It took the ANC six years before acknowledging the phenomenon of state capture and openly backing investigations into it despite reports of its creeping and corrosive effect within its own structures and the government.
President Cyril Ramaphosa dropped this bombshell when he appeared before the Zondo commission into state capture, accompanied by a large delegation of the party’s national officials and members of the national executive committee (NEC).
Ramaphosa has been invited to detail what the ANC and its leadership had known and done about corruption and state capture allegations.
He openly told the commission that the party had only formally took the decision to back the probe into state capture at its 2017 elective conference, six years after the allegations became public.
The ANC failed to take a stance despite mounting calls for investigations from alliance partners, veterans, as well as a direct testimony by NEC members that the controversial Guptas had prior knowledge of ministerial appointments as early as 2011.
In a clear admission that the party’s leaders had been unable to act on former president Jacob Zuma and his criminally implicated associates, Ramaphosa said the ability to act on corruption within the ANC had partly depended on “the balance of power within its structures”.
Ramaphosa had been the party’s deputy president since 2012 before he took over from Zuma in 2017.
“The alignment of views within such an organisation is further influenced by access to the offices of state, where the ability to appoint and dismiss – and even to dispense patronage – is concentrated among a few individuals. For the ANC, this was compounded by its own subjective challenges,” he said.
He said the ANC was willing to admit its shortcomings and called on the commission to get to the bottom of the malfeasance that had taken place over the past years.
Ramaphosa, however, moved to defend the party’s cadre deployment policy, which he said was a critical instrument to achieve its transformation agenda, demographic and gender representation.
The policy has been blamed for enabling the appointment of rogue officials and board members of state-owned enterprises (SOEs).
Ramaphosa, however, insisted that the ANC had identified suitable candidates for such positions through a rigorous, complex process that involved the cabinet. “Candidates are still expected to submit their applications, meet the necessary requirements and be subjected to the normal processes of recruitment, selection and appointment,” he said.
Zondo, however, quizzed Ramaphosa on why many state-owned enterprises, including Eskom, SA Airways, Prasa, Transnet and Denel, had been driven to near collapse by those at the helm despite the process being “rigorous”.
Zondo said the commission needed to be told what had gone wrong in the appointments of the various boards in order for it to make recommendations to those who help stop the crises.
Ramaphosa admitted that the malfeasance at the SOEs had been driven by dubious appointments “where certain people were put in certain positions to advance certain agendas”.
“Some of it was so hidden so much that you just could not see that certain individuals were there to advance a particular agenda,” he said.
His testimony came a day after former mineral resources minister Mosebenzi Zwane told the inquiry that he appointed two advisors – Kuben Moodley and Malcolm Mabaso – despite not knowing any qualifications they held. He also claimed not to have known their business ties to Gupta associate Salim Essa.
Ramaphosa said the cabinet had also been working in silos under Zuma, where it was not easy to know in detail what was happening in other departments.
On party funding, Ramaphosa said there had been no clear restrictions on donations to political parties before the recently passed Political Party Funding Act, but that the party had a prescribed expectation in its constitution that “monies that are the product of a criminal act are offered in exchange for favours or are from a source known to engage in illegal or unethical activities”.
This was despite the party having allegedly secured numerous donations from various companies that have been implicated in state-related corruption, including controversial facilities management company Bosasa.
Ramaphosa returns to the stand today.
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