By Neelam Rahim

The long journey of the Zondo commission of inquiry into state capture concluded this week when the Chief Justice handed the final volumes over to President Ramaphosa at the unit building, so now what next?

Radio Islam discusses with Angelo Fick.

“President Ramaphosa’s office has suggested that he needs until October to give a comprehensive response to the multi volume reports that presumably he will have to make the recommendations on what his office and the executive will do. In relation to the very many recommendations given. There are specific recommendations around what to see is expected to do, particularly around the appointments to cabinet and to senior posts. The Zondo commission suggests or former that to prevent the cronyism and corrupt networks and developing that we saw in administration. But there are also specific issues around the prosecuting of individuals that the National prosecuting authority has to follow up on the priority Crime Investigation units. There are several commercial crimes that have to be followed, people that have to be charged in Thai entities, there’s also stuff around money that has to be recouped that people have wasted and spent, and then there is the big matter of the prominent issue the return of the Gupta brothers, who’ve been arrested in the UAE. And then there’ll be if there’ll be repatriated to South Africa,” Angelo reports to Radio Islam.

Moving on, Ramaphosa criticizes the report for his actions and inactions. What are the main challenges that the head of state faces? And what is the report Sketch of the man and the office suggests about politics, power and corruption.

Angelo says, “There’s an entire section in which is headed what he knew? And when did he know it? Which questions the version of events that Mr. Ramaphosa gave as president of the country and former deputy president and as President of the ANC. His suggestion in his testimony was that he had intervened at the appropriate location and times and done all he could. And he mentioned the issue of the appointment of this Hungarian as finance minister that he objected to. And two other incidents that he sort of stood up and put his foot down and said, up to here and no further. But the Zondo Commission found that this was not entirely convincing, because there had been a longer period of reports in the public media certainly should have warranted some kind of response from Mr. Ramaphosa as deputy president of the country. There were newspaper reports as early as 2010 and 2011, about the awkward relationship between the Guptas and the ANC and then government.”

“We have to take this on seriously, it makes specific suggestions. But I think it’s important for civil society and civic actors and what matters for their subs in their various ways of communing, in order to come to some form of understanding and then to represent their takes on the Zondo Commission’s recommendations, by making these, you know, these understandings and their contestation, visible to Parliament to the presidency by writing to these authorities and suggesting,” says Angelo.

For more about this, listen to Radio Islam’s podcast below.