MANDY WIENER: Revisionism will find fertile ground without convictions
The wheels of justice are starting to turn in the right direction, but we urgently need convictions.
MK Party members Brian Molefe (front) and Mzwanele Manyi (back) were sworn in as members of Parliament on 28 August 2024. Picture: GCIS
A WhatsApp voice note to The Midday Report this week suggested that we should put the Zondo Commission’s findings into a filing cabinet and just move on with our lives. Close that chapter and focus on the future.
Wouldn’t that be lovely for all those implicated in looting the state’s coffers, eviscerating institutions and benefitting from rigged tenders?
Sadly, for them, that is not the way the rule of law works in a constitutional democracy.
The reality is that quite the opposite is happening. The wheels of justice are starting to turn in the right direction.
In the past few months, we have seen high-profile arrests, guilty pleas and significant asset recoveries. The warning signs are there for those responsible for looting the state.
Also, this week, I was invited to deliver a keynote at the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners conference. It was essentially a room full of investigators and experts that dealt with corruption and fraud in all its awful glory every single day.
These are the guys who are in the firing line, quite literally, of extraction networks, extortion mafia and cabals that are sucking the state dry.
If ever there was a room full of people who could remind me why we need to strengthen the fight against corruption in the country, this was it!
It is because of the buttressing of our response to corruption and organised crime that we are seeing a full onslaught fight back campaign being launched by those rogue characters who were identified as being central to the state capture project.
Some of these now ironically find themselves within the enclave of Parliament and have the platform of being MPs to use to fire salvo after salvo at legitimate law enforcement endeavours to bring them to book.
As Carol Paton excellently put it, “It is a wicked twist to the SA story that no accountability has been held, and the architects of state capture are now perched on the moral high ground of Parliament's opposition benches.”
With this has come a brazen attempt to scrub clean their public images and revise history in the court of public opinion. What we are seeing is straight-up audacious revisionism.
Two fine examples of this played out in parliamentary committee meetings this week.
Former Transnet CEO and MK party MP Brian Molefe, sitting on the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA) on Tuesday, was able to confront the current Transnet CEO Michelle Phillips about the performance of the company.
Keep in mind that Molefe was deeply implicated by the Zondo Commission, and he is currently awaiting trial for crimes he is accused of committing whilst he was the CEO. He has been charged, along with other former Transnet execs, of the contravention of the PFMA, fraud, corruption and money laundering in connection with the irregular procurement of locomotives in 2015.
The MK’s David Skosana even went as far as to ask for factual proof of the impact of state capture, saying much of the evidence at the Zondo Commission was merely ‘gossip’.
Also on Tuesday, the MK party’s Mzwanele Manyi used his position on the Portfolio Committee on Justice and Constitutional Development to question the security clearance, agenda and integrity of senior NPA prosecutors.
A reminder of course that Manyi is also implicated in the Zondo report.
In response to his spurious allegations, NDPP Shamila Batohi warned that Manyi should not use his position in parliament to ‘slander’ people.
This is all the more reason why the NPA should be allowed unfettered access to the Zondo database, which was the subject of Batohi’s appearance before the committee.
This access is required so that prosecutors can use the evidence in criminal cases against those named in the report.
As I wrote last month, it is now becoming increasingly urgent that the NPA convicts those individuals who were involved in the state capture project. If they are not convicted, they will be able to continue to leverage their positions as lawmakers to revise history and to scrub clean their images.
As the media, we must remain vigilant, to remind our listeners, viewers and readers, and to provide context and to fact-check statements made by politicians.
Yes, that includes lawmakers from all parties. Not just from the MK.
We can’t afford to just put the Zondo Commission findings into a filing cabinet and just move on to the next chapter. That is not how democracy and the rule of law work.