Chief Justice Raymond Zondo. (Photo by Veli Nhlapo/Sowetan/Gallo Images via Getty Images)
President Cyril Ramaphosa will receive the first of a three-part report on state capture from the commission chaired by Acting Chief Justice Raymond Zondo on Tuesday, 4 January.
Zondo is expected to hand-deliver the first report at Ramaphosa’s Union Buildings office in Pretoria, followed by a media briefing.
On 21 December the Zondo Commission said it would not meet its year-end deadline to hand over a final report into corruption but would instead hand two interim reports to Ramaphosa before the final report at the end of February. The second part of the report is expected to be handed over to the president by the end of January.
The Mail & Guardian previously reported that Zondo had reached an agreement with the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) for a shorter, reader-friendly summary of its voluminous final report.
The summarised report will be made available to the public and the commission intends that the full report will be used during possible legal reviews by those it names and shames.
In the minutes of a virtual meeting between Zondo and the HSRC, the commission chair suggested that the commission needed the research council to condense the report in the eventuality of legal challenges.
“There is no shortage of people wanting to take the report and its findings on legal review. The more detailed document with the full reasoning can be kept separate and put before the courts should it become necessary. This would give comfort in that in the preparation, the condensed report, the initial reasons for the findings are [not] lost,” the minutes show Zondo as saying.
It is reliably understood that the full report will still be readily available to the public. Zondo conceded to the HSRC that the commission “should not have started [public] hearings before an investigation”, adding that it bowed to public pressure.
The Zondo commission had broken down its workstreams into six parts: power utility Eskom, logistics firm Transnet, public broadcaster SABC, arms maker Denel, aviation, and the sixth stream for other matters.