SACP backs independent state capture probe
THE SA Communist Party is calling for an independent judicial commission of inquiry into state capture to be established immediately.
“In light of the barrage of further revelations concerning the Gupta network, the commission needs clearly to extend its scope beyond the major but still limited issues investigated in the public protector’s State of Capture report‚” general secretary Blade Nzimande said in Johannesburg yesterday following the party’s central committee meeting.
“But we must vigorously guard against recent attempts to dilute it into probing such a wide field that its work will never be completed.”
This follows the ANC national executive committee’s decision to support the establishment of a judicial commission of inquiry into wider state capture going as far back as 1994.
The ANC has also called on President Jacob Zuma to establish the inquiry despite him being implicated.
On the number of leaked e-mails showing the relationship between the Gupta family and their associates and the extent of their influence on the running of the state‚ Nzimande said they “look genuine”.
“Every week‚ in fact almost every day now with a barrage of leaked e-mails, and more and more whistleblowers coming forward, the sheer scale of corporate capture and parasitic plundering of public resources by the Gupta network becomes more and more evident‚” he said.
The DA has, meanwhile, reiterated its call for National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete to act swiftly on its call for an ad hoc committee to fully probe the relations of captured ministers and officials‚ the president and the Gupta family.
“We expect parliament to schedule this committee during the coming week‚” DA spokeswoman on public enterprises Natasha Mazzone said.
This followed media reports yesterday of further Gupta capture of the ANC government‚ she said.
According to reports yesterday‚ Department of Public Enterprises director-general Richard Seleke allegedly leaked important information to the Guptas about deals with state-owned entities and e-mailed his CV to President Jacob Zuma’s son, Duduzane, six months before being hired as DG.
“Similarly‚ reports today reveal that former independent non-executive director of Transnet Iqbal Sharma passed on confidential board committee documents to the Guptas a week before a May 2014 meeting of the board that hiked the costs of a locomotives tender expected to earn the Guptas R5.3-billion‚” Mazzone said.
The Gupta family‚ it has been learnt, has left South Africa, but apparently only for a few days.
They left on Thursday for their home town Saharanpur in India, where they landed early on Friday morning. Family spokesman Gert van der Merwe said they had gone to attend a religious ceremony.
He was unable to say whether Duduzane was with them.