by making assumptions without actually researching the merits of the proposal, and without contacting the FF Plus to properly gauge the party’s position.

Second, it stifles debate about an important issue that can contribute tremendously towards social cohesion, which can go a long way to wiping out the country’s “deficit in human solidarity”.

The FF Plus is on record as saying that a department of minorities will be an appropriate institutional tool to safeguard the rights of the coloured, Indian and white communities.

We have members from all those communities who believe in the value of minority rights.

The very fact that President Jacob Zuma has stated in Parliament that only the majority has rights, and given the structural de facto economic discrimination against coloureds and Indians, and the de jure discrimination against whites, such a department is an imperative to bring about an equilibrium against the unfolding “tyranny of the majority”.

SA is in breach of its international obligations to give effect to minority rights as prescribed by the United Nations. This department can therefore go a long way to fulfilling that obligation and drawing minorities back into the mainstream that have been alienated by, amongst others, the likes of African National Congress apparatchiks such as Julius Malema and Jimmy Manyi.

Further to this, should pent-up minority expertise and capital be released as a result, one can only imagine the broader socioeconomic effects thereof. This can indeed be a case of win-win for everyone in SA. Therefore, this should become a national debate.

Anton Alberts is an MP for the Freedom Front Plus

Emphasis on affirmative action must shift to education

The Freedom Front has in reaction to research undertaken by the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR), which indicates that there is a correlation between the employment of an individual and the individual’s level of education, regardless of race, that there are an increasing amount of proof that affirmative action’s time has been served. According to the SAIRR research, 41% of black people have a degree and 36% of these people are employed in professional positions. Similarly, there were 45% white people with degrees and 42% of them are in professional positions. According to Adv. Anton Alberts, FF Plus parliamentary spokesperson in Labour, the research indicates that race no longer plays a role on a professional level and that the labour market offers opportunities to graduates, regardless of their race. That means that the emphasis has to shift away from affirmative action and should rather be placed on proper training. “In addition, South Africa has a serious shortage of skilled labour and it would be to the government’s advantage to rather fix the problems with the education system so that quality education can take place. The mere continued implementation of affirmative action on the other hand, denies the country effectiveness and optimal functioning of the economy. That is why the FF Plus will continue to oppose affirmative action,” Alberts explained.

“The rationale of affirmative action is busy falling away and any continued implementation will make it objectionable on the basis of the implementation of an irrational policy which is merely being maintained for the easy advantages which it disperses on the basis of race to a segment of the population. The ANC government should not be surprised if the policy in its entirety is eventually challenged in the Constitutional Court,” Alberts warned.