‘Zondo wants to Zumarise me’
Ex-CEO Siyabonga Gama denies being complicit in Gupta corruption at Transnet
● Former Transnet boss Siyabonga Gama has accused acting chief justice Raymond Zondo of character assassination and doing his best to “Zumarise” him in the latest state capture report.
Speaking to the Sunday Times this week, Gama stood by the story he told the Zondo commission last year, insisting he had never been captured by the Gupta family and their associates.
“The commission spent a great deal of time going back to 2008/2009 about my employment and disciplinary processes,” said Gama, who was fired as CEO of Transnet Freight Rail (TFR) in June 2010 for misconduct in relation to an R800m locomotive refurbishment contract.
“That is being done so they could arrive at some kind of conclusion that somehow I was appointed by [Jacob] Zuma. They are trying very hard to character assassinate and Zumarise me, so that it appears like I was being prepared for some kind of Gupta project.
“They don’t tell the public how I was reinstated. I was reinstated because I appealed and Transnet asked for a settlement, and it is on the basis of those settlements that I was reinstated,” said Gama.
At the time of his 2010 dismissal, Gama was also found guilty of the irregular appointment
of a security firm owned by former communications minister and defence force chief Gen Siphiwe Nyanda.
Gama, who said this week he had been without work for 39 months, is among the former Transnet executives — including former group CEO Brian Molefe and CFO Anoj Singh — who Zondo says should face possible prosecution over transactions totalling more than R41bn between the state-owned enterprise and the Guptas and their associates.
Molefe, Singh and Lynne Brown — the former public enterprises minister who was also criticised in part 2 of the Zondo report, released this week — did not respond to requests for comment.
Zondo recommended that Brown’s predecessor as the minister of public enterprises, Malusi Gigaba, be criminally investigated. He cited evidence from former bodyguards that Gigaba, Gama, Molefe, Singh and other Transnet executives accepted bags of cash from the Guptas when they visited the family’s Saxonwold compound.
Mafika Mkhwanazi, the chair of Transnet in 2011 when Gama was reinstated as CEO of TFR, conceded before the Zondo commission in 2020 that the final written warning handed to Gama before his dismissal had been “nonsensical”.
But in his findings Zondo said there had been no basis for the Transnet board under Mkhwanazi to reinstate Gama. Five years later he was appointed Transnet group CEO.
“There was thus a complete capitulation on the part of Transnet during the settlement negotiations, despite Transnet having a very good case on the merits and the fact that, to the knowledge of the board, Mr Gama accepted by then that he was guilty,” said Zondo in the report. He said the only explanation for
Transnet’s actions was political interference.
“President Zuma is the most plausible account. There is simply no other credible explanation for this level of indefensible decision-making,” the report said.
Zondo found that Zuma, in exchanges with the then minister of public enterprises Barbara Hogan, “made no bones about his preference for Mr Gama”.
“Gigaba’s testimony that he was issued with no instructions by president Zuma whatsoever is improbable in the light of Ms Hogan’s evidence and the time frame,” the state capture report said. “Mr Gama was reinstated shortly after Ms Hogan was removed by president Zuma as minister … and replaced by Mr Gigaba.”
Gama told the Sunday Times he and his lawyers would review Zondo’s report and insisted he had done nothing untoward.
“I have spent more than 25 years at Transnet, but if you read the report you would think that Siyabonga Gama was taken from the streets and made the CEO of TFR … They
are trying to Zumarise me,” he said.
“I have never met Mr Zuma to talk about anything related to my career and now they say that I was appointed by Gigaba, even though I had been working at Transnet for years. These are used to make conclusions that I was part of what they call the Gupta enterprise.”
Gama called it “absurd” to conclude he had been involved in instigating corrupt transactions such as those with Guptalinked firms Regiments Capital and Trillian. “Five or six months later I cancelled the Regiments/Trillian contract in Transnet but that doesn’t appear anywhere in the report. So if I was corrupt, and with the Gupta enterprise, why would I cancel their contracts, why would I kill my only cow that gives me milk?”
Gama said it was the entire Transnet board, not Mkhwanazi alone, that found he had been dismissed unfairly in 2010.
Zondo’s finding was that Mkhwanazi had “led the board astray” on the issue.
They are trying very hard to character assassinate and Zumarise me, so that it appears like I was being prepared for some kind of Gupta project Siyabonga Gama
Former Transnet CEO