The Zondo report implicates former president Jacob Zuma directly in State Capture.
Former President Jacob Zuma features on 92 pages of the more than 800-page first part of the State Capture report. This is according to Ferial Haffajee in the Daily Maverick.
Zondo’s report says that 1 438 persons and entities are implicated by the proceedings of the four-year-long inquiry into State Capture.
While Zuma has refused to account for the numerous times he was implicated by witnesses at the commission, findings have been made against him based on the petabyte (one thousand Terabytes) of evidence gathered and processed by Zondo’s investigators and legal team.
Two of the areas of Zuma’s involvement are set out in the report.
‘On the evidence heard by the Commission there is absolutely no doubt that President Zuma did, indeed, instruct (the late) Minister (Collins) Chabane to fire Mr Themba Maseko from his position as DG and CEO of GCIS (the Government Communication and Information System).
‘There is also no doubt that in giving this instruction, President Zuma was giving effect to the wishes of the Guptas or was complying with their request or instruction…’. The Guptas had wanted the GCIS entire R600-million of the state’s advertising budget to be given over to their newspaper the New Age.
The report also confirmed whistle-blower Athol Williams’s testimony that Zuma had met representatives of Bain & Company 17 times between 2012 and 2014 to plan the capture of SARS and to structure a new central procurement agency for private financial enrichment.
GCIS and SARS (and Eskom as well) were instances where Zuma was himself was directly and personally involved in the activities and plans to take over a government entity.