By: Clyde Ramalaine
– Is she merely narrating as before from Stellenbosch scripts, it’s not her original thoughts just as state capture in 2016 was not. –
As the State of Capture Commission’s official time is running swiftly to an end jolts of inflections or is it deflections threaten detailing its dying days. The commission often dubbed the Zondo Commission, an accepted practice that takes identity in who leads the commission, is unfortunately also deceptively identified as the State Capture Commission. This often overlooked mispronunciation of the SoCC is not just deliberate but also very political. The Commission was brought into existence to investigate the plausibility of a captured state. Now depending on where you find yourself in the polarized SA world of views, some will tell you DCJ Zondo’s Commission had proven the presence of state capture beyond any doubt. Others of whom I am one, would advocate state capture cannot be proven in any commission because it was, is and remains a political campaign engineered by the DA in its 3C’s [ Cadre Deployment, Corruption and Capture} 2009 political campaign. I have said it a zillion times the DA needed a state office and institution to legitimise its political campaign and found in the former Public Protector Advocate Thuli Madonsela a willing partner.
I have said the commission will find corruption but the unique media-invented crime of ‘state capture’ a World-Bank invented notion when they wanted to describe the Russian Oligarchs in physical presence in that economy, will remain a mirage. In recent days some of the deflections that entered our discourse are led by none other than the original source for this commission, former public protector Thuli Madonsela who now four years later finds herself in academic gowns of a Stellenbosch academic institution with a title of professor. Some argue her State Capture Report became the Dissertation for her designation as professor. Madonsela the colourful jagged-edged public protector who in her own way revolutionized this Chapter 9 institution before her departure in October 2016 did more than legal work while leading this institution.
I am also on record to have said Madonsela politicized this office until her successor is today embroiled in what is defined for some political wrangles with the incumbent president Cyril Ramaphosa and arguably his chief lieutenant Pravin Gordhan in a relationship where we not always sure who leads. Madonsela’s two predecessors, Advocates Selby Baqwa and Lawrence Mushwanawere ordinary officials if we look at her political meteoritic rise to power from the bedrock of that office. Thuli Madonsela has shown she has a vested interest in both the PP Office post her departure with her sponsored lectures and opinions on the office and the SoCC. In typical Helen Zille style of not seeking to cut the umbilical cord between herself and the report that produced this commission she has eked out a forced continuity of existence measurable in ‘State Capture’ her report and the office she never really at a personal level left. It is as if she broods over it as her offspring. While most reports of this nature from inception belong to the institutions it was generated in, Madonsela outside the public protector office holds onto it with a pungent need to want to be public on such. We thus must assume for either her own toxic combination of political or economic reasons.
Madonsela in this epoch now is coughing muttered inflexions of amnesty for those standing accused of corruption. Let us hear Madonsela in her own words: “The suggestion that we should have an amnesty-like process is to fish out people who can give us more information about the extent of corruption.” “How it happened, who was involved, what in the system enabled it, and where is the money? The idea is to get those that were minor actors, who wouldn’t be the kingpins or the main beneficiaries. It would be something like an admin clerk in the system who, out of fear of losing their jobs, participated in the crime,”
From this advanced rationale former Public Protector now Professor Thuli Madonsela in 2020 believes the key to rooting out corruption in SA might be through a type of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission where those involved in the scourge of corruption however defined, would confess their unscrupulous behaviour without fear of being prosecuted since they would be willing to disclose information and implicate others who in Thuli’s minds constitute bigger fish. Listening to Madonsela’s newer thoughts on how truth on corruption could be unearthed with the intention of what she calls a rooting out of corruption presents a set of dialectical if not conflicting notions.
