Deputy President Jacob Zuma is well on his way to getting the all-clear from the state’s ethics watchdogs, even though interest declarations he has made are beset with controversy.
Public Protector Lawrence Mushwana’s report on Zuma’s interests, released by Parliament last Friday, substantially clears him, but only on allegations Mushwana chose to investigate.
Mushwana excluded the bulk of allegations — those that relate to almost R1,2-million in payments by Schabir Shaik to or on behalf of Zuma. Mushwana justified the exclusion, saying that “whether or not the payments allegedly made on behalf of Mr Zuma constituted a contact [sic] interest, gift or financial interest” could only be determined at Shaik’s pending corruption trial, which is “sub judice”.
However, leaks from Parliament’s ethics committee, which is conducting a parallel probe into whether Zuma has received undue benefits and whether he made proper declarations, suggest that that body had no such qualms.
The committee seems to have examined payments on Zuma’s behalf from both Shaik and other sources. If it were not for objections from some committee members on Monday, it might have cleared him by now.
Behind both probes is a dossier forwarded to Parliament by National Director of Public Prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka in August. The dossier details Shaik’s R1,2-million transfers, but also other allegations. These include claims that:
Zuma’s 100% interest in a company, Michigan Investments, had not been properly declared;
In 1999 and 2001 Cay Nominees, a company controlled by well-connected businessman Jurgen Kogl, had made payments into the bond account of Michigan Investments, which holds one of Zuma’s properties, a flat in Killarney, Johannesburg;
In 2000 Nora Fakude-Nkuna, a businesswoman close to Zuma, had settled professional fees relating to
the development of Zuma’s traditional estate at Nkandla in KwaZulu-Natal.
Mushwana’s report dispensed with the first allegation by saying that his 100% interest in Michigan had been declared by Zuma in the confidential section of the register of executive members’ interests. What remains unexplained is why, according to companies registration documents, Michigan still belongs to a previous owner; meaning that information usually in the public domain was not made public.
Mushwana dispensed with the Kogl payments by saying Zuma had declared them in the confidential section. He chose to believe Zuma’s version that this was an interest-bearing loan. If it was interest-free, it should have been declared as a benefit — which it was not.
Mushwana could not fault the payments by Fakude-Nkuna, as they were made before the Executive Members’ Ethics Code, which governs disclosure by Cabinet members, became effective.
The parallel probe by the parliamentary ethics committee came to a head on Monday this week, when its registrar, Fazela Mahomed, submitted a report on her probe into Zuma.
Mahomed’s report is understood to have set the stage to clear Zuma on allegations, based on the same set of facts, that he had received undue benefits from Shaik, Kogl, Fakude-Nkuna and others, and had not properly declared these in the parliamentary register of interests, which is separate from the executive members’ register examined by Mushwana.
Unlike Mushwana, Mahomed also examined the Shaik payments and substantially accepted that all the payments to or on behalf of Zuma had been interest-bearing loans.
If they were indeed loans with interest, Zuma had no obligation to declare them to Parliament. If, conversely, they were gifts or interest-free loans, they should have been declared as benefits. This could have placed Zuma in hot water, as he might have been seen to have lobbied for remuneration, an abuse of influence.
A mini-rebellion by some members of the committee prevented the immediate acceptance of Zuma’s version. African Christian Democratic Party MP Louis Green, a member of the committee, released a statement
soon afterwards saying that some of the supposed proof on which Zuma relied was “documents … only recently drawn up”.
Green’s concern dovetails with a more general scepticism about Zuma’s claims that the payments were interest-bearing loans. The known payments to or on behalf of Zuma total more than R2-million, of which perhaps R1,5-million have been made since 1999, when Zuma became an MP and deputy president. How, critics ask, could he hope to repay that money, plus interest, if these were genuine loans?
Green was suspended from the committee on Tuesday, as he was held to have broken its confidentiality rules by going public.
The committee is expected to reconvene next week, but it is unlikely that African National Congress members will ultimately reject Zuma’s explanations — meaning that he will be cleared. The ANC constitutes a majority of the committee.
“Despite statements promising transparency and accountability in the government, my impression … is that the ANC will continue to close ranks around the deputy president regardless of what evidence is made available,” Green was quoted as saying after his suspension.