Bosasa allegations are not new

THIS WEEK, the Zondo Commission of Inquiry into State Capture resumed with even more gripping testimony than last year.

Taking the stand was former chief operations officer of Bosasa, Angelo Agrizzi, recounting how the payment of bribes became so institutionalised in the multi-billion rand facilities company, that cash was laundered and then stacked into bricks to pay untraceable kickbacks to officials every month.

These are not new allegations; journalists have been bravely reporting on the company’s corrosive, collusive and corrupt practices for years, but somehow all of this became eclipsed in a combination of circumstance and expedience to render state capture a catch-all phrase for former president Jacob Zuma’s tenure and his wholly unhealthy and inappropriate relationship with the Gupta brothers.

The Zondo Commission reminds us that state capture extends far beyond the Guptas. The conditions that allowed the Guptas to metastasize to the life-threatening cancer that they are, is no different from the conditions that allowed audit firms and management consultancies to pervert our birth right for profit. Or, in the Bosasa case, another family, this time with ostensibly real struggle credentials to pillage and profit for their own pocket, irrespective of the cost to the rest of us.

This commission is perhaps the most seminal to be held in this country since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission into human rights abuses during the apartheid era. The costs of state capture, in terms of opportunity lost and hope denied to those who most needed to benefit from the state, are incalculable. The difference this time is the guilty must be brought to book.

The National Prosecuting Authority must pay heed to the testimonies before the commission and begin with its own processes with a view to bringing those who would sell our children’s future – or even our present – to book.

If we don’t, we can never excise this tumour and start to heal.