Events leading up to the Hawks raid on the Gupta family

Former public protector Thuli Madonsela‚ in her 2016 report on state capture‚ directed President Jacob Zuma to appoint a commission of inquiry to investigate whether any official or organ of state had acted unlawfully‚ improperly or corruptly by giving financing facilities to companies linked to the Gupta family.

This included a R659.5-million prepayment that Eskom made to Tegeta Exploration & Resources to acquire the Optimum mine that supplied coal to Eskom.

The Gupta email leaks last year confirmed much of Madonsela's report and shed substantial new light on other alleged improprieties by the family and their wider network of business associates and political allies. The president and his family‚ in particular his son Duduzane Zuma‚ have been placed at the centre of much of the Gupta operations.

After a lengthy legal battle and a ruling by the High Court in Pretoria‚ Zuma finally appointed Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo in January to head a state-capture inquiry.

Current Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane was in the spotlight this week over her controversial report on the Vrede dairy project.

Parliament’s justice and correctional services committee said it would question Mkhwebane about her report while the Democratic Alliance said it would take the report on judicial review‚ calling it a "disgraceful whitewash".

The project to establish the dairy farm in Vrede in the Free State‚ in partnership with Estina‚ saw R220-million being channeled to the project with no benefit being derived by members of the local community. Instead‚ about R84-million made its way into the offshore bank accounts of the Guptas‚ and some of it was used to fund a family wedding.