By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Chief Justice Raymond Zondo bemoans individuals who made many sacrifices in the fight against apartheid and only to become involved in corruption and state capture.
Zondo made reference to the ruling ANC’s failure to recall former President Jacob Zuma earlier, which has cost billions being taken out of the country.
He detailed how state capture was at the heart of the Zuma administration and severely derailed the likes of Transnet, resulting in more than R41.204-billion being irregularly awarded to benefit Gupta companies. This amount represents 72.2% of state payment to contracts tainted by state capture.
Zondo recommended that law enforcement agencies further investigate Zuma, and others, with a view to possible prosecution for corruption and/or racketeering.
He delivered the annual Oliver Reginald Tambo public lecture at the Fort Hare University on Friday.
Zondo, who chaired the commission of inquiry into state capture prior to being appointed as head of the judiciary, managed to lay bare the grand corruption and theft of public resources at state institutions.
He says the scale of the corruption is eroding the gains of democracy.
“The journey that we have travelled as a country from 1994 and we look at where we are, there are many things that we see every day which are the opposite of what these leaders sacrificed for.
“There are many things, fishers of South African life, which are completely in conflict with the kind of South Africa that OR Tambo worked and sacrificed so much for.”
Zondo believes that self-interest in driving much of the decay.
“Some of the people who are behind the state capture and corruption are people who themselves sacrificed a lot in order to ensure that apartheid was defeated, but they don’t have the kind of values that OR Tambo had. Some of them want to make sure that they eat first and their families eat first.
“They have no shame that they knew Tambo personally, and that wherever he is with people like Mandela, would turn in their grave when they see whatever they are doing.”
Under Zuma the country became known for looting and pillaging at home, foreign policy drifted into irrelevance. At some point, South Africa was pulled into the now largely defunct BRICS grouping as an afterthought, a vainglorious attempt to hitch on to the coattails of China.