Gigaba denies role in tenders awarded to Guptas

Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba defended his performance as the former minister of public enterprises on Tuesday, denying that he had wilfully facilitated state capture.

He repeatedly emphasised under questioning by MPs that he had not been involved in the awarding of contracts by stateowned enterprises (SOEs) as this was the responsibility of the board of directors as the accounting authority.

DA public enterprises spokeswoman Natasha Mazzone was adamant that the repeated awarding of major contracts to the Gupta family by SOEs should have raised a red flag for Gigaba and that he must have known that state capture was under way.

“Ministers must not get involved in tenders. They must stay away,” Gigaba said during the parliamentary inquiry into the state capture of SOEs.

He was required to answer to allegations that he had aided and abetted state capture through his appointment of Gupta-linked individuals to the boards of SOEs when he was minister of public enterprises between November 2010 and May 2014.

The appointment of Guptaassociated Iqbal Sharma to the board of Transnet was the most glaring example of such an appointment, but Gigaba insisted Sharma was appointed purely on the basis of his skills. As the chairman of the Transnet board acquisition and disposal committee, Sharma is alleged to have played a crucial role in the state capture of Transnet.

Gupta-linked Tequesta earned an advisory fee of about R5.3bn from the R52bn deal Transnet signed with China South Rail for the acquisition of 1,064 locomotives. Sharma denies the allegations.

Gigaba said it was “disheartening” to witness that some of the appointments he had made were now being impugned, whereas at the time they were hailed as being positive.

“I made decisions to ensure good governance and I appointed people who I viewed as competent to fulfil some very important roles in the stateowned companies. I am severely disappointed that those roles appear to have, in certain instances, been abused.

“I regret any role that I inadvertently played in the appointment of any director who subsequently failed to prioritise the interests of the relevant stateowned company and, more importantly, this country. At the time I acted on the facts available and made what I thought were meritorious appointments.”

The Eskom board was replaced as the majority of directors had served for longer than nine years and needed to be rotated in the interests of good corporate

governance. Gigaba told MPs that he had been concerned about the sponsorships Transnet and Eskom gave between 2011 and 2013 to the business breakfasts organised by the New Age newspaper, owned at the time by the Guptas.

Eskom paid R17.5m for 18 breakfasts and Transnet R7.2m for six breakfasts that were covered by the SABC and addressed by government ministers. “I felt it was inappropriate that such large sums of money were being spent on breakfast sponsorships, especially in the midst of such large-scale build projects that were being undertaken,” Gigaba said. His powers were limited, however, as such decisions were the responsibility of the boards.

“I issued instructions to the chairs of the state-owned companies that all such sponsorship requests and requests for information [about the state-owned companies] must be routed through the department [of public enterprises] in the future.”

In 2013, then public protector Thuli Madonsela initiated an investigation into alleged fruitless and wasteful expenditure by Eskom, Transnet, the SABC and Telkom. She also probed the allegation that the department had exercised undue influence on these companies in deciding to sponsor the breakfasts.