‘Don’t over-Zumanise state capture’
Jonas says SA needs to decouple politics, structures from personalities
FORMER deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas yesterday warned the country not to overly link the state capture phenomenon to his former boss, ex-president Jacob Zuma.
In his last day of giving evidence at the commission of inquiry into state capture, Jonas warned that the country should avoid the danger of not looking into structural issues.
“The danger with state capture is to ‘over-Zumanise’ it. To think it was about Zuma because it is bigger, it is structural and it is systemic,” Jonas said.
Jonas told the commission, chaired by Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, that the country should be engaging on how to decouple its politics and structures from personalities and embed them in the system.
“We have an over-personalised political system, we hardly talk structural issues,” he said.
He also proposed that the country revisits its political system and draw a wall between party and state.
“I think we should revisit our political system, particularly how do we draw a wall between the political party and the state and how do we build state institutions that go beyond political and electoral cycles.”
He said South African institutions which have survived have done so because of them being not linked to political cycles, citing the judiciary as an example.
“The judiciary survives, it survives simply because when you have a new president you don’t jump and fire all judges,” said Jonas, now one of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s special envoys on investment.
Jonas, who has dropped bombshells in his testimony, also maintained that there should be a clear separation between the state from the political party.
“Ultimately, you’re going to have a problem where capturing the party is the easy vehicle of capturing the state because the relationship between the party and the state has no lines that are as strong as you would want to have,” he added.
Earlier in the day, Jonas was crossexamined by Duduzane Zuma’s lawyer Piet Louw, who sought to discredit his version before former public protector Thuli Madonsela during her investigation into state capture.
Jonas said his unsigned statement to Madonsela had been prepared by his attorney Max Boqwana and he had not gone through it with a fine-tooth comb.
He said the first comprehensive statement he made on the Guptas’ offer of making him finance minister and pay him R600 million in October 2015 was to the inquiry.
Jonas also testified that during his tenure as deputy finance minister there was hostility directed primarily at the National Treasury and the Ministry of Finance when Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan was his boss.
He said attempts were made to move the Treasury’s budget office to Zuma’s Presidency.
“At the core of that injunction was an understanding that there was a need to place it (budget office) at a point where regulation is not taken seriously,” Jonas said.
He also revealed that if a government official was located at Treasury they were essentially seen as the ones who were holding back this process and often accused of preparing a budget that was not aligned to the National Development Plan.
According to Jonas, this led to a lot of senior officials at Treasury leaving.
“It’s absurd. The constitution says you manage revenue and expenditure, on the other hand you have a policy that says we are taking budgeting away from you which is a constitutionally assigned responsibility,” said Jonas.
He said moving the budget office would have been very useful because when managing the budget state capture would become very easy to discharge.
The commission is set to resume on Monday.