LET SENSE PREVAIL: LOBBYING AND CORRUPTION ARE NOT THE SAME

Do not even try to suggest synonymity.

On the matter now threatened between ActionSA’s Michael Beaumont and Tony Leon’s private company Resolve Communications, lobbying has suddenly been sprung up to be mistakenly interchangeable by the untutored to mean the same thing as corruption. The two are expediently now cast as neck to neck in the race for meaning.

The seeming failure to make the difference, to decide the winner out of the claimed grey ambiguity zone, is said to be legislative vacuum. The sophistry does not hold. The invited confusion should not be honoured.

The sky is blue for clouds to be blamed to invite lack clarity on the matter.

This follows outgone DA leader John Steenhuisen’s interview with News24 editor Adriaan Basson.

In the interview Steenhuisen claimed his exit from the post of DA leader and Agriculture Minister in the ‘government of national unity’ (‘GNU’) has former leader Tony Leon’s fingerprints all over it.

Entering the fray, ActionSA chair Michael Beaumont threw straight punches.

Beaumont has dared Leon: if he holds otherwise, bring it on. He awaits the papers to have the matter resolved in open court.

At the centre of it all is public policy being inundated to bend a knee and be favourably inclined to Elon Musk’s Starlink entrance to the South African telecommunications market — without compliance to standing regulatory requirements applicable to all players in the field Musk included.

In his rebuttal, in his capacity as head of Resolve Communications, to whom Starlink is one of the clients, Tony Leon’s counter is that the conduct of his private business fits the definition of lobbying, not alleged corruption.

There is a point not to be forgotten. Communications Minister Solly Malatsi was made to retreat on proposed changes to legislation deemed to be more in line with Starlink’s wishes to enter SA than was coincidental.

This was immediately after President Cyril Ramaphosa’s state visit to the United States on 21 May 2025, meeting in the Oval Office with US counterpart Donald Trump.

Also present on Trump’s side: Musk, and golfers Retief Goosen and Ernie Els.
On Ramaphosa’s side: Trade and Industry Minister Parks Tau, International Relations and Cooperation Minister Ronald Lamola, Intelligence Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, and Steenhuisen.

Steenhuisen says his refusal to lend weight to false claims of a ‘white genocide’ led to him receiving calls branding him a sellout. That, according to Steenhuisen, set things in motion for his removal as Agriculture Minister by current DA leader Geordin Hill-Lewis from Ramaphosa’s ‘GNU’ cabinet.

In the interview with Basson, Steenhuisen said pressure piled on Malatsi in favour of Starlink was escalated to him as DA leader, and he found that inappropriate.

Steenhuisen attributed his failure to play ball, and the piled-up pressure, as the cause behind his removal as DA leader and Minister of Agriculture in the GNU headed by President Cyril Ramaphosa.

Curiously now, a thin line between LOBBYING and CORRUPTION is emboldened and advanced as a STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM.

Lobbying is NOT synonymous with corruption.

Open advocacy arguably for public good, from public power — elected representatives— to benefit communal interests, fits the category of lobbying.

Private soliciting of support from public power — elected public representatives— on behalf of a private business entity for private gain, inescapably walks the path of corruption and must be treated as such.

The nation’s IQ should not be made a plaything of hopeless spinning angels to dizzy the unsuspecting public out of the sense of making the difference. ‎