McBride’s inquiry testimony postponed
INDEPENDENT Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid) executive director Robert McBride is expected to implicate more than 30 politicians and senior government officials when he finally testifies before the commission of inquiry into state capture.
McBride was due to give evidence yesterday and today.
The head of the commission’s legal team, Paul Pretorius, requested that McBride’s evidence be deferred to a later date.
Pretorius said procedural fairness to the parties implicated by McBride dictated that they be given enough time to respond and possibly apply for leave to cross-examine the former uMkhonto weSizwe operative.
The commission’s investigators, Pretorius added, also needed to probe his evidence, which was contained in up to five lever-arch files and would deal with the role of the country’s law-enforcement agencies in aiding and abetting the capture of the state in the past few years.
Commission head Justice Raymond Zondo granted the legal team’s application to postpone McBride’s testimony, but warned that the obligation to be seen to be consistent and fair was something that should be paramount to the commission.
The commission also heard that it would have to dig deep from its resources to corroborate key parts of former ANC MP Vytjie Mentor’s testimony against the Gupta family.
Department of Public Works architect Erna Wiese told the commission that it would need more than R810 000 to hire experts to conduct historical mapping of the Gupta compound, analyse the painting done on the property and hire a material constructor.
A team of seven, including a deputy director-general, property valuers, a quantity surveyor, structural engineer and electrical technologist, was unable to provide an opinion on the features Mentor identified in her evidence to prove that the property she described belonged to the controversial family.
“If we prove beyond reasonable doubt, a team of specialists needs to be appointed,” said Wiese.
She said the R810 000 quote was based on the department’s internal projection on the work that needed to be done and did not include restoration of the property to its original state after the work done by the expert team.
Wiese acknowledged that the department did not have the expertise to conduct the work that needed to be done. The public works team conducted an in loco inspection with the commission’s legal team, investigators and lawyers representing the Guptas in December.
In her evidence this week and last year, Mentor described the features of one of the standalone properties in the Guptas’ Saxonwold compound in which she was allegedly offered a ministerial post by the controversial family.
But Wiese said Mentor was supposed to point out the property in which the offer was made by one of the Gupta brothers while former president Jacob Zuma was in another room in 2010.
“She (Mentor) did not point it out immediately,” Wiese testified.
According to Wiese, Mentor could not identify the house she visited with 100% certainty.
Wiese’s testimony follows the two days earlier this week in which Mentor sought to discredit records from SA Airways, the Home Affairs Department and Vodacom, appearing to disprove most of her evidence.
In her defence, Mentor told Justice Zondo almost a decade had lapsed since some of the events allegedly took place, and that the time could have been used to alter the documents.
She said some of the documents appeared to have been computer generated, prompting Justice Zondo to state that she seemed to have issues with all records produced before the commission.
The commission will resume on Monday when National Treasury officials give evidence and they will be followed by Eskom representatives, who will testify for up to three weeks.