State capture: Commission of
The public protector was due to release her state capture report on her last day in office
Outgoing public protector Thuli Madonsela was scheduled to recommend a full-blown commission of inquiry into state capture before President Jacob Zuma put a spanner in the works with a last-minute application to interdict her report, which was due to be released on Friday.
The Mail & Guardian understands that phase one of her report was ready for release and Madonsela’s office was locked in meetings until late on Thursday to consider a legal response to Zuma’s move.
By l aw, only the president is authorised to establish a commission of inquiry — which would, in this case, have been into allegations against himself and the Guptas.
Zuma’s court bid came as a surprise because his spokesperson, Bongani Ngqulunga, had earlier said that the president is not “trying to stymie” the report.
All indications are that Madonsela was ready to release the report. As late as Wednesday afternoon she contacted the Gupta family’s lawyer for access to Ajay Gupta, patriarch of the controversial family.
The M&G has also been told that Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown and Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula had been asked to make submissions to Madonsela on Thursday. Brown’s office confirmed that a delegation from the public enterprises department delivered a letter to Madonsela.
This came on the back of Ajay Gupta offering Madonsela an unsolicited interview with regard to alle- gations that his family appeared to have the power to hire and fire Cabinet ministers and board members of state-owned enterprises to score lucrative government deals.
Another allegation Madonsela is focusing on is how two Guptaaligned “special advisers”, Mohamed Bobat and Ian Whitley, were appointed to the treasury to aid ANC backbencher Des van Rooyen in his new job as finance minister in December 2015. Van Rooyen was plucked from obscurity to replace then finance minister Nhlanhla Nene, only to be replaced by Pravin Gordhan four days later.
The M&G has established that new information regarding Bobat’s and Whitley’s alleged links to the Guptas have landed on Madonsela’s desk in the form of a whistle-blower’s dossier.
According to a source with intimate knowledge of the dossier’s content, it further relates to questionable deals done between a Gupta-linked company and several parastatals, including Denel, SAA, Eskom, SA Express and Transnet.
The Guptas are “worried”, their lawyer Gert van der Merwe told the M&G earlier.
Despite Madonsela appearing hell-bent on releasing a version of her report to the public before she vacated office on Friday, she curiously did not subpoena any of the Gupta brothers to submit evidence in her investigation.
Van der Merwe warned that if the report is released prematurely, his clients would initiate review procedures that, he said, if successful, would render Madonsela’s report and its findings “useless”.
Said Van der Merwe: “Ajay is in India, attending a religious festival. It is a trip that has been booked long ago and of which Madonsela is fully aware. She emailed me [on Wednesday] … asking Ajay to answer questions by [Thursday morning]. Her preliminary report is said to be released on Friday. I told her office it is impossible to answer her questions adequately in such a short time.
“This report is going to be a mess.