SA must ensure that nothing like state capture ever happens again, public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan said yesterday.
This was his damning assessment in his reaction to chief justice Raymond Zondo’s fourth state capture report detailing state capture at Eskom and the Treasury, and the asbestos and housing scandals in the Free State among other issues. The report highlights former president Jacob Zuma’s complicity and the failure of the ANC to lift a finger to halt state capture.
“The Zondo report has finally exposed what was really going on during state capture of the key institutions in South Africa including Eskom, Transnet, Sars [the SA Revenue Service] and many other institutions,’’ Gordhan told the Sunday Times.
Gordhan, who Zondo lauded together with former finance minister Nhlanhla Nene for having saved the Treasury from the Guptas, called for those implicated by the report to be held to account.
“We must stop having short memories because recording this past is a very important part for the rebuilding of the future, and we have got to ensure that these institutions have solid foundations so that they serve all the people of South Africa for decades to come,” he said.
Gordhan said the report “gives due acknowledgment to the struggle that people like ourselves and key officials in the Treasury put up in the order to ensure that the Treasury never falls into the hands of the Guptas, for which eventually people like deputy minister [Mcebisi] Jonas and myself were fired”.
“Remember that Derek Hanekom was also fired, [Ngoako] Ramatlhodi was also dismissed. Anybody who stood in the way was fired in March 2017.
“It is important that all sections of society understand the negative and devastating impact that corruption has on institutions and that the real corrupters must be held to account.”
More importantly, he said, “those who have benefited in one way or another must stop being treated as little heroes because they are not. These are the people who have done South Africa and the 60-million people in South Africa a huge disservice by accumulating money for themselves through these means.”
This, he said, should serve as a warning to all of those who are thinking of stealing from the poor in future.
All of us must be firmly committed against corrupt deals, corrupters and corruption and not become victims of fake news, fake narratives, which are used by the corrupt in order to mask their nefarious activity
— Public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan
“That is why all of us must be firmly committed against corrupt deals, corrupters and corruption and not become victims of fake news, fake narratives, which are used by the corrupt in order to mask their nefarious activity.”
Gordhan and his colleagues, including Jonas and former Treasury director-general Lungisa Fuzile, were hailed in the Zondo report, but the political party he owes allegiance to was slammed.
“The ANC and the ANC government should be ashamed that this happened under their watch,” Zondo writes, putting the party and its former president Jacob Zuma at the centre of a criminal conspiracy to help the Gupta family capture SA.
The report will cast a long shadow over the party’s attempts to present a reformed face under President Cyril Ramaphosa, whose election thwarted Zuma’s apparent second attempt to enable a Gupta takeover of the Treasury.
“The question that the people of South Africa are entitled to ask is: where was the ANC as the Guptas took control of important SOEs such as Transnet, Eskom and Denel? Where were they? What were they doing?” Zondo writes in his report.
While Zuma and top ANC figures spent years attempting to discredit critics of the Guptas’ influence in the government and SOEs with the “white monopoly claim’’ devised by London-based PR agency Bell Pottinger, it fell to civic organisations, journalists, non-governmental organisations, opposition parties in parliament and ordinary people who staged marches to protest against the Guptas and Zuma’s role in state capture, Zondo notes.
Zondo’s report starkly outlines how the ANC marched to Zuma’s tune, with Gupta-approved ministers placed in key posts, including finance, mineral resources and public enterprises, to smooth the path for a takeover by the family and its lieutenants.
One of those is the current chair of parliament’s transport portfolio committee, Mosebenzi Zwane, who Zondo described as a “Gupta minister”. He has never faced sanction.
“There can be no explanation why President Zuma overlooked so many able and competent ANC members of Parliament and brought Mr Zwane from outside of Parliament so that he could appoint him to the position of Minister of Mineral Resources,” the report states.
Zwane played a significant role in the Gupta family’s state capture scheme, even venturing into illegal actions and threats to help it along.
The National Treasury’s deputy director-general for tax and financial sector policy, Ismail Momoniat, detailed to the state capture commission in an affidavit how Zwane together with Zuma attempted to weaken anti-corruption and anti-money laundering legislation to protect the corrupt activities of the Guptas.
Momoniat revealed that Zwane tried to manipulate the cabinet into appointing a judicial inquiry into the SA Reserve Bank and Treasury.
