RANJENI MUNUSAMY: Zondo inquiry witnesses suffer abuse, while perpetrators live in luxury or await their return to parliament
Extract:
A former government official who is still to testify at the Zondo commission confided this week that he is questioning whether it was still worth doing so. Considering the avalanche of damning evidence that has been presented at the inquiry over the past seven months of public hearings, he says it is quite ridiculous that there is still scepticism about whether the state was captured.
Even more incredible is how the perpetrators of state capture are able to agitate society and demonise those giving evidence, without consequences.
They claim that the existence of state capture can only be determined once judge Raymond Zondo presents his final report — as if the crippled state institutions, the billions the Guptas and their cohorts drained from the fiscus, and intermittent power blackouts are not glaring enough evidence of the devastation of state capture. It is very telling that after committing to clean up the state and listening to months of exhaustive testimony about the political rot, the ANC did not think it necessary to disqualify those who enabled and benefited from corruption from their election list. The ANC national election list looks like an opposition party campaign prank to display the worst side of the ANC. How Mosebenzi Zwane, Faith Muthambi, Bathabile Dlamini, Nomvula Mokonyane, Malusi Gigaba, Tina Joemat-Pettersson and David Mahlobo passed any form of “vetting” is bizarre. The inclusion of the gallery of deplorables is like a homage to Jacob Zuma’s “nine wasted years”. When former finance mi...
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