'How to Steal a Country' is a gripping breakdown of the state capture saga

Facebook feeds during the Covid-19 lockdown are increasingly filled with lamentations on the state of the nation and pleas that we make sure to use this moment to re-imagine a better version of the world.

How to Steal a Country, Rehad Desai and Mark Kaplan's pertinent and effective documentary, serves as a short, sharp refresher course on state capture and the terrible, long-lasting and unresolved consequences of the wholesale looting and profiteering that a decade of blatant daylight robbery perpetuated by Jacob Zuma and his cronies left us with.

Refreshingly free of heavy-handed editorialising and without preaching, the film simply tells the story of the Guptas, Zuma, his cronies and the international accounting, consultancy and PR firms that helped them offload an estimated R1-trillion of state funds into their pockets.

The documentary is told predominantly through interviews with the celebrated journalists whose work on the infamous Gupta Leaks e-mails exposed a complicated web of deals and political connections that enabled enormous theft of our country's resources.

The film offers a broad but thorough breakdown of the actors and events in what remains the most blatant and brazen confidence trick ever pulled on the people of SA.

It also offers a powerful and necessary call to avoid the kind of collective amnesia that we often allow ourselves to indulge in as an easy escape from having to face our uncomfortable truths. With the Zondo commission on hold and our attention anxiously focused on Covid-19 and what happens next, it's still of paramount importance that those responsible for state capture be brought to book and that it never be allowed to happen again.

How to Steal a Country shows us what happened, who was responsible, how we found out — and leaves the question of what we need to do about it firmly in our court. Here's hoping that this time we make the right choice. 

• 'How to Steal a Country' is available on Showmax.