The ANC has backed out of seeking to cross-examine former Bosasa COO Angelo Agrizzi, who the party’s spokesperson has previously condemned as a racist Nazi hellbent on undermining its credibility before the May election.
The party, however, admitted earlier this week that the many corruption allegations against party officials had hit its election campaign.
It has been criticised heavily for the inclusion of leaders implicated in corruption on its candidate lists for parliament and the provincial legislatures.
ANC spokesperson Dakota Legoete confirmed to Business Day that the ANC had decided not to ask the state-capture inquiry for the right to cross-examine Agrizzi about his claims that Bosasa gave R12m to the ANC’s top six officials from 2004 to 2006.
"Mr Agrizzi has clarified that these alleged payments to the top six were donations. They were not bribes," Legoete said.
"We have received legal advice that there is therefore no need to cross-examine him."
Agrizzi’s lawyer Daniel Witz told Business Day on Tuesday that none of the senior ANC officials implicated in corruption by Agrizzi — including minister Nomvula Mokonyane and MPs Vincent Smith and Cedric Frolick — had yet applied to cross-examine him, despite public statements that they were considering doing so.
Mokonyane’s spokesperson, Mlimandlela Ndamase, told Business Day that the minister still intended to cross-examine Agrizzi, but would do so "at a later stage" due to the recent death of her husband.
Agrizzi has also handed over receipts to the inquiry, allegedly showing how Bosasa made a R1m payment to the ANC in the North-West in 2015, just prior to the 2016 elections.
Agrizzi testified that Bosasa would generate false invoices to the government to generate such funding for the ANC’s election campaigns.
The ANC’s failure to challenge Agrizzi’s evidence, according to legal expert James Grant, now means that the state-capture inquiry "currently gets to rely on what he said as if it’s the truth.
"The political and social implications of failing to cross-examine Agrizzi may also leave ordinary people with the impression that the party simply has no answer to the claims he has made against it," he said.
Legoete maintains, however that the ANC will respond to Agrizzi’s evidence about how Bosasa used funding of the party to ensure lucrative state tenders when it makes a full submission to the inquiry.
Between May 2004 and December 2005, the period when Bosasa allegedly made the R12m payments to the ANC top six, the department of correctional services awarded four tenders, worth about R2bn, to the facilities management company.
The Special Investigating Unit later found these contracts
to have been defined by tender rigging and corruption, and recommended criminal investigation.
Despite these findings being publicised in 2010, the governing party continued to accept donations and election funding from Bosasa.
Legoete had earlier stated that the ANC was intent on cross-examining Agrizzi because his evidence was designed to undermine the party before the elections.
"He is a self-confessed racist and adherent of Nazism. He has confessed that he hates us," Legoete said.
Agrizzi previously denied that his testimony was designed to undermine the ANC.
"I’ve never been a Nazi and I’ve never confessed that I hate the ANC. I hate corruption, I don’t hate the top six," he said.
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