In a day of testimony that will be remembered for many hours to come, President Cyril Ramaphosa explained that he fought state capture as hard as he could, which was not at all because it might have got him fired, but still surprisingly hard given state capture didn’t really exist until just before it was discovered and stopped.
According to the president, it “became increasingly clearer — through the so-called Gupta leaks and other revelations — that a network of individuals was seemingly colluding with senior government officials to occupy key positions and ‘capture’ key institutions”.
Thank God for those “so-called Gupta leaks and other revelations” or poor Cyril might still be in the dark.
I mean yes, he was warning the ANC about corruption 25 years ago and sure, he watched the arms deal play out and former national police commissioner Jackie Selebi get convicted for consorting with mafia bosses, and local municipalities rack up billions in dodgy expenditure every year without any repercussions, and ANC cadres help themselves in so many scandals that we’ve stopped counting.
And yes, he read former public protector Thuli Madonsela’s report, “Secure In Comfort”, laying out how former president Jacob Zuma and his enablers allegedly looted R250m from taxpayers to acquire, in Madonsela’s words, “opulence on a grand scale”.
And yes, he knew part of the reason Zuma knew he would get away with this was the “Premier League” of loyal premiers who placed their patronage networks above their oaths of office.
And yes, he was deputy president when the ANC voted as a bloc against Zuma being forced to pay back the money, and when the ANC-run state refused to obey international law and arrest Sudanese tyrant Omar al-Bashir while he was in SA.
And sure, he watched the Guptas annex a strategic key point in 2013 and was no doubt briefed that the state’s top security cluster had a six-hour meeting about it, and yes, he heard Cosatu’s Zwelinzima Vavi accuse them of being a “shadow government”, and yes, in 2016 he heard former ANC MP Vytjie Mentor say the Guptas offered to make her the minister of public enterprises if she discontinued SAA’s route to India, which would allow the Gupta-linked Jet Airways to take over.
And yes, in late 2016 he read another Madonsela report, titled “State of Capture”, or even just the front cover, which read: “Report on an investigation into alleged improper and unethical conduct by the President and other state functionaries relating to alleged improper relationships and involvement of the Gupta family in the removal and appointment of Ministers and Directors of State-Owned Enterprises resulting in improper and possibly corrupt award of state contracts and benefits to the Gupta family’s businesses.”
Thank God for those 'so-called Gupta Leaks and other revelations' or poor Cyril might still be in the dark.
But is that enough to suspect the ANC is a festering, filthy hollowed-out husk? Of course not.
No, without the Gupta leaks in 2017 he might never have started to get the nagging feeling that all was not well in his party and country.
Once that feeling took hold, however, his course was clear.
“I had five options,” explained Ramaphosa. “Resign, speak out, acquiesce and abet, remain and keep silent or remain and resist.”
And so resist he did, as hard as he could. And what a resistance it was, apparently starting after the Gupta leaks in May 2017 and lasting a whole seven months, before he won over Premier League member DD Mabuza at Nasrec by apparently offering him a timeshare in Moscow, and became president.
I don’t like being lied to by my president. It doesn’t feel good. But despite the pungent odour of dishonesty — or at least strategic truth-avoidance and revisionist history — that clung to Ramaphosa’s testimony on Wednesday, I grudgingly have to make some concessions.
The first is that he did exactly what was required.
Ramaphosa has miles to go before his position is safe. If he is to survive, he still needs to move slowly, fudging as he goes, all the while trying to distance himself from the people around him without making them feel judged or isolated or alarmed; trying to escape being implicated in the dirtier workings of the corrupt and capricious extraction machine he now leads.
I must also concede that his testimony was presidential, in that he said exactly what the presidents of most countries would say were they in the same position.
Which brings me to my third concession; the somewhat defeatist admission that it feels better to have been lied to by a president testifying before a commission of inquiry into corruption than to have been met with nothing but contemptuous silence because such a commission hasn’t been convened at all.
If my choices are Ramaphosa’s disingenuous waffle and revisionism or “Heh heh heh” from his predecessor, I know which I prefer.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.