In the first instance, why was Madonsela as Public Protector at the time not alive to this apparent wisdom she now in professorial designation seeks to suggest? Are we hearing her advocating for another commission distinct from this current one? Is this then her analysis of the current commission as having dismally failed that another process and structure immanent in a commission is needed? If we accept the subject of rooting out of corruption was always the cardinal focus for her report generation, why did the learned jurist not propose or advocate for this initially. You would recall how brave Madonsela was to direct that the then-president [Zuma] be not allowed to decide on who of the judiciary must lead the commission. We must then assume it was within her ambit to have made such a proposal, it is materially not important to argue what the outcomes may or may have been for her preferred proposal. It thus means there is justifiable cause for concern as to what really informed Madonsela’s original disposition as evidenced in her questionable and hastily compiled report as she was about to empty her desk. It is for this reason why I hold Madonsela strayed into political spaces from the office of the PP.
On another score, Madonsela will forgive us to hear her subtle but implicit admission that her report may not have been ethically / morally inspired but may in all probability have derived a political frame. Shall we afford Madonsela the benefit of maturity that has set in over the last four years? Or shall we with the benefit of maintaining a critical distance of reflection advance the idea of that original choice informed by politics to have this Commission no different to her newfound morality thrust that evidence a transactional amnesty for those who will be willing to share information to nail the bigger fish and in this way retrieving stolen money may have the same womb? We dare not be oblivious to Madonsela’s stances then and now, these warrant contextualization and critical engagement I will dare to advance the choices to have the commission and the new notion of a TRC frame are both mutually inclusive as not originating from Madonsela but may well detail the political agenda behind Madonsela’s suspicious actions.
The third challenge with Madonsela’s newfound morality argument is the aims of such a process. Reading her rationale carefully one sees she does not believe this commission had yet unearthed the truth of its original intention. So, what reverberates in the background is a view that Zondo has failed. Meaning for those who share Thuli’s mind the truth is still out there after 26 months of hearings at a bloated budget that bulged into a R1 billion with a most recent further R63million injection. The state capture script narrator today tells us we should follow another process to unearth the same truth [this current commission after 26 months could not let surface], to entice proverbial ‘smaller fries’ in the objective of really catching the proverbial ‘big fish’ in hope of retrieving the billions.
I don’t think listeners hear Madonsela – this in my assessment is arguably the biggest concession on the part of whom I now comfortably can label “The State Capture Script Narrator” The script – State Capture project draped in a Commission has failed in its original intention. You may then ask what the original intention was? Given the benefit of hindsight most will now admit the commission’s target was not corruption, it was not aimed at any institution but it had a person in mind. That person no different to the DA 2009 campaign, it was always to prove Jacob G. Zuma as not just the prime suspect but the guilty one. The mastermind behind the phantom of state capture.
State Capture Script Narrator, Professor Thuli Madonsela, or is it the non-departing Public protector on October 19, 2020, still looks for the bigger fish which begs the question what bigger fish will her advanced TRC process unearth bigger than a former SA president Jacob Zuma and the family South Africa is scripted to hate, the Guptas? Madonsela’s new 2020 wisdom does not remotely tell us what would inform a typical ‘small fry’ in degrees of corrupt millions benefitted from a big fish that she motivates as warranting an amnesty?
Maybe the critical flaw of this Zondo Commission was that it never called this former Pubic Protector, State Capture Script Narrator to engage her on her produced report. If the challenge was to ascertain the state of capture than the framing of state capture as designed in her report [the one that shot her into stardom and a professor designation at the heart of apartheid’s academic womb] is a material essential. One would have thought the Commission could only have been served substantially in content by inviting her as a witness to answer on her methodology, approach, praxis, content, assumptions, and potential overlooked information for arriving at her report the same which details the reason for this Commission. The Commission did itself and SA a disservice by not letting Madonsela the public face of a state capture narrative not deliver testimony.
Equally so what if witnesses such as former Eskom CEO Brian Molefe who is public that he submitted 103 documents that Madonsela wilfully disregarded wanted to cross-examine her for the motive and reasons for her glaring inaction yet conclude on him in the manner she did.
