Exemplary punishment must follow the exposure of state capture’s architects
The nightmare that was state capture under Jacob Zuma still reads like a bestselling crime novel. Key state institutions were hijacked by powerful and hand-picked allies of the former president — their mission was to weaken controls so that the looting of resources could happen undetected. It is frightening to think how a different outcome at the ANC’s elective conference in December might have allowed this plunder to continue unchecked.
One institution that was systematically dismantled with the shadowy hand of Zuma at play was SARS. He hand-picked Tom Moyane as commissioner, bringing him back from retirement to be his key lieutenant in a mission to compromise an institution that until then had an impeccable reputation.
The extent of the rot that set in under Moyane is slowly coming to light at the commission of inquiry headed by Judge Robert Nugent.
Witnesses before the commission have painted a picture of how Moyane destroyed SARS, for example shutting down the Large Business Centre that operated as a one-stop shop for corporate tax collection. The now-suspended tax boss also went on a witchhunt, targeting experienced tax executives who kept the wheels oiled at Lehae La SARS, the revenue service’s headquarters in Pretoria.
Who can forget how deputy commissioner Ivan Pillay was hounded out of the service, accused of heading a rogue unit that was spying on politicians? It turned out, of course, that a paranoid Zuma, who saw spies everywhere, had it in his overactive imagination that SARS employees were
“campaigning for an alternative ANC president”.
That we are today celebrating that Zuma is a former president and Moyane a suspended commissioner, is in part due to the diligence and tenacity of champions of truth and honesty, those who refused to give up the fight against corruption. They are to be found in the ANC, in the opposition, in civil society, in the media and even inside the institutions under siege — the whistleblowers who cried foul often at great cost to their careers, and at times their lives.
Moyane was not just an appointment that went wrong; he was a hand-picked tool unleashed on one of the most credible institutions of state as part of a strategy to dismantle one of the last obstacles to unfettered state capture. Other institutions and state-owned companies had already fallen. The Hawks, the NPA, Eskom, SAA and countless others. When the inexperienced Des van Rooyen was controversially appointed finance minister in December 2015, he was the final piece in the puzzle, the convenient toy in the grander game of capturing the National Treasury. Game, set and match; the state was theirs.
While the Nugent commission is providing dramatic evidence of this despicable plot, it is only scraping the surface of a cancer that runs extremely deep. We can brace ourselves for shocking revelations of the full extent of the brazen hijacking of the state when the commission of inquiry headed by Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo starts its own hearings.
Key state capture players, especially Zuma and his Gupta allies, must be made to appear before the Zondo commission along with their pawns so that South Africans can finally find closure in the knowledge that those who tried to sell the country to the highest bidder are being made to answer for their sins.
But it should not end there. Whatever evidence of looting that is uncovered by these commissions must be handed over to the relevant law enforcement authorities for further action. No one should escape accountability. Such strong action would serve as a warning to our future leaders and bureaucrats that opening the state vault and helping themselves to the jewellery inside is a crime that will lead to the harshest punishment.
It is scraping the surface of a cancer that runs extremely deep