'Guptas have bled SA dry': Cronin

SA Communist Party veteran Jeremy Cronin says the ANC is grappling with how to deal with the controversial Gupta family, who have had a parasitic influence on the party and the government.

Cronin, the SACP's outgoing first deputy general secretary, said the issue went to the very heart of the ruling party.

"The ANC is clearly hamstrung and paralysed in confronting the issue of the Guptas because it goes deep into the ANC itself."

Cronin was speaking on the sidelines of the party's six-day 14th national congress in Boksburg on the East Rand.

"We have got a very important responsibility as the SACP to help to provide a voice to many in the alliance but who find, for one reason or the other, that the structures themselves are not working. They are disabled by the factional problems they have.

"We need to make the link between the problems of state capture and the persisting problems of unemployment, poverty and equality," said Cronin.

He said state capture had "bled dry" key state entities.

"What the Gupta faction has done is preyed upon the more effective delivery structures in the state, whether it's the social grant payment system, which has worked amazingly, whether it's Eskom and Transnet, which have their own challenges, which in previous years were critical arms of delivery in terms of infrastructure and logistics.

"What has happened with state capture is that those critical points of delivery and professional capacity have been bled dry with parasitic looting," he said.

The SACP was the first member of the ANC-led tripartite alliance to call for a judicial commission of inquiry into state capture.

Cronin said divisions within the top leadership of the ANC were the root cause of the party's failure to deal with the Guptas, who continue to milk the country dry.