Zondo faults Ramaphosa’s frustrating long game

NEWS ANALYSIS

Chief Justice Raymond Zondo has, in part VI volume II of his report on state capture, delivered a damning verdict on the political long game President Cyril Ramaphosa has played for the past eight years.

He found, in short, that the strategy has served neither the country nor the president well and that he could have done more to resist state capture.

“While no counterfactual can be proven, we must ask whether these processes could have been arrested sooner if powerful figures like President Ramaphosa had been willing to act with more urgency,” Zondo wrote in a chapter devoted to the president’s parsimonious testimony to the commission.

“Considering the dire straits we find ourselves in, the effectiveness of President Ramaphosa’s decision to remain within the state and the party is not a given.”

The assessment that Ramaphosa hesitated as deputy president and continued to do so as president — when he could have shown courage and acted on the knowledge at his disposal — could not have come at a more apt or darker hour. 

In paragraph 283, Zondo noted that Ramaphosa conceded that he knew in 2018 — when he chose to retain Arthur Fraser as a director general — that he faced allegations of serious crimes committed while he held that position at the State Security Agency.

“Various serious findings were made against Mr Fraser over his coordination of the PAN [Principal Agent Network] and later during his tenure as DG,” Zondo wrote.

“Yet in April 2018, he was redeployed by President Ramaphosa to be the director general of correctional services. President Ramaphosa was asked to explain this appointment. He confirmed that he knew of some of the allegations at the time but would only say that he was waiting for the commission’s report.”

The rest is history and hubris. 

When Ramaphosa’s game farm was robbed of a reportedly vast sum of foreign denomination two years later, Fraser was free to gather information for later use. The final instalment of the Zondo report has reiterated that Fraser is suspected of subverting state funds for illicit spy activities and recommended that the Hawks reopen the corruption investigation into his parallel spy operation, the Principal Agent Network, and they might now do so.

In the meanwhile, Fraser has put Ramaphosa’s back against the wall by walking into Rosebank police station to open a case of money-laundering that has sent up calls for the president to step aside six months ahead of the ANC’s elective conference. It has also left him, whatever the outcome, indelibly tainted.

The president’s suggestion to Zondo from the witness stand that he feared he could not count on his party’s support while he was deputy to former president Jacob Zuma and risked being ousted may be as true now as it was then.

Zondo disagreed with Ramaphosa’s calculation that as deputy president his best option was to “remain and resist” — but only to the extent that the political climate allowed — because confronting state capture would have led to him being fired, nor that he in fact offered much resistance.

He dismissed Ramaphosa’s contention that he only realised that allegations of state capture could be true after the release of the Gupta leaks as implausible. By then Fikile Mbalula had told the ANC he learnt of his future appointment as finance minister from the Guptas, the family’s wedding guests had landed at Waterkloof landing had happened and Nhlanhla Nene had been fired as finance minister.

These events were enough to persuade Ramaphosa that state capture was happening, he said.

“President Ramaphosa had nothing to lose by speaking out against what was happening.

“The option he chose did not prevent state capture from happening.”

Only Zuma could fire him, Zondo said, and Ramaphosa did not recount anything that proved the president had been ready to do so. 

“Speaking out and being more confrontational during his deputy presidency would not entirely have curtailed his ability to affect change,” he said.

Yet the president’s inference was a profound one, he said, because it suggested not only that collusion with corruption was the dominant ethos but that Ramaphosa was in minority and did not have the power to prevail.

“A further implication is that he could not count on the ruling party to defend him in such a scenario.”

  Zondo suggested that had Ramaphosa been more vocal, others in the party may have strength from it. Had Zuma fired him, he added, it would not have meant the end of his political career, because he could have gone to Nasrec and challenged him for the presidency of the party.

  There was a precedent for it, he noted, in that Zuma did precisely that after he was sacked by then president Thabo Mbeki in 2005. 

   Moreover, had Zuma fired Ramaphosa for opposing grand corruption, it “may have given hope to lots of others of members of cabinet who may have been looking for someone to lead in this regard”.

It is doubtful that Ramaphosa could believe he now holds enough support in the party to act with alacrity on Zondo’s recommendations, which include him reconsidering the tenure of his ally, Zizi Kodwa, as deputy minister of state security, because he was financially indebted to a former executive of tech company EOH, which allegedly donated millions of rands to the ANC in exchange for a City of Johannesburg tender.

Zondo has further recommended that ANC chairperson and mineral resources and energy Gwede Mantashe be investigated on corruption charges for allowing logistics company Bosasa to provide free security updates to three of his homes. 

Mantashe has vowed to take Zondo’s findings on legal review, and if he were to turn on the president, Ramaphosa will go to the party’s elective conference in December without the crucial support of the Eastern Cape province.

The report also urged an investigation into Human Settlements Deputy Minister David Mahlobo for breaching the law to direct state security operations and shift vast sums of state money to Zuma while he held that portfolio under Zuma. His continued tenure has arguably not been a function of his talent but the fact that he carries clout as a member of the ANC’s national executive committee.

There has been every indication that parliament was in no rush to act on the recommendations of part IV of the Zondo report, which contained the findings against Mantashe and other prominent MPs.

It only was under duress from the opposition that the speaker released an internal legal opinion that recommended steps against sitting MPs fingered in the report and noted should Mantashe be convicted of corruption he would lose his seat in the national assembly.

Zondo found that the party line that disciplinary action on corruption was dependent on a finding by a court of law was untenable.

One would expect that the ANC would hold its members, and its leaders in particular, to higher standards than “has not been convicted in a court of law”, he said.

The report does not spare Ramaphosa with regard to the donation from the Watson family to his campaign for the presidency of the ANC. It was not true that he had been fully in the dark as to all sources of campaign funding and the one from the founders of Bosasa was among those, Zondo said.

“President Ramaphosa conceded that the ANC should have known about Bosasa’s unethical and unlawful activities and therefore should not have accepted donations. This surely would apply to his own campaign as well.”

He added: “It is clear from his own testimony that he did know about certain donors, and that the firewall supposedly protecting him from feeling beholden to donors was not absolute.”

  It is, in theory, never too late to locate one’s courage. But, to borrow from Zondo, there is no counterfactual to confirm that had Ramaphosa acted boldly with no heed as to whether his may only have been a single term presidency, he might have been more secure now.

And a statement from the presidency on Thursday suggests he will continue to play for time.

The statement notes that Zondo made “certain observations” about Ramaphosa’s decisions, and said: “The president has committed to consider the commission’s report in its totality and to represent a comprehensive response and implementation plan to parliament.”

Ramaphosa will not respond to questions about specific findings. The approach is the same he has adopted regarding Farmgate, citing “due process” as reason for not offering an explanation for why he failed to declare foreign currency or disclose the theft.

His calculation might well be that acting now would give his foes time to regroup before December. Sticking to his initial undertaking to set out a plan to implement the findings of the report four months after the final chapters were released has the merit of keeping him in character and everyone else in suspense.

This story has been updated with further findings from the Zondo report.

[/membership]