Guptas’ reckoning already in the works

It has only been a week and already I miss the Guptas. They provide endless entertainment, from hurt and sincere denials of their outrageous relationship with the presidential family to cheesy tweets like “You were born an original, Don’t die a copy”.

I never really believed they would simply up sticks and leave South Africa, but I am relieved to hear they have merely decamped to attend a family wedding in, of all places, Turkey.

I missed it, but apparently Atul Gupta tweeted that they would be back and intended in future to live in Durban. The tweet was then deleted. But Durban makes sense. It is closer to Nkandla, and out of the reach of the Gauteng ANC.

But in the Gupta flight and the ongoing internal ANC rumblings about whether President Jacob Zuma should resign, a vital ingredient in the Gupta drama has been hidden.

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Largely that is the fault, more likely than not by design, of ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe.

On March 16, Deputy Minister of Finance Mcebisi Jonas issued a statement confirming that members of the Gupta family had offered him the position of finance minister shortly before the then finance minister, Nhlanhla Nene, was fired by Zuma. He didn’t say much more than that.

The Guptas offered up a heartfelt denial. No such meeting had ever taken place, perish the thought!

Amid the uproar that followed, Mantashe was quick to spot the obvious danger and immediately moved to make it go away.

The obvious danger is that merely by making the offer Jonas said they had made, the Guptas may have committed a criminal act that would invite arrest and prosecution.

The same applies to Zuma’s son Duduzane, who is a business partner of the Guptas and who was allegedly present when the offer was made to Jonas.

Mantashe set up his own investigation, inviting any ANC member who had a Gupta story to tell to bring such to his office. A few days later we were told that people were “streaming” to his office with their stories.

But Mantashe’s inquiry is a smoke screen and the results will be used for his own purposes. Jonas’s statement on its own should have been sufficient grounds for a formal charge by the police under the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act. Obviously, that isn’t going to happen, which is in itself a sad reflection on where we are as a country.

But whether the Guptas deny the offer or not, an avowal by a senior member of the government that it was made amounts to prima facie evidence that it happened. It demands to be investigated.

Prima facie is defined in legal dictionaries as an adjective meaning “sufficient to establish a fact or raise an assumption unless disproved or rebutted”. Denial is not rebuttal. In the US, a prima facie case presented to a grand jury would result in certain indictment. Thank goodness for Google!

The DA ’s spokesman on finance, David Maynier, was quick to spot the threat and pounced on it.

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On March 17, the day after Jonas’s revelation, he laid charges under the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act against Atul and Ajay Gupta and Duduzane, at a police station in Cape Town. He even has a case number: CAS1200/3/2016. Of course there will be endless delays. The police will lose the docket. The investigator will retire. Whatever.

But at some stage the affair will land up in a court. Then an appeal and then another court and another, until the Guptas get to the Last Chance Saloon on Constitution Hill in Johannesburg.

In terms of the act, it won’t matter that the Guptas don’t actually have the formal power to appoint cabinet ministers.

And as this saga progresses, Jonas himself will have to supplement his brave but relatively barren revelation with more information. Where and when did the meeting take place? Who was in the room? Was he asked to fire Treasury officials? Was he asked to support the purchase of 9 600MW of nuclear power as finance minister? Was he offered money?

As we now know, the Constitutional Court has loads of patience. It will watch and wait for this despicable moment of treachery to reach it.

I hope the Guptas don’t forget to ask Jacob Zuma to get them a lawyer.