Urgent, urgent, urgent road to nowhere
The judicial commission of inquiry into state capture is seemingly urgent for everyone except President Jacob Zuma. State capture, like many other potential criminal or corrupt practices involving the state, is in danger of being swept under the carpet. It will be another arms deal, discussed for years, but without any real resolution and no perpetrators brought to book.
Yes, Zuma paid back the money on Nkandla, but where is the case against his architect or any other official accused of inflating prices? Former crime-intelligence boss Richard Mdluli is still running around on his sixth year of paid suspension. Zuma’s ANC is indeed, as former Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi famously said, one of Absolutely No Consequences.
It is an indictment on both our criminal justice system and our politics. Especially our politicians. Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa told Parliament on Wednesday that setting up the commission was “urgent”. It was also “urgent” when he addressed Parliament in June. And at the South African Communist Party’s national congress in July, he called for a “speedy probe” into state capture.
Ramaphosa has also told Parliament that the country and the Constitution were more important than the party. But the conduct of his party and his government tell an entirely different story.
At its national executive committee (NEC) meeting in May, the ANC supported a commission of inquiry into state capture, saying it should be set up “urgently”. The media were told the decision came at the prompting of Zuma himself. Journalists were also told the decision was separate from the recommendation in former public protector Thuli Madonsela’s report on state capture released in October 2016 — that the commission the ANC had agreed on could, in fact, be broader than that Madonsela envisioned.
In her report, State of Capture, she recommended the setting up of a judicial commission of inquiry, with the judge to be selected by Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng. Zuma is challenging this recommendation in court, arguing that only he is constitutionally allowed to appoint a judge to preside over such a commission.
Zuma backers argue that the delay in setting up the commission is a result of the president awaiting the outcome of the review process, a position entirely at odds with what the ANC announced at its post-NEC media briefing in May.
The governing party cannot be taken at its word because its president is a law unto himself. And his administration is following suit. Take the South African Revenue Service; its second in charge, Jonas Makwakwa, will have been suspended for a year come September after disclosures of suspicious and irregular transactions flowing into his bank accounts and that of his girlfriend, who also worked at the tax agency.
Then there is Mineral Resources Minister Mosebenzi Zwane, who announced a far-reaching banking probe as a cabinet decision, when in fact it was not. Zuma at the time said Zwane had been “reprimanded”. Think back to the Nkandla scandal, when Zuma’s “reprimand” was a letter sent to certain ministers telling them to consider themselves reprimanded.
The high court judgment on the Cabinet’s intervention in the relationship between banks and their clients was a further indictment of Zwane. It made it clear that “there is no statute that empowers a member of the national executive to intervene in a private bank-client dispute. Neither does the Constitution confer such powers.”
Even more worrying than Zwane’s fake statements is that the entire Cabinet agreed to an interministerial task team to look into the relationship between the banks and the Gupta family, who are now selling assets rapidly to overcome their banking woes. The family became more audacious in Zuma’s second term at the helm of the ANC and SA — this was after he had the security cluster and its agencies firmly under his thumb.
The Hawks, crime intelligence, the National Prosecuting Authority and even the South African Revenue Service are firmly under his heel, which is why justice in the state-capture matter remains so elusive.
Even Parliament’s paltry attempts at accountability are falling flat. But even if they did not, Faith Muthambi remains minister of a key portfolio despite Parliament’s ad hoc committee on the SABC recommending that she be investigated for misleading the committee. She also faces no censure for sending confidential cabinet documents to the Guptas.
The Guptas are now selling off their assets and the ANC’s call for a judicial inquiry into state capture has amounted to nothing. But this brings the ANC full circle.
Secretary-general Gwede Mantashe also sought to probe state capture after former deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas accused the Guptas of offering him the post of finance minister, but insiders say his inability to provide “political protection” killed that initiative. Incredible, when churches and academics have produced detailed reports on state capture.
The big scandal of the ANC’s second decade in office looks set to go unpunished, just like the one that plagued the first.
THE GUPTAS BECAME MORE AUDACIOUS IN ZUMA’S SECOND TERM — AFTER HE HAD THE SECURITY CLUSTER AND ITS AGENCIES FIRMLY UNDER HIS THUMB