Testifying: President Cyril Ramaphosa at the Zondo commission. Photo: Luba Lesolle/Gallo
President Cyril Ramaphosa this week conceded to the Zondo commission that the governing party had failed the electorate through egregious abuse of power and public funds for years, four of which he served as deputy to Jacob Zuma. So far, so good.
In an opening statement and in response to questions, Ramaphosa also spoke at length of the party’s ongoing internal reckoning and its commitment to renewal. It was plainly meant for the public gallery: the party prepares for local government polls in October, and his readiness to appear while Zuma risks jail for refusing to testify makes for good optics.
But the president did not provide a clear account of how party and government structures either conspired or collapsed to allow the suspect deployments and corrupt deals that defined state capture.
Between 2014 and 2018, Ramaphosa was deputy president of the country. He’s led the ANC since late 2017 and was head of both government business and the ANC’s deployment committee.
The commission homed in first on cadre deployment and how it enabled the capture of state-owned enterprises through boards and executives hand-picked to further the business interests of the Guptas.
Second, it turned to parliament’s refusal for years to act on reports that the family had become a secondary centre of power.
Ramaphosa blamed the deployments on “massive systems failure” that meant the committee was sidelined on appointments that ran from Brian Molefe at Eskom to Arthur Fraser as director general of the State Security Agency.
Those two names bookended a non-exhaustive list that Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo put to Ramaphosa after asking him to explain how the committee worked, notably whether it merely recommended candidates or prescribed who should be appointed.
[related_posts_sc article_id=”371652″]
Ramaphosa said in the main the committee made recommendations on suitable candidates, but at times the recommendation may have been restricted to a single name.
“It is not impossible for the deployment committee to function in that way because all that it really seeks to do and should seek to do is to get whoever is fit for purpose, and particularly, if you like, in this new reformed era, of making sure that we have people who will execute the task at hand … without feeling that they need to pursue or advance certain side interests.”
Zondo directed him back to the past and pointed to the secondment of Molefe and Anoj Singh to Eskom, the appointment of Daniel Mantsha as chair of Denel, and Siyabonga Gama’s return to Transnet after being sacked for misconduct and his subsequent rise to chief executive.
Ramaphosa said there was a general view at the time that Gama possessed a certain knowledge and competence. As for the rest, he had mentioned to Zuma that the deployment committee was not consulted and was offered a mea culpa.
Zondo asked why individual ministers and the cabinet as a whole did not raise the red flag when malfeasance at parastatals became patent.
At the time, Ramaphosa replied, the collective did not work in an integrated manner.
This proved frustrating to Zondo, who asked Ramaphosa to explain the exact juncture where the party went wrong so that a repeat could be prevented and its promises of self-correction could become credible.
The president replied that to some extent the party was looking to the commission “to ferret out” exactly how the rent-seeking arose.
“I would like you to identify the actual areas where you say as a party we have done our homework, we think this is where we didn’t do what we are supposed to do, this is something we should not have done,” the chairman insisted. “While an acknowledgment is good and it should be given its proper weight, it is even better if one knows what you are talking about.”
Ramaphosa asked if he could do so later in his testimony and Zondo agreed, adding: “It will also give you enough time to look at it properly.”
On Thursday, evidence leader Alec Freund tried for a forensic approach as he asked Ramaphosa why parliament waited five years to appoint an ad hoc committee to investigate information that the Gupta family meddled in cabinet appointments and decisions.
[related_posts_sc article_id=”407370″]
“There was a dropping of the ball at that level, that will be conceded,” the president said.
He rebuffed suggestions that his role as head of government business in parliament meant he had leeway to intervene.
“It is not an executive role and I see it that I am the president,” he said. “It is where you are able to exert pressure on truant ministers to answer questions… to pull them on the carpet … so the role is a little behind the scenes.”
But Freund pointed out that the political committee of the ANC — which was headed by Ramaphosa and, according to him, established to ensure the party worked effectively in parliament — also appeared to have been missing in action as media reports emerged of ministers taking instructions from Saxonwold.
“With the benefit of hindsight all of us would agree that our reading and interpretations of a lot of things that happened were blinded by events at the time,” Ramaphosa said.
“As politicians, we don’t always believe what the media writes because we look at what they write through a particular prism … but in this instance we have to commend them … they played a patriotic role.”
Freund countered that when then deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas revealed in February 2016 that he had been offered a bribe and a cabinet promotion by the Gupta family, this was not a mere report but the word of one of the party’s own — and yet it did not jolt the ANC into action in the legislature.
[related_posts_sc article_id=”217260″]
Ramaphosa said the ANC believed it should deal with the matter internally, conceding that only when the so-called #GuptaLeaks emails surfaced did the party feel there was substantial evidence that necessitated a parliamentary investigation.
“The delayed reaction was not the correct way to handle the matter … I guess,” he said.
He added that the tension between political parties went some way towards explaining why the ANC repudiated a report that the late ANC chief whip Jackson Mthembu had supported an earlier call by the Democratic Alliance for an ad hoc committee to probe state capture.
“I think these types of responses should be seen in the context, the fulcrum of contestation between various parties in parliament, when an issue is raised, how it is raised, who raised it,” he said.
Zondo pointed out that the result was the ANC’s failure to act on a 2012 resolution to improve its oversight function in parliament until five years later, when its caucus finally agreed to set up a committee to probe state capture.
“Once these GuptaLeaks emails came out it became clear to many of us there needed to be a response of one sort or another. The ANC, without having the investigative powers, clearly knew that to get to the bottom of this it would have to rely on other structures,” Ramaphosa said.
“What we should be grateful for is that our democracy, as much as it is a nascent democracy, in 2017 we started seeing a sea change.”
Zondo commented that five years was an unconscionable delay.
Freund moved on to ask why the party did not allow its MPs to vote freely on opposition motions of no confidence against Zuma and in the end drew a concession of sorts from Ramaphosa that politics trumped parliamentary duty.
He himself was at heart “a party animal”, and in that context had to understand the collective predicament where voting to remove a president would mean “actually imploding the executive”.
“And members then have to ask themselves: is that what we want?
“Certainly, if that is the desire which is collectively agreed to, then that is what should be opted for but we are actually saying you need to analyse the situation very carefully so that we don’t just run blindly into something that is emotionally charged.”
[/membership]