Zuma’s motto: don’t sweat the small stuff

THE president just wants to explain a bit about state capture. Like Thabo Mbeki just wanted to explain about syndromes. C’mon people, think; be reasonable.

State capture, Jacob Zuma told an audience earlier this month, it’s just a small thing. It’s not like someone “captured” the army or anything. “If you talk about state capture,” he intoned, “you’re misleading people. You’re taking a small issue and making it a big issue. Is the judiciary captured? Is the legislature captured?” And all the other continents would fit into Africa . . .

So if little bits of the state are captured then it’s OK, he seems to be saying. A government department or two, a state asset or two. So?

The one I love is the Denel capture. Denel is the state-owned (profitable) manufacturer of weapons, making everything from small arms and ammunition to large cannon, armoured vehicles and the fabulous Rooivalk helicopter. Its engineers and designers match any in the world.

Under a plan hatched by the Gupta family through a proxy, Salim Essa, Denel Asia has been launched, 49% owned by them and based in Hong Kong. They will sell products Denel has developed with its own South African intellectual genius. But instead of 100% of the revenue going to South Africa, almost half of it will go to the Guptas and their associates, a member of the Zuma family included. Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan is trying to stop it. Nice one, Mr President. It’s capture, I’m sure you’ll agree. But it’s small.

Here’s how the next “small issue” will go. In the next few weeks or months, the Hawks and the prosecuting authority will settle on something to charge Gordhan with.

It doesn’t matter how flimsy or silly. Zuma will regretfully ask for his resignation. Mbeki, after all, used the mere hint of a charge against Zuma to dismiss him as deputy president back in 2005.

He will then make a call to the CEO of Eskom, Brian Molefe, and offer him the job. For Molefe, the call will be an agony. A lot of people think Molefe is corrupt. I don’t. But I do think he’s also been “captured”.

It would have happened slowly. By the time he became CEO at Transnet the Guptas already had proxies on the board. He got on with the job, threw the proxies a bone, a tender, now and then. And the same has happened at Eskom. Gupta people on the board, but best keep them quiet with a tender or two. “Small issues”, sure, but before you know it you’ve thrown a lot of bones and suddenly you’re the Zupta go-to guy.

So the offer to Molefe will be stark. “Gordhan has gone and if you don’t take it I [No 1] will have to look elsewhere.”

Here’s the thing: if you had the National Treasury experience, international debt market experience and the background in running large and complex organisations that Molefe has had, what would you say to Zuma if he told you that he’d appoint David van Rooyen if you turned his offer down?

I know what I would do. I’d accept the offer and so, I think, would Molefe. But from there, Zuma canters home and there’s nothing Molefe could do to stop it. It’s the price of capture.

Mcebisi Jonas is removed as deputy finance minister and Sfiso Buthlelezi replaces him, in the process becoming chairman of the Public Investment Corporation, the state’s pension fund manager, with R1.8-trillion (a trillion is a thousand billion) at its disposal. This is the Big Prize.

As chairman, Buthelezi removes the PIC chief executive, Dan Matjila, who has lent R888-million, interest free for five years, to Dr Iqbal Survé to buy the Independent newspaper group. Just before that acquisition, Survé had agreed to give the Guptas a stake in the group and a contract to manage it. Now the Guptas want it and the issue is in court. I never thought I’d say this, but I hope Survé wins.

Ultimately, sadly, he will lose and the Zuptas will own or control the SABC, the Gupta media business and Independent newspapers. Media24 is already dependent on government licences to broadcast as DStv. It leaves a tiny independent media, this great newspaper among them.

But that is what state capture does. It shrinks the space in which normal competition can occur. It reduces us as an economy and a people. It poisons our souls. Comment on this: write to tellus@sundaytimes.co.za or SMS us at 33971 www.sundaytimes.co.za