No state capture fear or favour
● ANC’s Kodwa says Zuma and others should answer allegations at state capture inquiry
Former president Jacob Zuma should appear before the commission of inquiry into state capture regardless of his position or stature and answer a slew of claims that the Gupta family controlled him and used their connections with him to milk the state of billions.
Asked if the ANC believed that Zuma – who, with his son Duduzane and the Guptas are at the centre of state capture allegations – should appear before the commission, head of the presidency Zizi Kodwa said yesterday there must be “no fear or favour”.
“We want this commission to do its work without fear or favour, regardless of your height or size, regardless of your position in society or in the organisation.
“Whether you were once a president of the republic or a premier of a province you must be bold enough because these allegations are quite serious,” Kodwa said.
Zuma, through his lawyers last week, said he would not apply to cross-examine witnesses because none of them had implicated him.
His lawyer, Daniel Lungisani Mantsha, wrote to the inquiry after Zuma was notified that he might be implicated by the evidence of former deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas, ex-ANC MP Vytjie Mentor, current and former government communications heads Themba Maseko and Phumla Williams, and former public enterprises minister Barbara Hogan.
“We have consulted our client,” Mantsha said.
“We are satisfied that nothing in the aforementioned witnesses’ statements implicates or may implicate our client in the infringement of the aforementioned statutes, policies of government and relevant ethical codes.”
Kodwa’s statement on Monday came on the day the commission, headed by deputy chief justice Raymond Zondo, heard how the Guptas’ media companies pocketed more than R260m from the government since 2004.
The funds were channelled from the Government Communications and Information System (GCIS) and various levels of government to the Gupta-owned The New Age Media (TNA) and Infinity Media.
Over the years, the money was transferred to 11 different bank accounts.
The description of the beneficiaries were all variations of the company names.
The figures were outlined in testimony by Treasury veteran Jan Gilliland, who described how he identified dozens of transactions through an accounting programme used to monitor the finances of departments and state entities.
Gilliland’s figures show that government spend on Gupta media assets skyrocketed around the time the family launched its ANN7 broadcast news channel in 2013.
Over the 14-year period, Infinity Media earned a total of R12m and TNA made R248m.
But the Guptas earned little money in comparison between 2004 and 2007, raking in a few payments of a few thousand rand each year.
Their first break seemingly came in 2008, when both companies earned a total of about R1.9m from the government.
Then, in 2011, the amount tripled to R6.1m and in 2012, skyrocketed to about R29m.
Gilliland’s figures show the Guptas’ media companies earned R30m in 2013, R51m in 2014, R66m in 2015, and R43m in 2016.
At a national level, R99.6m was spent and the top three provincial spenders were identified as the Free State (R79.3m), KwaZulu-Natal (R25m) and North West (R23.8m).
The bulk of the money came from the office of the premier in each of these provinces.
The figures tally with testimony by former GCIS boss Themba Maseko, who described how his refusal to do the family’s bidding saw him ousted in 2010.
Maseko told the commission last month that between September and October 2010, at the request of Zuma, he met Ajay Gupta where he was ordered to direct GCIS’s entire R600m media spend to the family’s media interests.
In January 2011, Maseko was removed.
The money GCIS spent on advertising and other services provided by the Gupta-owned media companies tripled thereafter.
The commission continues on Wednesday and is expected to hear testimony from Hogan.