State capture: No more Gupta ‘idiots’ for SOEs

Some analysts and commentators have been referring to Malusi Gigaba, Lynne Brown, Anoj Singh, Brian Molefe and others as the “architects of state capture” for their involvement in the complex schemes to siphon off taxpayer money on behalf of the Gupta family.

That characterisation overstates the reality. These people were not the architects of the involved plot. They simply don’t have the brain power to pull off something like this – not judging by their evasive and simplistic testimony to the Zondo commission.

Nor is the man referred to by some of them as “Number One” – former president Jacob Zuma. What all of them are, at most, are the people who laid the bricks of state capture – it was the Guptas and their inner circle who actually designed it.

The Guptas’ “useful idiots” were only too willing to take instruction because they were lining their pockets.

And greed was much more important to them than the interests of ordinary South Africans, if they even thought about the latter for a moment…

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Yet such pliable and useful tools abound throughout the country’s civil service – and in our state-owned enterprises.

This, it has to be said, is the direct result of the ANC’s disastrous policy of “cadre deployment”, where loyalty to party is the main criterion in getting a position.

Whether or not these people were tempted into doing the bidding of the Guptas with the connivance of the ANC as an organisation – or whether Zuma himself captured and subverted his own party – remains to be seen.

However, what was clear from Justice Raymond Zondo’s latest report’s recommendations is that we need an
independent mechanism to select people for key positions in CEO posts and boards of directors in our SOEs.

Only people with competence, commitment and integrity should be appointed to run these institutions.