Why Mantashe’s Gupta probe flopped
The African National Congress (ANC) decision to shelve its investigation into state capture has laid bare the cracks in the governing alliance.
More insidiously, it has exposed the continued hold which the politically connected Gupta family has on President Jacob Zuma and his allies.
The investigation, which was announced in March, was precipitated by the very public admission by deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas that members of the family had offered him the critical post of head of national treasury, which was then still held by former minister Nhlanhla Nene.
Weeks later Nene was fired by Zuma, unleashing a market backlash and tanking the rand, which forced him to back-track on his decision to appoint little-known MP David Des van Rooyen and reappoint Pravin Gordhan to the position.
The ANC’s national executive committee (NEC) at an ordinary meeting in March discussed the issue of state capture, rather hesitantly.
The majority of the members of the NEC are aligned to Zuma and sought to shut down any talk of Jonas’s admission, but eventually the group relented and a broader discussion on state capture took place. That meeting, however, set the stage for last week’s shelving of the probe.
On the one hand, the NEC raised questions about the validity of the information brought forward about the influence of the Gupta family, and on the other reluctantly agreed to a probe of the issue — and very specifically assigned the key decision making powers around the probe to the party’s national officials and its national working committee.
The office of secretary-general Gwede Mantashe was assigned simply to collect the information from those who have had runins with the Guptas.
The issue remained on the party’s agenda as it held high-level meetings with the Gupta family — who had publicly denied that they had offered Jonas the position.
But emboldened by Jonas’s admission, other ANC MPs and former leaders came forward with their own experiences, including respected former cabinet spokesman Themba Maseko, former public enterprises minister Barbara Hogan and former MP Vytjie Mentor.
Before the furore around the Guptas had subsided, less than two weeks later the con- stitutional court delivered its judgment on Nkandla in which it found that Zuma had failed to uphold, defend and respect the constitution in his handling of the public protector’s report on Nkandla.
The ANC was in the eye of a storm — fresh from fending off outrage over the extent of the Gupta family’s capture of the state, its damage-control machinery had to be trained on dealing with the fall-out of the judgment, which included calls for Zuma’s axing. The Gupta matter then took a back seat. Fast forward to the ANC’s NEC meeting last week.
The party’s top leaders — most of whom are ministers and deputy ministers and beholden to Zuma for their jobs — decided that the state capture probe was to go no further. This was after only one of eight people who had come forward with information was willing to put their complaint in writing.
“That made the exercise fruitless for us,” Mantashe said.
Mantashe had first reported this to the national working committee (NWC) — a smaller core of leaders and a structure which is packed to the brim with Zuma loyalists. A “progress report” was meant to be given to the NWC and perhaps more time allocated to the probe. But the structure took a decision that the slow progress on the probe indicated that there was “nothing to investigate” and that the matter should be taken to the NEC to be finalised.
The end result was the NEC decision to refer all those who came forward to the relevant state institutions to make their complaints — in effect the ANC had washed its hands of the issue. Maseko, who was the only complainant to make a written submission, said a nonpartisan public inquiry was the only answer.
It is understood that Jonas had received legal advice not to make a written submission to the process.
Also, the ANC was unable to give assurances to those who made written submissions that the information would not later be used against them.
Enter ANC ally the SA Communist Party (SACP), who this week described the decision by the NEC as “misguided” — dismissing the argument that state capture was a “marginal issue”. This was aimed squarely at Zuma, who had publicly downplayed the debate on state capture saying it was much ado
being made about a “small issue”. SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande delivered a hard-hitting secretariat report at the SACP central committee meeting over the weekend and also dismissed arguments in some ANC quarters that the state capture debate was a “distraction” from the 2016 election campaign.
Insiders in the party questioned Zuma’s public comments on state capture, saying it contradicted an alliance summit declaration taken last year which the president himself had convened, which came out strongly against corporate capture.
The SACP has been amassing its own submission to the ANC about corporate capture — spokesman Alex Mashilo, however, said the party had written to Mantashe’s office expressing an interest in tabling the submission because it recognised that the process was an ANC and not an alliance one.
Before receiving feedback, the ANC pub- licly announced that the process was shelved.
A heated meeting of ANC and SACP leaders took place on Monday.
The battle lines between the ANC and the SACP are clearly drawn — the SACP has also sharply questioned the NEC decision. The ANC also decided last week that the banks should explain their apparent “collusion” in closing Gupta-linked Oakbay’s bank accounts.
The ANC NEC’s stance on both the banks and state capture is an indication of the extent of the family’s hold on the governing party’s highest decision-making body.
Mining minister Mosebenzi Zwane at a meeting of the National Union of Mineworkers last week indicated just how far the Zuma administration was willing to go to ensure that the Gupta interests are protected. He said government was still “pursuing” a solution to the matter — “even if it means coming up with a state bank”.
The Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) also condemned the action of the banks, saying it was concerned for the welfare of Oakbay workers who would be affected by the move. However, Cosatu was silent last week when reports emerged that Oakbay
had disciplined workers for failing to sign a memorandum to the banks appealing to them to re-open the company accounts.
In stark contrast to its allies, the SACP said it believed that the banks did not collude but rather were under pressure of “severe sanction” from local regulators including the SA Reserve Bank and from international agencies, should it have failed to close the Oakbay accounts. SACP deputy general secretary Jeremy Cronin said if the Guptas felt hard done by, they had recourse to go to court and it was “interesting” that they had not done so.
The party received a presentation from Gordhan at its meeting over the weekend in which he is understood to have highlighted the extent of the problem of “rent-seeking” in SA.
The SACP, however, is no longer part of the faction aligned to Zuma and alleges that it is being sidelined by his strongest backers, the premier league, which is made up of the leaders of the Mpumalanga, North West and Free State provinces. This group also includes the new leadership collective in KwaZulu Natal, which is purging leaders aligned to the SACP in its lower structures. The SACP said it would act “legally and politically” to ensure the state capture debate remained on the agenda. But those opposing the communists say they are using the issue in their factional fight against Zuma and his allies.
Mantashe has said that the debate on state capture will be around for a “long time”, suggesting that despite the ANC NEC decision, the issue could again be raised at a later stage. He also said people should be willing to make sacrifices and do what was principled, despite the costs.
“It does not mean we will walk away from it, we will continue to monitor that situation as an organisation,” he said.
However, the balance of power in the ANC indicates that there is very little chance of this happening — as long as the faction aligned to Zuma continues to hold sway in the party.