Scandal after scandal
THE news that both the FBI and Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority are to investigate their own nationals – and, in the UK’s case, banks – for involvement in our state capture is incredibly welcome.
It’s not for nothing that the Pan South African Language Board last week named “state capture” as South Africa’s word of the year, because it is an issue that has dominated our national conversation since the dawning of 2017.
The unfolding of the revelations has been unprecedented, and breathtaking in its breadth and scope. It started with the unbelievable treasure trove of hacked emails, the so-called Gupta leaks, that placed the Saxonwold family front and centre in a web of inappropriate influence, bordering on downright corruption, that reached to the core of our nation.
Those were followed by public protests across the country, uniting former political foes in their patriotism and mutual condemnation of the kleptocracy that appeared to have taken root.
Now, almost daily, we have senior members of the ruling ANC, the continent’s oldest liberation movement, speaking out against the corruption that has so tragically become the hallmark, the legacy, of the Jacob Zuma presidency.
Even his deputy, Cyril Ramaphosa, has spoken out unequivocally about the scourge so pervasive and profound it threatens the legacy of the man the ANC has set aside 2017 to honour, Oliver Reginald Tambo, the father of the modern ANC.
And yet, there appears no intent on the part of any of our law enforcement agencies – in particular the National Prosecuting Authority – to even begin to investigate the obvious prima facie cases. The national director of public prosecutions has been conspicuous by his absence, and his silence throughout has been deafening.
Instead, it is left to the FBI and other foreign agencies to find justice of sorts for the people of this country whose sovereignty in the form of the various state-owned enterprises appears to have been sold for the proverbial mess of pottage.
It’s difficult to know what the bigger scandal is – that we’ve been robbed blind or our prosecutors won’t do anything about it.