April 2011 - Centre for Civil Society - University of KwaZulu-Natal

may be decisive. Often suggested as a candidate for the top job at the
Bank or IMF, Manuel recently confirmed anger at the way local politics
evolved after Zuma booted Mbeki from the SA presidency.
In an open public letter last month, for example, Manuel told Zuma’s main
spokesperson, Jimmy Manyi, “your behaviour is of the worst-order racist”
after a (year-old) incident in which Manyi, then lead labour department
official, claimed there were too many coloured workers in the Western
Cape in relation to other parts of SA. Manyi had earlier offered a halfbaked
apology, but suffered no punishment. Once a political titan, Manuel
now appears as has-been gadfly.
His disillusionment apparently began in December 2007, just prior to
Mbeki’s defeat in the African National Congress (ANC) leadership election.
After his finance ministry job was threatened by Zuma assistant Mo Shaik’s
offhanded comments, Manuel penned another enraged open letter: “Your
conduct is certainly not something in the tradition of the ANC… You have
no right to turn this organisation into something that serves your ego.” In
May 2009 Shaik, whose brother Schabir was convicted of corrupting Zuma
during the infamous $6 billion arms deal, was made director of the SA
intelligence service. Manuel was downgraded to a resource-scarce, dolittle
planning ministry.
It is easy to sympathize with Manuel’s frustrating struggle against
ethnicism and cronyism, especially after his opponents’ apparent victories.
However, former ANC member of parliament Andrew Feinstein records
that the finance minister knew of arms-deal bribes solicited by the late
defense minister Joe Modise. In court, Feinstein testified (without
challenge) that in late 2000, Manuel surreptitiously advised him over
lunch, “It’s possible there was some shit in the deal. But if there was, no
one will ever uncover it. They’re not that stupid. Just let it lie.” Remarked
Terry Crawford-Browne of Economists Allied for Arms Reduction, “By
actively blocking thorough investigation of bribery payments, Manuel
facilitated such crimes.”
Nevertheless, the myth of Manuel’s financial wizardry and integrity
continues, in part thanks to a 600-page puff-piece biography, Choice not
Fate (Penguin, 2008) by his former spokesperson Pippa Green (subsidized
by BHP Billiton, Anglo American, Total oil and Rand Merchant Bank). And
after all, recent politico-moral and economic scandals by World Bank
presidents Robert Zoellick and Paul Wolfowitz (whom in 2005 Manuel
welcomed to the job as “a wonderful individual . . . perfectly capable”)
confirm that global elites are already scraping the bottom of the financial
leadership barrel.
Yet it is still tragic that as host to 2011’s world climate summit, South
Africa leads (non-petroleum countries) in carbon emissions/GDP/capita,
twenty times higher than even the US. Even more tragic: Manuel’s final
budget countenanced more than $100 billion for additional coal-fired and
nuclear power plants in coming years.
In sum, Manuel’s leadership of the Green Climate Fund adds a new
quantum of global-scale risk. His long history of collaboration with
Washington-London raises prospects for “default” by the industrialized
North on payment of climate debt to the impoverished South. Indeed, if
Pretoria’s main man link to the Bretton Woods Institutions, Manuel, cochairs
the fund and gives the Bank more influence, then expect new forms
of subprime financing and blunt neoliberal economic weapons potentially
fatal to climate change mitigation and adaptation.