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Picture: 123RF/BELCHONOK
Picture: 123RF/BELCHONOK

The Zondo commission, as recommended in Thuli Madonsela’s 2016 “State of Capture” report, has sat for four years and its final cost will be more than R1bn. It was primarily supposed to investigate the nexus between former president Jacob Zuma and the Gupta family.

While the first two volumes have done this, they have also shown South Africans that the governing ANC was, and still is, irredeemably corrupt.       

The FBI defines a criminal enterprise as: “A group of individuals with an identified hierarchy or comparable structure engaged in significant criminal activity.” The Mafia, South American drug cartels  and the Gestapo exemplify criminal enterprises. Given the evidence detailed thus far by acting chief justice Raymond Zondo, it can be argued that the ANC is also a criminal enterprise.

I’m not a lawyer, but as the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) is unlikely, on current form, to have any of the dramatis personae in jail for years, civil society should investigate if  a private prosecution under SA law in terms of section 332 of the Criminal Procedure Act, the Prevention of Organised Crime Act or the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act could be brought against the ANC as a corporate entity.

A billion rand of evidence sifted, considered and presented by one of the country’s finest legal minds lies steaming on a platter. Almost countless examples of corruption are there to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the ANC is indeed a criminal organisation.

If the prosecution were successful, all members and donors of the ANC would be guilty of criminal offences and law-abiding South Africans would withhold further payment of  taxes until the ANC government was jailed en masse.     

James Cunningham
Camps Bay

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