Illustration by Ellen Heydenrych
We need to build the momentum for a newly invigorated South Africa. Achieving this is not just about having the ‘the right person at the top’, although obviously this is an important success factor. It is rather about embedding a change agenda in a diverse range of interest groups – political formations, the state, trade unions, civil society, business, and every invested citizen. This societal mobilisation is vital to combat those hell-bent on destroying our country.
— Mcebisi Jonas
Chapter 1

Defeating State Capture

The Centre for Change was born out of an imperative to defeat state capture, but that was only the beginning. In October 2015, the Gupta brothers - the architects of State Capture in South Africa — offered Mcebisi Jonas the position of minister of finance in exchange for R600 million. At the time he was deputy minister of finance...

Read More
Chapter 2

Makhenkesi Stofile dies

On 15 August 2016, African National Congress (ANC) senior leader Makhenkesi Stofile died. His death marked another tipping point in the fight against State capture. Stofile was deeply concerned about the degradation of South Africa’s democracy and had been sounding alarm bells for some time...

Read More
Chapter 3

The Public Protector investigates

Following Jonas’s public statement about the Gupta’s attempt to bribe him, three South African citizens formally requested the then Public Protector, Thuli Madonsela, to investigate whether the South African state had been captured by private interests. Jonas’s public statement was the basis for these complaints and he was therefore the key witness in this investigation...

Read More
Chapter 4

Jonas is Fired as Deputy Minister of Finance

Jonas’s refusal to march to Gupta’s beat ultimately led to his dismissal from Cabinet in March 2017, together with his friend and Minister of Finance Pravin Gordhan, by President Jacob Zuma. Zuma was the Gupta’s political cut-out. Their dismissal immediately wiped nearly R1-trillion rand off the markets and the images...

Read More
I think South Africans have a responsibility. I keep making this point –
connect the dots and ask: ‘what is the political moment in the country?’ If we are not doing that, I can tell you now by the time disaster hits the country, we will be accused of having lived with our eyes wide shut while political decay is deepening.
— Mcebisi Jonas
Chapter 5

Betrayal of the Promise: How South Africa is Being Stolen

In March 2017 Professor Mark Swilling of Stellenbosch University was on a flight from Johannesburg from Cape Town. He was in an aisle seat and Jonas, then the deputy minister of finance, was in the aisle seat on the opposite side. They had last worked together in the early 1990s when Jonas was active in the Eastern Cape...

Read More
Chapter 6

South African Council of Churches galvanise

During the Betrayal of the Promise project, Jonas and Bishop Malusi Mpumlwana, the General-Secretary of the South African Council of Churches (SACC) and a senior struggle activist (along with Steve Biko, he and his wife Thoko Mpumlwana were founding activists of the anti-apartheid Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa), came together to broaden the front against state capture...

Read More
Chapter 7

#UniteBehind People’s March

On 7 August 2017, the #UniteBehind coalition, a group of 20 community, activist and faith-based movements, organised a protest march in Cape Town to the Parliamentary buildings the day before a crucial vote of no-confidence in President Zuma was due to be held. The march was a call on Members of Parliament (MPs) to recall the president and for all MPs to vote according to their constitutional obligations, rather than along political party lines...

Read More
Chapter 8

Centre for Change is formed

In November 2017 Jonas formed the Centre for Change (CFC) in response to his belief that the state capture period had thrust the country into a transition. He believed that this left two choices: first choice was a future where our democracy would fall victim to power-seekers who would misuse our institutions to enrich a few at the expense of many...

Read More
Chapter 9

Shining the light, Joining the Dots

The election of President Cyril Ramaphosa in December 2017 was a victory, and progressive South Africans breathed a well-deserved collective sigh of relief. But the President was almost immediately burdened with the insurmountable expectations attached to ‘Ramaphoria’. When, after 100 days in office, he had not delivered the impossible, newspaper headlines screamed ‘From Dawn to Dust...

Read More
Chapter 10

Zondo Commission

In August 2018, the chain of events catalysed by Jonas’s public statement about the Gupta’s bribe offer culminated in the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture, also known as the Zondo Commission. President Cyril Ramaphosa launched the Zondo Commission to "investigate allegations of State Capture, Corruption, Fraud and other allegations in the Public Sector …" in South Africa...

Read More
Chapter 11

After Dawn

In 2019, in response to his deep concerns about the state of South Africa, Jonas decided to write a book to record his observations and to propose solutions. He had considered writing a book for some time about the current political and economic moment in South Africa, but he wanted to be absolutely sure that what he wrote would be relevant and useful to the national debate on how to progress our young democracy.

Read More
What we do
Solutions
AboutContact
© Copyright Centre for Change 2017-2020