The Ace Of Arts

On page 10 you Will find an extract from Pieter-Louis Myburgh’s new book: Gangster State – unravelling ANC Secretary General Ace Ma-gashule’s web of capture.

A must-read. That and similar exposés published over the past year, have persuaded me that to vote for the ANC in this election is to make yourself an accessory to crime – itself a crime.

Myburgh exposes mind-boggling misappropriation facilitated by Magashule of billions of rands intended for housing the poor – the same people the ANC now brazenly claims it will house if it is reelected.

But even “petty” theft apparently features on Magashule’s agenda: the South African Heritage Resources Agency is deeply concerned about how last year a painting by renowned artist J H Pierneef that belonged to the Free State Administration and for decades had pride of place in the Premier’s office, ended up being offered for auction to art auctioneers Strauss and company by ANC Secretary General Ace Magashule’s notorious bagman-bodyguard, Ricardo Mettler.

A similar painting was recently sold by the auctioneers for R20 million.

Mettler claimed that the painting “ended up” in a “pile of things” that Magashule wanted his bodyguard to “dispose of” when he was packing up to leave the Premier’s office in January last year to take up his new top post at ANC head office, Luthuli House in Johannesburg.

In March last year Mettler is said to have asked “a wealthy Chinese businessman” in Bloemfontein to arrange for the painting to be sold by art auctioneers Strauss & Co.