THE THICK END OF THE WEDGE: Let’s have an apartheid money inquiry
Jacob Zuma would have nothing to lose (and a lot to gain), so he could actually appoint a real judge with a real budget to do the job, writes Peter Bruce
As distractions go, the leaking of the public protector’s Report 12 of 2016-17, to wit, the "alleged failure by government to recover funds borrowed to Absa", is proving to be a big one. Obviously its leaking has a strictly political purpose. It is designed to counter claims by President Jacob Zuma’s opponents that he has allowed the state to be "captured" by his cronies, notably the Gupta family. It does this by harking back to commercial and fiscal malfeasance in the dying years of apartheid, when the Reserve Bank decided it was duty bound to rescue a banking group called Bankorp. There, it seems to want to say, whites did it too! You bet they did. There is lots of apartheid money lying around. I drive daily past the imposing homes of people I know made money busting sanctions. But I always thought the point about the "new" SA was that it was supposed to be a better place than the old one. It is interesting that while former public protector Thuli Madonsela did much of the work on...
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