Hallelujah! The charade of the ‘Raymond & Cyril R1bn Show’ is over

By: Clyde N.S. Ramalaine

You’re right. I am writing again about the State of Capture report. My first musing on such was a distant back in 2017. Maybe it’s time to put together my musings on this state capture subject. Hopefully, this piece is the last, but I know it won’t be.

The perhaps unnecessary voluminous sections detailing the final “State of Capture Report” as presented by Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, who since April 1, has been moonlighting for the Ramaphosa Executive, is a meticulously crafted project engineered to reorder our fundamental political existence in ballot power. On another level, as I have warned at its inception, it is designed to put the ANC on trial with the hope of reducing its ballot entrusted majority to dust.

Zondo’s appetite for non-legal topics and subject matter but overtly political issues are glaring and repeatedly underscored throughout these report in its manifold sections. Let us also not be fooled about who drafted and penned this final report. It is rumoured that Zondo did not write this report. That honour befalls an entity like Werksman Attorney et al., who usually benefit from large chunks of State-briefed work. Nevertheless, we shall treat it as his work; his name is on it.

It is more than evident that Raymond Zondo abused this Commission to try and carve out his unique future and role measurable in the redefinition of electoral reform, the order of how Presidents must be elected, and the right of the ANC ruling party to have deployment as a practice.

I was hoping you could permit me to be this forthright and categoric. Even though the report points to acts of undeniable corruption in instances, this entire report for its politically contaminated Commissioner Raymond Zondo belongs in the dustbin. His general interest in cheap ANC factional political and straying, as we saw with the Lindiwe Sisulu opinion piece published on January 6, pits him as the reason why the report belongs in the proverbial file thirteen.

This is happens when Glencore UK, to which Cyril has direct links, admits the same corruption and bribery crimes it did in the USA with five countries listed from Africa. So, Glencore’s business partner, the more recently dubbed ‘dollar-couch-mattress -ankola king,’ Cyril, the social media dubbed ‘gangsta’ (kidnapping and bribery case informed ), is expectedly exonerated. Raymond overlooked all because, by the time he sat on August 20, 2018, for the first time in this Commission, his mission was crystal clear, and his findings had already been concluded. I say again there was no need for all these years of extensions and hearings he could give called Pravin Gordhan for coffee and write the entire slobber of a report he has produced. I say so because he believed that version before he became Commissioner and confirmed his uncritical faith in the evidence and account of someone (Gordhan) who, under cross-examination, collapsed and had to concede he had no evidence of ‘state capture’ on Moyane since it was mere gossip. Raymond pinned his entire report on the evidence of Gordhan, who had to be forced to attend the Raymond & Cyril Show.

He glaringly papers over the intrinsic role of Cyril, meticulously conscious not to make any overt and direct factual findings with legal implications, but generalisations immanent in ‘Ramaphosa could have done more to stop Zuma.’ He was painstakingly seeking to disengage Cyril as any accused from any complicit role. To Zondo, we say whether your report admits or denies Cyril as equally compromised, you cannot obliterate history. Cyril served as a deputy with the substantial part of being the head of government business. Cyril chaired the Eskom Warroom during the critical period. Cyril recommended the appointment of Brian Molefe to Zuma. Glencore wanted to extricate themselves from a penalty of R2bn while overcharging it’s per tonnage fee.

Zondo’s one-sided cripple report insists the Guptas were instrumental in the appointment of Molefe when he heard evidence from Cyril that the latter recommended Molefe. How do you link the dots on this? If the evidence in record details how the appointment of Molefe came about has the Commission, but it wilfully rejects it. What more than culpability to a particular agenda can be deduced? Please deal with the Guptas, I hold no brief for them and have always maintained they must face their music for what they stand accused.

On another score is it not questionable that the same venom Pravin had towards Zuma was transmitted to this Commission and Zondo uncritically became an extension of a political fight. Any fool can see Zondo is obsessed with nailing Zuma and had used these million pages to do so. Nothing less, nothing more. I hope that those NEC members who are yet to take us in confidence as to the real reason why Zondo detests Zuma will hopefully one day muster the courage to unravel the real story. Then some will perhaps understand what some of us already suspected. History cannot be obliterated; you can only try to manage it.

This report will never be implemented and thus will die a natural death that emanates precisely from the place of death. It cannot be implemented because the one who must give effect to it is just as compromised and have no moral authority to implement its recommendations.

The power of the ballot, the democratic franchise we fought for, is threatened by a captured judge who admires his hero politician Cyril and his sidekick Pravin and believes their accounts as gospel, outrightly rejecting evidence and information presented by Brian Molefe, Matshele Koko, Lucky Montana, and point-blank refused Arthur Fraser to testify.

Zondo as a jurist, is too predictable, case in point in the report and his findings on the Constitutional Court leaked info on the Public Protector Advocate Mkhwebane case. He is unfortunately a dangerous political player draped in robes and negotiated into a very prestigious office today contaminated by his presence in such. Zondo is, therefore, an insult to the judiciary and spells a grave indictment to the practice of law.

Zondo arrogates a right to think he can unilaterally determine our political life with opposition parties’ aid. Zondo’s epistemology on majoritarian political parties is unveiled in this report. He, therefore, uses the report to endorse the notion that South Africa must be governed through the doctrine of coalitions.

The NPA, who is supposed to use this report to act against certain ANC politicians and associates, will endeavour to do exactly that. Yet, it will find itself in a sandstorm because this report dare I say will go nowhere in criminal pursuit of anyone in any hurry.

Don’t forget Cyril earlier asked that he be granted four months to study the content upon receiving the final report. As an earlier piece of mine predicted, this was orchestrated with the ANC’s 55th Conference as end game. This means Cyril will only act in explaining what he will do with the report in November, days before the 55th Conference. We also know he told ANC leaders it won’t have a standard policy conference. In fact he unilaterally sees the elective conference to also accommodate organisational policy deliberations. It goes without saying that Cyril fears being held accountable if it’s a policy conference is held in its usual July calendar date of an elective conference. Thus the report report and its content are to strengthen Cyril’s second term ambitions and hand to him a smooth path which he can negotiate with some of his ardent supporters who are also implicated in a quid-for-pro-quo deal.

The final part of the report unlocked its drama with delays and telephone calls between Raymond and Cyril until even the DA questioned their cozy relations. This means it is no longer a case of some dissidents in the ANC mistrusting both Raymond and Cyril; even the Cyril-loving opposition of Steenhuizen has expressed more than reservations.

So after R,1.2bn, I hold more than ever before that this report belongs in the dustbin because it was compromised by the lust of the second term for Cyril and the CJ position of the megalomaniac of a former labour law practitioner. Incidentally, both Raymond and Cyril, in the legal description of designations, are labour law practitioners to varying degrees. The latter, an undeniable political actor, is subservient to an agenda of a faction of ANC politics and minority-white interest protection in ballot politics.

So four years shy of time spent of this Commission, I am glad the charade of what I have christened the ‘Raymond and Cyril R1bn Show’ had its finale and thus is over. South Africans will soon realise it was a waste of taxpayers’ money because it became the means of how he could claim a resume to fit him to occupy the venerated CJ position. While cutting his favourite politician major slack.

Sisulu was right; we are in a precarious place when the critical office of the judiciary is under the control of those who politically was long ago defined in the USA as house negroes. We are in a troublesome environment when the judiciary can stray into the political spaces with no ramifications.