Stalemate in SA Government on Chang extradition

A sharp dispute in SA among President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Ministers and advisers about which country to extradite former Mozambican Finance Minister Manuel Chang to is keeping him incarcerated in a South African prison more than 28 months after he was arrested at OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg, says a Daily Maverick report. Justice Minister Ronald Lamola is leading a ‘rule of law’ faction which wants Ramaphosa to send Chang to the US to face corruption and fraud charges brought by the US Justice Department about his complicity in an alleged scheme to siphon off millions of dollars from $2bn worth of loans in 2013 and 2014 to buy fishing trawlers and patrol boats for the Mozambican Government. Lamola’s recommendation that Chang be extradited to the US has been sitting on Ramaphosa’s desk for several months. But the reason he has not acted on it, official sources confirm, is the strenuous lobbying by another faction, which is close to Frelimo and believes that giving Chang up to the US would damage relations with the ANC’s fellow former liberation movement. This securocrat, pro-Frelimo faction, led by presidential security adviser Charles Nqakula and his wife, Defence Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, is urging Ramaphosa to send Chang back to Mozambique, the sources said. Nqakula is himself a former Defence and Safety & Security Minister, and has been South African High Commissioner to Mozambique. Chang was arrested at OR Tambo International Airport on 29 December 2018 en route to a holiday in Dubai, on an Interpol warrant brought by the US which exercised jurisdiction in the case because it alleged that US investors had been defrauded in the $2bn loan-for-ships scam.