Africa-Press – South-Africa. As worrisome as they are foreboding” – this is how lobby group Public Interest SA described Deputy President Paul Mashatile’s “apparent links to individuals fingered for state capture corruption”.
On Monday morning, News24 revealed that Mashatile lives a life of luxury, living in expensive homes owned by businessmen benefitting from state contracts.
One of Mashatile’s largest benefactors is Edwin Sodi, the politically connected businessman currently on trial on charges of corruption and fraud linked to a R255-million Free State asbestos eradication tender, together with former Free State premier, Ace Magashule, who was recently expelled from the ANC.
In a statement, Public Interest SA said the report is “alleging an unseemly, opulent lifestyle” by Mashatile.
“While we acknowledge Mr Mashatile’s constitutionally-enshrined freedom of association, it is deeply regrettable that he is alleged to maintain links with and to be benefitting from those alleged to have pilfered from the state through corrupt practices.”
The organisation urged Mashatile to urgently address the “serious allegations of his reported continued association and pecuniary interests he may have with those who are accused of plundering public resources through state capture and corruption”.
The statement reads:
The organisation said just as it has in the past lamented the Zondo Commission’s “tardiness” in concluding its work, and while it appreciates the doctrine of the separation of powers, the Chief Justice was “correct to lament the snail pace with which the National Assembly is processing his recommendations”.
Addressing a Human Science Research Council symposium that analysed the state capture report’s impact on democracy on Thursday – a year to the day that the final instalment of the state capture report was released – Zondo said if state capture were to re-occur, Parliament would be unable to prevent it.
Parliament, in response, reacted with shock and strongly objected to his statements. The legislature’s presiding officers requested an urgent meeting with Zondo to “clarify any potential misunderstandings and to establish a common understanding of the respective roles and responsibilities of each arm of government within the context of Parliament’s implementation of the commission’s recommendations”.
Since the release of his report, the ANC had blocked any attempt to investigate the Phala Phala allegations against Ramaphosa, using the same arguments it did when it refused to investigate state capture, and which Zondo dismissed in his report.
Parliament has also been sluggish in dealing with the report’s recommendations, with the National Assembly Rules Committee not meeting in the first quarter of the year, and kicked the recommendation to establish a committee to oversee the Presidency into touch by insisting on a “study tour” to the UK.
The person coordinating portfolio committees’ response to the Zondo recommendations, Chair of Chairs Cedric Frolick, was himself implicated in the report.
ANC MP and chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Public Service and Administration, Tyotyo James, dismissed Zondo’s criticism of cadre deployment as unlawful and unconstitutional as follows: “Unfortunately, Judge Zondo is not governing on our behalf.”
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