Africa-Press – South-Africa. Chief Justice Raymond Zondo said he still believed that if another group of people were to attempt to capture the state, they would succeed because Parliament would again fail to stop them.
Zondo said that a year after he had delivered his state capture report to President Cyril Ramaphosa, he had seen no changes to protect the country from rampant corruption and the kind of state capture engineered by the Gupta family.
He was speaking on Thursday at a Human Sciences Research Council symposium organised to discuss the public impact of the state capture report and its implications.
Zondo said his biggest fear was that citizens remained vulnerable to the impact of corruption, despite his pride in the work of the State Capture Inquiry.
He added:
Zondo highlighted the failures of Parliament in holding the government accountable when it was becoming clear that the Gupta family and other entities were intent on capturing various state-owned enterprises.
He said this was a failure by Parliament and that he was concerned that the ANC had used its majority to ensure that accountability was stifled, rather than increased.
Zondo repeated that, as early as 2009, it had been clear from the actions of former president Jacob Zuma and the power shifts occurring at SOEs that there were problems, but that the opportunity to stop the corruption was ignored.
“The reason why we failed to stop state capture is because the ruling party refused to agree to the establishment of an inquiry that would probe the allegations. There were a number of opportunities for the majority party to agree, but it did not. The Guptas continued with their projects, and the transactions that happened afterward happened because they were not stopped,” he said.
In his report, Zondo had recommended safeguards to protect the country against state capture and lack of action by Parliament.
He repeated this recommendation, adding that electoral reform to allow for a constituency-based system would give voters more power.
If public representatives, elected directly by constituencies, acted against the mandate given, they would be held accountable by those voters, Zondo said.
Currently, political parties decide who they will deploy to Parliament, and the party’s mandate takes precedence over voters’ demands and needs.
Another recommendation was for a more active citizenry, Zondo said.
When asked if he believed state capture placed the country’s democracy at risk, Zondo said: “Yes, unequivocally, it does.”
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