By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has asked the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria for an extension of four months – after receiving the complete report from the State Capture Commission.
After receiving the report Ramaphosa would have 14 days to act on it.
But Ramaphosa said while he was not opposing Acting Chief Justice Raymond Zondo’s extension application, he wanted to see the full report before he publicly released it and before he put it before parliament with a plan for how he was going to act on it.
“I ask that the time for communication with Parliament be extended to four months after receipt of the complete report from the commission…it is submitted that, in light of the requirements and demands related to responding to the report and producing a plan of action for implementation by government, four months is reasonable,” he said in his counter application filed in court.
Zondo urgently approached the court this week for yet another extension of the deadline to submit his report to Ramaphosa. The president said in his affidavit that this was Zondo’s sixth extension application and the Council for the Advancement of the SA Constitution (Casac) said it was his seventh.
Zondo, said he intended to release his final report in three parts.
This time, Zondo proposed that he would deliver his report in parts: part 1 before the end of December, part 2 before the end of January and part 3 before the end of February.
In his application, he said that part I would cover Transnet, SAA, SAAT and SA Express. “This is significant because, should the president decide to release part 1 of the report to the public in the meantime, the public will be informed of the findings and recommendations made by the commission in respect of the workstreams or topics that will be covered by part 1,” he said.
Similarly, the National Prosecuting Authority could “derive such assistance” from the report as they might need, he said.
Ramaphosa said: “There may be themes in the findings and recommendations that cut across all three parts of the SCC report and warrant a comprehensive, coherent analysis and response. That would not be possible on the fragmented and serialised approach suggested by the commission.”
He said this did not mean that, in the meantime, parts 1 and 2 would be “shelved”.
“Reading and analysis will start. But it would not be proper or appropriate or fair to expect me to formulate a comprehensive answer and implementation plan without sight of the complete report,”said Ramaphosa.
However, the original court order from December 2017 said “the president shall submit a copy with an indication of his/her intentions regarding the implementation to parliament within 14 days of releasing the report”.
Ramaphosa said it would be impractical to expect him to read, consider, analyse and take advice on Part 1 of the report – and then to formulate a response and implementation plan, and communicate it to Parliament.
Meanwhile Civil society organisation, Democracy in Action has written to the commission’s chairperson Zondo, to determine if there may be a conflict of interest in Ramaphosa’s receiving the state capture report.
The group has based its query, among other things, on the fact that Ramaphosa was the deputy president during the state capture era, as well as him being implicated by some witnesses at the commission.
“He was also a witness during the state capture [proceedings]. Now you have got the situation where the president was at that time witness, now he must go and implement a report.”
“Apart from that there’s few other people that mentioned his name. So we feel that the president might not be the correct person to receive this report.”