Well, that was another pretty average weekend for Jacob Zuma, Cyril Ramaphosa, and the tattered remains of the ANC’s integrity.

The last one is a joke, because that integrity has long since disappeared.

Yesterday, the Sunday Times ran an explosive account of how the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi handed millions of dollars to Jacob Zuma for safekeeping.

Zuma then stored the money at his Nkandla residence, with the loot secretly moved to Swaziland earlier this year.

We’re talking big money here, folks:

Ramaphosa last month flew with two ministers to Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) where he asked King Mswati about the money. In that meeting, the king denied knowledge of the stash.

However, on Thursday last week, Ramaphosa and Mswati met again at OR Tambo International Airport where the king confirmed the existence of the fortune, estimated to be $30m (about R422m) in cash.

King Mswati III is worth around R2,8 billion, so I’m sure he can find somewhere to stash the cash.

The allegations of Gaddafi’s cash at Nkandla aren’t new, but have only recently been confirmed. Suspicions swirled when then-Public Protector Thuli Madonsela was denied entry to an Nkandla bunker during an inspection in 2013, and it seems that’s where the money was hidden.

The cash pile is said to have been given to Zuma by the Libyan leader for safekeeping shortly before he was killed in October 2011…

Shortly before Gaddafi was killed, Zuma undertook a trip to Libya with then intelligence minister Siyabonga Cwele, top sources in the presidency, the government and intelligence structures said this week. The delegation offered the Libyan leader safe passage to SA as rebel forces closed in.

“Gaddafi refused to go. He said he will die in his own country. He gave them money and said, ‘Please use this if I’m captured and taken to the International Criminal Court, find a good lawyer for me’. He said, ‘If I’m killed, please give it to my family’,” said a well-placed insider who asked not to be named.

It is understood the cash was smuggled into SA and taken to Nkandla, where it was kept in an underground vault.

This is why we live in a gangster state, friends.

Over the first few months of this year, the money was moved to Eswatini in five separate tranches. Not that Jacob didn’t try and have his way with it, first:

“Zuma told Mswati that they were coming after him. He is scared he is going to be arrested and he said that he needs the money because CR [Ramaphosa] does not want to pay for his legal fees,” the source added.

The insider said because the money was a large amount of cash in foreign currency, it needed to be “cleaned”.

“They tried cleaning the money through the Jacob Zuma Foundation but that was not successful so then they became desperate because it’s a large amount,” he said.

This is all completely and utterly bonkers.

So the cash has now been shifted to Eswatini, although things didn’t go exactly according to plan once the complete amount had arrived:

The money was said to have been transported out of King Shaka airport in Durban bound for Eswatini, where it was to be stored by the Central Bank of Eswatini.

But highly placed sources in the country said the bank’s governor, Majozi Sithole, refused to deposit the cash pile. Sorting out the cash was left to deputy governor Mhlabuhlangene Dlamini, who is related to the king.

“The deputy governor is involved. He is the one who went with JZ [Zuma] to go and count the money. He took some people at the bank, they apparently flew to King Shaka airport, counted the money and brought it back. Majozi is refusing to put the cash into the system,” said an insider with links to both the royal household and the bank.

I think we’ve encountered our first person with a shred of moral fibre in this story.

Again, just remember that Zuma offered murderous dictator Gaddafi asylum in South Africa, and when he refused, he took his money back to South Africa and tucked it away in an underground vault.

It’s all kind of surreal, isn’t it?

Will we see anyone held accountable for this? Cyril Ramaphosa loves to talk about how the NPA is now an organisation with teeth, as opposed to when the Zuma / Shaun Abrahams double act rendered them useless, but who’s going to lay down the law here?

I guess now we wait.

[source:timeslive]