It is time to venture an opinion on the sincerity of the Commission in living experience as encountered over the life of its existence. In my assessment had the Zondo Commission remotely been sincere to ascertain the state of capture it could only have been in its interest to locate the former public protector at the interstice of a pre-and-post state capture paradigms that defines SA in democracy. It then appears the Commission as its stands accused by former CEO of PRASA Lucky Montana for having taken the account of former PRASA Chairperson Popo Molefe as gospel, did the same with the Public Protector Madonsela report. Herein lies a fundamental problem that perpetually begins to cast long shadows over the intention, the function and role of the Zondo Commission.
Perhaps a bigger truth is blissfully being overlooked in this Madonsela narration of deflection, that being is it possible that the Stellenbosch Agenda has been served and the material tainted state of Jacob Zuma and the ANC directly is immortalized while their regain of directing the SA economic and social life spaces, lost under Zuma is with the advent of the 1978 Urban Foundation ‘charity gesture’ Irene Menell’s words on Ramaphosa] and White Monopoly Capital sponsored Cyril Ramaphosa a thing of the past. Meaning the conscious BRICS choices that Zuma ideologically and brazenly led in defiance of the old West order, systems and its institutions such as IMF and World Bank are now a thing of the past since the old West is back in pound seats driving the future narrative of SA.
Is there a place you reach when you know you may have overplayed your hand and if you go one step further what you had hoped would nail your opponent really comes at you with more than snarls but real threats? I say that to hypothetically argue Stellenbosch knows that Zuma is in a corner and that he has access to information which can be verified that can expose more than what meets the eye. Are they with this Madonsela new narration wisdom really admitting it’s of no interest to continue pursuing Zuma because he may really come and expose whom Stellenbosch and its colonial partners in crime protect in the ANC spaces not from today but from whenever?
In that sense, Madonsela’s new so-called superior wisdom, is firstly not hers just as her decision for the lynching of Zuma in political campaign draped in judiciary uniform was not hers but that of those who rewarded her more than handsomely with a chair at Stellenbosch. Shall we know how much she now earns in this plush position and what that means if juxtaposed to the University of Stellenbosch rectors’ income? Meaning may we know why Madonsela earns what she earns at US is this not part of her being paid for her role in the drama of a political script of State Capture?
Stellenbosch cannot afford to be stupid they know the evidence before the Commission from the onset would never confirm a state capture finding against Zuma. They also know w that in the sunset of this Commission hitherto nothing directly links Former President Jacob G. Zuma. They knew from the start but needed to press ahead because his tainted state may prevent him from making a second run for power. We all know there is nothing in the current ANC constitution that prevents Zuma with his authentic constituency of ANC followers to run for a third term and to complete his incomplete State President term after which he may decide who should take over from him. Stellenbosch knew how important it was to have Zuma the only real politician in the ANC with a true following tainted in state capture, the fulcrum of the DA 2009 political campaign.
On another score, if you ask me Jacob Zuma would be ill-advised not to rethink entering the race and make that constituency and following count. I personally would recommend Zuma applies his mind and appreciate the authentic constituency he has and use it for his advantage in considering running for a third term. Everyone in the chattering class will find this laughable but the chattering class regardless of colour do not make up Zuma’s constituency and do not hold the sway in ANC elections. .
As for Thuli Madonsela, she is merely a pawn in the bigger scheme of Stellenbosch Apartheid self-serving thinking and entrenched infrastructure. She may have articulated this notion of amnesty for corruption but she is not the original source but only the script narrator. This is exactly what she did in 2016 when she narrated the DA capture political campaign thus evidencing a more than willing partner to give that political campaign the support of a Chapter 9 Institution.
I still hold Madonsela owes to explain herself on her choices in her report and for the costs of R1bn South Africa continues to waste on the latent labour dispute Zondo Commission.
A Lifelong Social Justice Activist Political Commentator & Writer is a SARChi D. Litt.et. Phil candidate in Political Science with the University of Johannesburg. Chairperson of TMoSA Foundation – The Thinking Masses of SA
