PETER BRUCE: Rob Davies must come clean at Zondo inquiry about his interactions with the Guptas
When this long-serving ANC minister attended the Gupta wedding at Sun City in 2013, did it not dawn on him that this family was poison to our country?
Let’s start this out by saying that, like former finance minister Nhlanhla Nene, trade and industry minister Rob Davies is a fundamentally decent man. There’s integrity there, and it was no surprise that when asked in a parliamentary question from the DA whether he had ever met with the fugitive Gupta family he did not hesitate to say that, indeed, he had, and on numerous occasions. It’s important he said that because the only reason Nene had to resign after telling the Zondo commission into state capture that he too had met the Guptas a few times and had tea at their home was because he had earlier told a TV interviewer he barely knew them. That wasn’t true, and the country is in no mood to tolerate any more lies or spin. Davies’s more forthright initial answer, however, will also get him into trouble. It has a “so what if I met them?” quality to it. He met a lot of business people, he said, and Helen Zille had also been to their house. What Zille has to do with it I don’t know, bu...
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