State capture probe to cost taxpayers a pretty penny
R580m — that is how much SA taxpayers have spent on inquiries into the Marikana massacre, free tertiary education and the arms deal, and will now spend on the commission into state capture.
Deputy chief justice Raymond Zondo stated in May that his investigation would cost R230m for the first six months of its existence, making it the most expensive inquiry in recent history. But, while these four major inquiries were and are intended to investigate some of SA’s most significant sources of socioeconomic and political crises, it is unclear if the millions spent on them have achieved any real outcomes.
Arguably one of the biggest criticisms of the effectiveness of commissions is that the executive is not obliged to act on their recommendations. They can consider them, but decide not to implement them.
Judge Willie Seriti’s fouryear-long inquiry into SA’s multibillion-rand arms deal cost R137m — and has been slammed as a whitewash.
That inquiry, which found no evidence of fraud or corruption in the arms deal, is being challenged by Corruption Watch
and the Right2Know campaign.
The nearly four-year-long inquiry into the Marikana massacre, which cost the state R157m — close to the nearly R160m settlement paid earlier this year to 134 claimants in the Life Esidimeni tragedy — has also had a limited outcome.
As yet, the state has to act on the report’s recommendations that the victims of the massacre should be compensated.
According to figures released by the department of justice to Business Day, the Heher inquiry into the feasibility of free tertiary education cost taxpayers R56m over nearly two years. Former president Jacob Zuma chose not to act on the Heher commission’s finding that there was no capacity for the state to provide free tertiary education to all students in the country. Instead, Zuma announced that the government would subsidise free higher education for poor and working-class students.
In addition to the Zondo, Farlam, Heher and Seriti inquiries, several other thorny issues have become the subject of inquiries, including tax governance and administration issues at the SA Revenue Service (Nugent inquiry) and political killings in KwaZulu-Natal (Moerane commission).
The costs of these inquiries have yet to be determined.
In a court application for the state-capture inquiry to be extended from six months to two years, Zondo revealed that he had difficulty in securing that money from the government and convincing officials from the Treasury, and the departments of justice and state security that his commission’s “funding and procurement processes could not simply follow the template for other commissions of inquiry”. This, he suggested, was because “it was very important to be able to ensure the confidentiality of many of the operations so that the integrity of its information would not be compromised in any way”.
It has been reported that the commission had budgeted a potential R10m for the installation of access control and security systems, including CCTV and X-ray scanners, at the commission’s new premises in Parktown, Johannesburg. But, it is unclear how Zondo’s concerns around security and confidentiality may have led to the apparent spike in the commission’s costs. Nor is it clear how the extension of the inquiry may affect its costs.
The commission of inquiry into state capture will be holding its first public hearings on August 20.
Meanwhile, it is expected that certain legal rights groups and opposition parties may challenge Zondo’s application for his inquiry to be extended.
The deputy chief justice obtained a temporary order granting that extension, but it will only be finalised if and when the high court in Pretoria decides on the validity of any potential objection.