RANJENI MUNUSAMY: Where is the ANC's outrage at the treatment of Mcebisi Jonas?
'Where is its outrage that one of its senior members was threatened with death if he acted according to his constitutional duty to report a crime?'
EXTRACT
The ANC NEC shut down an internal investigation into state capture and buried its head in the sand.
Not even the great Zuma vanquisher, President Cyril Ramaphosa, had anything to say about the Gupta infestation in the state until he was ready to make a bid for the ANC leadership.
Jonas told justice Raymond Zondo on Friday that Ajay Gupta said the family had the ability to destroy his political career, and, when he refused his offer of a bribe, threatened to kill him if he disclosed what had transpired.
He also described how difficult it was to confide in anyone at the time, apart from Nene and Pravin Gordhan, because of the hostility facing senior staff in the National Treasury.
"The whole state was in favour of state capture," Jonas said. He said the Treasury was utterly dependent on political support, particularly from the president, but it did not have it.
Mcebisi Jonas wasn't at the ANC's 54th national conference at Nasrec in December. Apart from the security threats that would have made his movement at a mass event difficult, he had another problem. Jonas did not align with either of the factions facing off at the elective conference. He was not interested in joining the shootout between those supporting either Cyril Ramaphosa or Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma to be president and, as a result, saw no way to meaningfully participate in the conference. Watching Jonas give testimony at the state capture commission of inquiry on Friday, it was understandable why he felt so politically isolated. Jonas's decision in March 2016 to expose the attempt by the Guptas to appoint him finance minister and pay him a R600m bribe alienated him from many of his comrades in the ANC. At the time, the ANC was still doing everything in its power to cheer on and protect the then president, Jacob Zuma. By the time Jonas spoke out, Nhlanhla Nene had been fired and ...
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