/ 6 October 2016

An interview with the public protector could again spell trouble for Zuma

Contested territory: Public Protector Thuli Madonsela's popularity is so great that voters jokingly looked for her name on ballot papers in last week's local elections.
Contested territory: Public Protector Thuli Madonsela's popularity is so great that voters jokingly looked for her name on ballot papers in last week's local elections.

NEWS ANALYSIS

The popularity of the phrase notwithstanding, Thuli Madonsela is not investigating “state capture”, the outgoing public protector said this week.

“It is the media that calls it ‘state capture’ … We are going into very specific allegations against very specific people.”

Those allegations deal with the Gupta family rather than President Jacob Zuma – that the family “corruptly offered” Cabinet jobs and that the Cabinet seemed awfully keen to get involved when major banks decided to deny service to the family and its business interests.

Along the way, though, Madonsela is due to sit across a table from Zuma to talk about those allegations and his relationship with the Gupta family, both their offices confirmed this week.

If history is any guide, both will be reluctant to discuss the content of the meeting before Madonsela officially reports on the matter, something she is determined to do, but could not guarantee would happen, by Friday October 14, the day before her term expires.

Whether or not she meets that deadline, though, and whenever the outcome becomes public, history also suggests Zuma could be in for a rough ride.

In the last half of 2013, things were going pretty well for him. Late the previous year Zuma had told Parliament that he and his family had paid for all the upgrades to their homes at Nkandla and, because of pervasive secrecy, nobody could prove any different. A few months later a government department released an “investigation report” that exonerated Zuma.

“Allegations that the president had used state resources to build or upgrade his personal dwellings are unfounded,” said Public Works Minister Thulas Nxesi.

Then, on August 11 2013, Zuma met Madonsela and made a terrible mistake.

We do not know whether Madonsela, the advocate, cornered Zuma to make the admission, or whether he thoughtlessly offered it of his own volition. We know only, in paraphrased fashion, what he said.

“He indicated that he requested the building of the kraal as the number of his cattle had increased,” Madonsela later wrote in her turning-point report on Nkandla. “He also stated that he would be willing to refund the state for the cost incurred in this regard.”

In one injudicious comment, Zuma had shattered the official line: that he had never asked for any of the improvements the state implemented at Nkandla, and could not be held responsible for payment on work that had effectively been done behind his back.

Factually, it made little difference. Madonsela, and later the Constitutional Court, held Zuma responsible for part of the Nkandla expenditure because of what he should have known and what he should have done – and how he benefited. What he knew and when he knew it made little difference. But politically it was a bombshell.

“He lied to us,” a member of the ANC executive told the Mail & Guardian much later. “He told us he didn’t know. And we defended him.”

The sense of betrayal did not fade quickly.

As was the case with Nkandla, Zuma has said remarkably little over years of continuing allegations of an unduly close relationship between him and the Gupta family. As with Nkandla, what Zuma knew and when he knew it is important, at least politically for an ANC recently keen to establish anti-corruption credentials. Were allegations ever put to him, and did he act on them?

And, as with Nkandla, some nominally uninvolved players have entered the fray in what appear to be efforts to delay and cloud investigations, albeit players of a much different calibre.

Before the Nkandla report was finally released, challenges seeking to end the investigation or suppress the publication of the report came from the state attorney, the chief state law adviser, the Cabinet’s combined security cluster (as well as individual ministers in it), and Zuma’s office. Arguments included national security, a lack of knowledge of security hardware on Madonsela’s part, and several convoluted legal theories.

The charge against the “state capture” report, on the other hand, has had less weight behind it, and seems to have been far less successful in delaying proceedings.

Opposition to the investigation has also been led by the fringe group, Black First Land First, which invaded the office of the public protector in July and locked staff in an office with some of its members, then refused to let those staffers leave, although it insisted they were not hostages.

The group this week said “all corruption must be given the same attention”, that Madonsela is serving the goal of “regime change” and the interests of white capital, and must not release a report on the Gupta family unless it also covers allegations two decades old of looting of the Reserve Bank.

Also this week, the Citizen newspaper published a letter written by arms-deal fixer Fana Hlongwana to Madonsela. He disputed that a Gupta family member had offered Deputy Finance Minister Mcebisi Jonas the job as finance minister at a meeting he had facilitated.

At that meeting, Hlongwana said in the letter, “a Gupta family member [who he did not name] entered the room briefly and then left”.

In March, the Gupta family issued a statement on reports that Jonas had been offered the top finance job twice. “To be absolutely clear: there was no meeting at all,” the family said.