Restoring cred ibility
FORMER president Jacob Zuma will by now be feeling increasingly isolated in his denial of state capture. He seeks to refute it, but few are heeding him.
Accusations of rank skulduggery in the Zuma era are no longer limited to the commentariat, observers or opposition politicians. It is now general belief that wicked efforts to abuse South Africa’s levers of power for personal enrichment were relentless.
How high and how low it went is the business of the Zondo Commission. At this stage of the hearings, however, there appears to be very little debate that it happened.
When Zuma spoke to students in Mthatha three months ago, urging them to contest the allegations of rot during his watch, he asked: “What state capture?” Within days, President Ramaphosa let the world know in a televised address that it was a fact – and the commission had to ascertain how far it went.
He has done so repeatedly, in fact. He is painfully aware of state capture. It is his monumental task to undo the harm that was done to the country in Zuma’s time and deal with the culprits properly.
Ramaphosa has been steadily dealing with some of the figures who featured strongly in the Zuma years. Procedure and openness have hallmarked his corrective moves. It has been a canny strategy, one of care.
The appointment of Shamila Batohi as National Director of Public Prosecutions this week was the latest of these processes. First, there was the patient court removal of the incumbent. Then Ramaphosa, unusually, threw open the process, generating applause. He appointed a qualified panel to interview candidates for this critical post.
Batohi was on a shortlist of five. A career prosecutor, who in her 32 years at it had risen to the prime job in Kwazulu-natal, she has a similar mission in her cornerstone department to Ramaphosa’s: root out the rotten and the duds, restore impartiality and expertise, and mend the criminal justice system.
Announcing her, Ramaphosa wished Batohi and the NPA well in the work ahead. Work indeed. They must be uncompromising and untiring in rescuing a department that is crucial to South Africa.