“It is shocking that he even went as far as threatening to have the government remove [the licence of one of SA's banks], which in my view would constitute an act of economic sabotage given the consequences not only of a bank failure, but it would have had dire consequences on the economy as a whole,” Momoniat said. This was after major banks cut ties with the Guptas following suspicious transactions in their accounts.
Zwane even flew to Switzerland in 2015 with the Guptas to ensure that Glencore sold Optimum coal mine to them. On that trip, Zwane dodged South African officials and was not even received or accompanied by ambassador Claudinah Ramosepele, which is the norm when a minster is on a working visit in a foreign country.
Zwane said he did not have a reaction to the report for now.
“I am busy studying this thing and weighing my options in terms of the next move,” he said, adding he was also consulting his lawyers to chart a way forward.
Political analyst professor Mcebisi Ndletyana said the Zondo report is an indictment on the ANC.
“It is a serious indictment, especially for a national liberation movement,” he said.
Ndletyana said being a national liberation movement meant asserting the sovereignty of the country and bringing dignity to the people of the country.
“For their president to be controlled by Indian immigrants, it's a disgrace. They are not even worthy of being called a liberation movement,” he said.
Ndletyana blamed state capture on the entire party, not just Zuma, saying some of the money stolen during state capture was spent in the ANC. He said it was also the party that brought Zuma in and allowed him to do whatever he did.
Ndletyana said he doubted the party would change its ways because even current contests in the party involve tainted individuals.
How could a president want to put such a person in charge of the country’s finances? There are no words to describe this conduct on President’s Zuma’s part
— State capture report, part 4
In a story with few heroes, ANC stalwarts Gordhan and Nene were, Zondo says, ostracised by their cabinet colleagues when they resisted the imposition of the unsuitable Des van Rooyen as finance minister, a post he held for three days as SA’s financial wellbeing was sacrificed in the name of serving the Guptas.
“The reason for that hostility by members of the cabinet towards the National Treasury may have been because they identified themselves with President Zuma’s wishes with regards to those transactions or projects because their departments also had transitions or projects that they wanted the National Treasury to approve which it did not approve,' says the report.
Among the projects Gordhan and Nene are said to have resisted were the nuclear deal, the Denel Asia venture and the SA Airways Airbus transaction.
“It appropriate to say that the fact that the Guptas and President Zuma failed to capture our National Treasury even after their relentless attempts to do so over a long period of time is due largely to the ministers of finance that SA had during those years, namely minister Nhlanhla Nene and minister Pravin Gordhan,” the report states.
“It is almost a miracle that the National Treasury was saved from the tentacles of the Guptas. I shudder to think what would have happened to this country if President Zuma was not forced to remove Des van Rooyen and his advisers out of the National Treasury.
“How could a president want to put such a person in charge of the country’s finances? There are no words to describe this conduct on President’s Zuma’s part, except to say that he must have been determined to give the Guptas direct access to the nation’s Treasury, to hand the control of our National Treasury to the Guptas before he left office.”
Zondo says the country owes a debt of gratitude to Lungisa Fuzile and Treasury staff.
He also criticised the ANC for not having brought to account Zwane and then Free State premier Ace Magashule.
Another ANC minister, public enterprises minister Lynne Brown, went out of her way to get Gupta crony Brian Molefe installed as Eskom CEO. After a damning public protector report, Molefe left Eskom vowing to clear his name, and the ANC obliged by giving him a seat in the National Assembly.
Among those named as wrongdoers in Zondo’s latest report, deputy minister responsible for state security Zizi Kodwa has slammed the recommendation against him by Zondo.
Zondo recommends that President Cyril Ramaphosa consider Kodwa’s position because of his “tainted relationship” with controversial businessman and former EOH boss Jehan Mackay.
During the hearings, the commission heard that Mackay funded Kodwa’s luxury holidays and lent him more than R1.7m.
Yesterday Kodwa responded: “We have reached a repayment settlement agreement on these loans with Mr Mackay. The process has started towards repaying the full loan amounts with interest, as agreed.
“The notion that I am 'beholden’ is unsubstantiated and false. Whilst the commission report found no impropriety on my part ... it makes recommendations which aren’t supported by any finding. I will take the report on review.”
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