Quit the bungling and bring the brothers back

It shouldn’t come as a great surprise that the Gupta brothers and their sidekick Duduzane Zuma have been allowed to slip the net and are now abroad, no doubt savouring their ill-gotten gains while South Africans are left to pay for the trail of dishonesty and deceit in high places that allowed them to amass a fortune under Jacob Zuma’s presidency. This week, for example, we learn that one of the brothers, Atul, calmly walked into the South African consulate in Dubai (where else?) and had legal forms signed, ostensibly in an attempt to get himself off the charges that he may face in South Africa. Atul is said to have scored R10-million from the abortive Free State Vrede dairy project.

It appears that infighting involving the Hawks and the National Prosecuting Authority, and the political incompetence with which they are led, is to blame for this calamity. In the new era of hope ushered in by President Cyril Ramaphosa, it is a bitter pill for South Africans, especially the poor, who with everyone else have been slapped with a one percentage point increase in the VAT rate, to 15%, in part to help pay for the excesses and malfeasance that were so much part of the Zuma era.

Later in the week came the astonishing news that the Hawks had, in fact, been ready to pounce on the Guptas as early as November, but failed to do so because they were awaiting the go-ahead from the NPA, whose boss, Shaun Abrahams, has bent over backwards to accommodate the Guptas’ misdeeds.

Now the Hawks and the NPA are at each other’s throats over the debacle, with Police Minister Fikile Mbalula having already muddied the waters by declaring Ajay Gupta a fugitive from justice when, in fact, that was not the case.

Be that as it may, it now falls to South African authorities to get their ducks in a row and crank up the diplomatic engine with a view to extraditing the brothers wherever they may be, in India or Dubai or wherever else.

If South Africa is to put the sorry era of state capture behind it and move on, it is vital that the Guptas be extradited and brought back to face the music. It will also help us to understand the full scope of the rot that set in under Zuma.