Zondo did his work, now we must do ours

The state capture report handed to President Cyril Ramaphosa this week is in many ways as much an example of what works as it is a symbol of what is broken in our country. The report by chief justice Raymond Zondo is a repository of the horrors of state capture, laid out on 8-million pages of documents capturing testimonies of more than 300 witnesses. But is also a fountain of hope.

The fact that Zondo and his team had the courage to dismiss, with admirable clarity, Ramaphosa’s claim to have fought state capture “from within” instead of speaking up, while praising him for supporting the arduous work of the commission, talks to this binary symbolism.

Zondo said Ramaphosa’s failure to speak out against state capture sent the wrong message: that where wrongdoing is spotted, people must not speak truth to power.

He also had stern words for former president Jacob Zuma, who was found to have stopped the country’s top spies from investigating the influence of the Gupta brothers on the government.

Zondo pointed out that Ramaphosa’s complicity in state capture was, in part, born of his belief that “the ANC would have protected a president (Zuma) who fired his deputy for the crime of confronting corruption”. Assuming Ramaphosa was correct, this would reveal a political culture to be frowned upon in a democracy.

And, in any case, Zondo found that Ramaphosa would have had enough time to fight state capture as ANC deputy president if fired from government for fighting corruption.

That Ramaphosa has supported the work of the commission, which made strident findings against him, is also indicative of a democratic system that works.

That the chief justice does not feel he must whitewash a report involving a sitting president must give us hope that ours is a strong and independent judiciary that is able to speak truth to power in a way that Ramaphosa could not.

The commission, if the totality of its evidence and findings is considered, found a litany of officials who, when ordered by their political masters to do wrong, complied ostensibly to keep their jobs. Beyond Zondo’s report, we need to find a way that obviates this challenge. The mere existence of the Zondo report does not mean the threat of capture has completely disappeared.

The commission has helped shed light on the cesspit of corruption involving a number of politicians and, sadly, how easily they got into the pockets of cunning and greedy businesspeople. Sometimes, Zondo found, it took a simple meal of curry to bribe officials.

To say the police and prosecuting authorities must move with speed to ensure that those caught with their hands in the cookie jar face the full might of the law is to point out the obvious.

While it’s good to prosecute those who enabled capture, the key to the country’s future is to ensure our government is staffed by officials of high integrity and led by politicians motivated by the need to make our democracy work for all.

Through this commission we also learnt of the heroic efforts of principled bureaucrats like Themba Maseko, the former head of government communications who proved a bulwark against the premature onset of capture.

In the end, it’s not about how much the commission cost taxpayers. Or the number of pages or witnesses called, or even the number of people convicted as a result of the commission.

Corruption, especially when it is this grand, is not a victimless crime. So the end of this commission must mark the beginning of a new chapter. A chapter of accountability. A chapter of an active citizenry. As Zondo handed over the state capture report, he, in effect, handed back to society our responsibility to take our future into our hands.

Corruption, especially when it is this grand, is not a victimless crime