Faizel Patel – 20/08/2021

Political analyst Ebrahim Fakir says the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into allegations of state capture – commonly known as the Zondo Commission may have been worth it despite the amount of money that was spent on the hearings.

The Zondo Commission concluded its hearings last week with the appearance of President Cyril Ramaphosa.

After three years of hearings, the commission witnessed testimony, evidence and allegations that revealed how pervasive grand corruption in South Africa has become and that some politicians just cannot be trusted.

Fakir says the commission which sat for the first time on 20 August 2018 has yielded some results.

“On the whole I think it was worth it. One can quibble about the value of rands spent in relation to what the outcomes are going to be and that’s debatable, but some prosecutions have happened, others may be ongoing. We know a whole lot now about the manner in which the state and government has functioned and how the party that was leading government has functioned.”

Fakir says Ramaphosa who appeared at the Zondo Commission as the president of the African National Congress (ANC) and president of the country in the last two weeks failed to take accountability and responsibility for the allegations of state capture.

“Remember most of his testimony was it was either a ‘mishap, it was a mistake, it was an oversight, we weren’t aware’ and so those are one of the four or five categories under which excuses fell.”

Fakir says the commission has also shown that politicians simply cannot be trusted.

“Of course we knew that instinctively. It didn’t take a multi-million rand commission to tell us that. But the reality is that those are the things which emerged, a manipulation system failure, process manipulation and the complete and abject failure to assume and take any responsibility.”

Justice Raymond Zondo has pointed out that it could still hear applications and call in more people for additional info before completing its report.

(Twitter: @FaizelPatel143)

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