South Africa: Electoral Commissioner Arrested for Decade-Old Charity Fraud - Not for Blowing the Whistle On 'Vote-Rigging' in South Africa's 2024 Elections

9 July 2024
Africa Check (Johannesburg)
By Mary Alexander

Electoral commissioner arrested for decade-old charity fraud - not for blowing the whistle on 'vote-rigging' in South Africa's 2024 elections

IN SHORT: The Independent Electoral Commission's Nomsa Masuku was arrested on fraud charges in June 2024, just weeks after the country's general election. But the claim that she was arrested because she was one of many IEC officials who blew the whistle on vote-rigging is false.

An Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) official who blew the whistle on vote rigging in South Africa's 29 May 2024 elections has been arrested. That's the claim circulating on social media since late June.

The election results were historic. The African National Congress (ANC) won just 40.2% of the national vote, losing its 30-year parliamentary majority. It was followed by the Democratic Alliance (DA) with 21.8% of the vote and the new uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MK Party), led by former president Jacob Zuma, with 14.6%.

With no outright winner, ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa invited the DA and other parties to form a government of national unity (GNU), which was last seen in South Africa between 1994 and 1997. The DA accepted but the MK Party, which had challenged the election results in court, declined. The GNU cabinet of ministers was sworn in on 3 July 2024.

According to the viral claim, "senior IEC officials" confessed to being bribed by Ramaphosa and DA leader John Steenhuisen to rig the elections "in favour of the ANC 40% and the DA 20%" so that the DA could "sneak into" a government of national unity.

Africa Check has previously debunked the claim that the ANC and DA bribed IEC officials to rig the elections.

But the new claim adds:

Now one of many IEC whistleblowers gets arrested by the Hawks for an old case of where she used to worked from 2006-2011 at one of the commercial Banks whose Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) Partner was no other than Ramaphosa [...] to humiliate her. Why did the Hawks arrest her after 13 years and on whose instructions [...] After she has implicated Ramaphosa in Vote Rigging and Bribery[?]

The Hawks are the police's Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation.

The claim is attributed to the "uMkhonto weSizwe Khoisan Federation" and ends by reiterating the MK Party's court challenge to the results. The party withdrew its case on 3 July.

She's not named, but the claim refers to Nomsa Masuku. Masuku is one of the IEC's four commissioners and was arrested on 21 June, the day before the claim appeared online. One version includes a screengrab of a news report about her arrest.

Is there any evidence that Masuku was arrested because she's "one of many IEC whistleblowers" to election rigging?

R1.2 million theft from charity reported 10 years ago

Masuku's arrest - coming so soon after the elections and given her high position in the IEC - was widely reported on local news.

But the arrest was for well-documented fraud, allegedly committed when Masuku headed the Standard Bank's Adopt a School charity more than a decade ago.

Police said an "intensive probe" by Hawks investigators found that Masuku had "flouted the processes of the trust by awarding scholarships to friends and family members through manipulation of documents and without the approval of the committee, with some of the monies deposited directly into her personal bank account to the tune of R1.2 million".

A TimesLive report details the case against Masuku. One detail is that the matter was "initially flagged by Standard Bank and reported to police 10 years ago".

The case has nothing to do with South Africa's 2024 elections.

Ramaphosa was a director of the board of Standard Bank and several other companies, but resigned from these positions when he returned to politics in 2012.

The ANC's performance in the 2024 elections was its worst in 30 years. If Ramaphosa had bribed IEC officials to rig the polls - and then had a whistleblower arrested "to humiliate her" - his party would have "won" far more than just 40.2% of the vote.

But there's no evidence for any of this. The claim is false.

Read the original story, with links and other resources.
Africa Check is a non-partisan organisation which promotes accuracy in public debate and in the media. Twitter @AfricaCheck and www.africacheck.org

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