Long shadow of the nuclear deal
State of Capture report by outgoing Public Protector Thuli Madonsela. Molefe, it was found, had close links with the Guptas and their “Saxonwold Shebeen”.
Molefe was the chess piece Zuma planned to move into place, and he was swiftly shuffled into Parliament and hastily sworn in as an MP with the excuse that he had been nominated to fill a vacancy on the North West list of ANC MPs.
But with Zuma’s plan thwarted and the Treasury out of reach and still putting the brakes on the Rosatom deal, Molefe was returned triumphant to Eskom in May 2017.
A vocal supporter of nuclear power, he immediately began pushing for the energy utility to invest in it. He had embarked on a three-week course in nuclear reactor technology for executives at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US in 2016.
VBS, the Guptas and the banks
In June 2017, Mkhwebane released her CIEX report finding the SARB’s bailout of Bankorp between 1985 and 1995 had been unlawful and the Constitution should be changed.
Kganyago immediately filed an urgent application to have the remedial action set aside. In an interview, he stated that the closure of the Gupta family’s accounts by commercial banks in mid-2016, as well as the Venda Building Society (VBS) mutual bank being placed under curatorship, had “sparked a political fightback”.
In August 2017, the SARB won its application to have Mkhwebane’s remedial action to change its constitutional mandate set aside. She had been wrong in law, the court said in a scathing judgment.
VBS was declared insolvent in March 2018 after defrauding its clients of about R2-billion, some of which was redirected to EFF deputy leader Floyd Shivambu’s brother Brian, through his company Grand Azania.
In 2012, it had been Madonsela and SARS who revealed that EFF leader Julius Malema, then the leader of the ANC Youth League, was using his Ratanang Trust to receive questionable income to support a visibly extravagant lifestyle.
The National Prosecuting Authority, led during Zuma’s tenure by a series of discredited heads, including Shaun Abrahams, dropped the criminal case against Malema. It has been dead in the water ever since (although you never know).
A now restored SARS, which had suffered prolonged and sustained attack during Zuma’s presidency, succeeded in shutting down Grand Azania, Brian Shivambu’s company, earlier this month.
SARS had applied for the liquidation of Grand Azania in July 2021, when the company was unable to pay its R11.5-million tax debt.
Why RET forces needed Mkhwebane
On the boil since 2011, the National Treasury and Gordhan only learned of the face-to-face nuclear agreement with Putin in 2013, when the then Department of Energy asked for a “tax incentive” structure for the deal.
In 2017, the man who stood in the doorway between Zuma, Putin, the nuclear deal and the voracious Gupta family was Gordhan.
In January that year, the ANC – still led by Zuma but not for long – began pushing for the release of Madonsela’s provisional report on the Bankorp-Absa bailout.
Gordhan, it must be remembered, was the former head of SARS. During his tenure between 1999 and 2009, the institution had clamped down on tax evasion, particularly in the tobacco industry.
If Gordhan was not going to go down by hook, he would have to go down by crook.
In 2014, shortly after his appointment by Zuma to head the revenue service, Tom Moyane began to restructure SARS on the advice of the now disgraced international consultancy Bain & Company. Bain & Co earned about R2-billion in public sector contracts doing business in South Africa.
Bain whistle-blower Athol Williams revealed that Vittorio Massone, Bain’s managing partner in South Africa, had met with Zuma on at least 20 occasions between 2012 and 2016. This was ostensibly to discuss “reshaping the South African economy”, including “the establishment of a presidential agency that would bypass other state executive bodies”.
Moyane soon set about enacting the bold plans, deploying fake news and propaganda about an apparent “rogue” unit – set up with Gordhan’s alleged approval – that had been targeting politicians.
The target was again on Gordhan’s back. The Sunday Times was later implicated in publishing fake news about SARS’s HighRisk Investigative Unit, which had made extraordinary progress. Moyane’s attempt to purge SARS of corruption busters led to a mass exodus of staff.
This report, too, has landed Mkhwebane in front of the impeachment inquiry.
Shaky start
Shortly after Madonsela’s term ended, Mkhwebane laid a criminal charge against her for allegedly violating the Public Protector Act by “leaking” the audio of an interview she had had with Zuma while in office.
Madonsela had left office after releasing her “black swan” – her damning State of Capture report. It later led to the establishment of the
State Capture commission headed by then Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo.
The audio clip was released on 13 October 2016, the day before Madonsela’s extraordinary term of office came to an end. She was still the Public Protector at the time and later said she had been within her rights to release the interview.
That Zuma himself could have charged Madonsela did not cross Mkhwebane’s mind, it appears.
2017 was also the year the #Guptaleaks hit the headlines, confirming what real investigative journalists had been exposing all along.
Mkhwebane appears to be the last woman standing. For how much longer, we will soon find out.