If elected in May, Cyril Ramaphosa will come under pressure to ensure those guilty of state capture are prosecuted
shop on the outskirts of Pretoria, South Africa’s capital, an official from the Special Investigating Unit walks in, checks whether he recognises anyone, sits down, and emits a long sigh. Last year he was appointed by President Ramaphosa to be one of his men inside the key criminal-justice institution, tasked with investigating serious cases of graft. What he found has shocked him. “I’m in the lion’s den,” he says, insisting on anonymity. “This country will take a long time to fix.
Fortunately for South Africa some of its institutions remained strong. Dogged investigative journalists from outlets such asexposed scandals. So, too, did brave whistleblowers and opposition politicians, especially those from the Democratic Alliance . Prosecutors such as Ms Madonsela pursued their cases with bravery and vigour. Without these, South Africa would have been in a far worse state.
In perhaps the most infamous case of the state-capture era, Eskom’s boss allegedly joined with senior political figures to squeeze Glencore, a commodities firm, into selling a coal mine to an investment company owned by one of Mr Zuma’s sons and the Gupta brothers. To facilitate the deal Eskom reportedly agreed to buy what turned out to be poor-quality coal from the new owners at an above-market rate—and paid them upfront so that they had the money to buy Glencore’s assets in the first place.
Such pressure is growing because of another tactic of Mr Ramaphosa’s: the reliance on inquiries to expose wrongdoing. These include inquiries into. But the most wide-ranging is the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture, otherwise known as the Zondo commission, after its presiding judge, Raymond Zondo.
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