Pravin won’t back down
Zuma pushed for nuclear deal
Pravin Gordhan, the man who is fast being turned into public enemy number one, has again warned of the fightback against the clean-up of the state, saying there are people who benefitted from corruption and state capture who are trying to “defend their largess and access to largess”.
On his first day of testimony at the Zondo commission yesterday, the public enterprises minister warned of the dangers of populism and the “politics of distraction so that the spotlight does not fall on you”. He said any trick in the book was being used to defend people’s ill-gotten gains. “Throughout the world, fake news is a reality. All of that is to ensure that elites or small groups of people become beneficiaries of distractive processes.”
He said he was experiencing this at the department of public enterprises where there were instances of big state capture and small state capture, where CEOs develop their own client bases to defend them when they get into trouble. “Those attacking us have something to hide, something to protect, something to Gordhan distract the public with,” said .
His comments came as the EFF staged a protest outside the inquiry where the party’s deputy leader, Floyd Shivambu, said Gordhan was a “danger” trying to destroy state-owned enterprises such as Eskom and South African Airways.
Gordhan’s highly anticipated testimony proved to be somewhat of an anti-climax yesterday as most of the day was spent on the context and previous reports on state capture, as well as the role of National Treasury as a guardian over state resources.
As the first member of the ANC national executive committee testifying at the inquiry, Gordhan acknowledged that the governing party fell short of its electoral mandate by not acting swiftly against its members involved in corruption. Justice Raymond Zondo said he struggled to recollect instances when the ANC took disciplinary action against its members over allegations of corruption.
Gordhan indicated that the ANC would have to explain this when it appeared at the commission. He said the phenomenon of state capture became evident around 2014 He traced how former president Jacob Zuma showed “personal interest” in certain mega projects that were unaffordable to the fiscus, such as the Russia-SA nuclear deal. Zuma took over the chairmanship of the energy security cabinet subcommittee due to “urgency” to push through the deal. Gordhan also told Zondo how Zuma intervened to get the Treasury to give guarantees for PetroSA’s purchase of Malaysian company Petronas’s stake in Engen even though there was “resistance” for due diligence to be conducted on the deal. The cost of the deal was also inflated from R12bn to R18.6bn, Gordhan said.
He said there was also an attempt to ram through a joint venture between Denel and Gupta-affiliated VR Laser during the short stint that Des van Rooyen was finance minister in December 2015.