'State capture could have resulted in dictatorship': Frank Chikane

ANC veteran Frank Chikane believes if the state capture trajectory had continued, it would have birthed a government dictatorship in South Africa controlled by group of people akin to a mafia.

Chikane, who was testifying at the state capture inquiry on Tuesday, was responding to questions from commission chairman Raymond Zondo about whether there was a clear division of duty between members of the ANC who also served in government.

Zondo said: "There is a certain reality about certain things. That is why somebody who is a member of parliament who may have taken an oath that includes putting the interests of the people of SA above everything else, where they might feel that I think what’s good for the country is ‘A’ but maybe that’s not what my party thinks".

He asked Chikane how the ANC responded to members who did not comply with the party's stance on various issues.

"It may be that it becomes relevant to look at how a party that is the governing party might deal with people who it perceives does things not the way it wants them to do things. Does it punish people for doing their job? Should that be allowed?"

Chikane responded by comparing a normal government to that of a captured state.

"In a normal society and democracy, the party would not act in a way that would intend violating or breaking the law deliberately. Unless there are people who are captured for other purposes then, of course, they would behave in a certain way," he said.

"In this particular case, I made the case that the risk for the state is that if this level of corruption of the system had been achieved, it would mean that the integrity of the state would have been totally compromised," he said.

"This would be the birth, for me, of a dictatorship and a country controlled by a mafia. With evidence that has come to the attention of this commission and the public, I am now convinced the Gupta family was not an accident of history.

"The effort to reach out to me and many others directly or through family members suggests there was a more intelligent operation in preparation for a larger project to capture the state and use it for their own personal gain."

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