Former public protector Thuli Madonsela has questioned why her successor Busisiwe Mkhwebane never released a report on her "important" investigation into the Gupta family’s Waterkloof landing, and instead deemed the matter to be "closed".
The 2013 incident, in which a private jet carrying 200 guests for a wedding in Sun City landed at the air force base, sparked uproar across the country. It has been credited with bringing into greater public attention the alleged influence of the family on the administration of former president Jacob Zuma.
Madonsela, who served from 2009 to 2016, also confirmed in an interview with Business Day that her draft report on the alleged Gupta-linked Vrede Dairy Project scam showed that top provincial officials in the Free State at the time,
Ace Magashule and Mosebenzi Zwane, had both asked her to talk to the other to get more information.
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The project was one of the most notorious examples of alleged corruption linked to the Gupta family, friends of Zuma who have been at the centre of state-capture allegations. The aim of the project was to empower black farmers. Instead, at least R200m of public funds allegedly flowed to Estina, some of which was said to have paid for the Sun City wedding.
At the time, Magashule was Free State premier and Zwane was his agriculture MEC.
While in her final report on Estina Mkhwebane effectively ignored reports that the pair were involved, Madonsela said that Magashule, during a visit to her office, told her that "Zwane was the key person and had all the answers".
Mkhwebane is under fire for her report on that investigation, which the high court in Pretoria found to be invalid and unconstitutional.
Her competence and suitability for the job was already questioned after her report on an apartheid-era loan by the Reserve Bank to Bankorp, now part of Absa, was reviewed and set aside by the same court, which found that she did not understand her job.
Mkhwebane deems both these decisions to be unjustified and unfair, and has hit back at accusations from public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan that she is pursuing multiple investigations against him for political purposes.
Her spokesperson, Oupa Segalwe, confirmed on Monday to Business Day that, besides closing the Waterkloof investigation without releasing a report, Mkhwebane had also referred two other Gupta-related cases to the Zondo inquiry into state capture, including one on the relationship between The New Age newspaper, Eskom and the public broadcaster, the SABC.
Mkhwebane’s office told Business Day that the Waterkloof landing complaint, initially laid by DA MP David Maynier
in 2013, had been "overtaken" by events and further investigation "would have served no purpose".
The investigation centred on Lt Col Christine Anderson’s dissatisfaction with the justice, crime prevention and security cluster’s investigation of the saga. Anderson, the movement-control officer at the military airport, turned to Madonsela, saying she had been unfairly made a scapegoat for the scandal.
She was one of the officials subjected to a military inquiry and investigated for irregularly giving clearance for the landing.
According to Mkhwebane, that inquiry referred the matter to the director of military prosecutions to determine whether, among other things, Anderson should be prosecuted.
"The case against Anderson was formally withdrawn by the director: military prosecutions on 19 January 2015. No further action was taken against her."
The withdrawal of that case overtook other inquiries and further investigations by the public protector would have served no purpose. But that’s not how Madonsela sees it.
"The truth is the investigation was completed and all we needed was a report".
Madonsela said that she had reached out to Mkhwebane’s office after she had incorrectly claimed that there was no public protector investigation of the Waterkloof landing. "How after that they closed the investigation is a mystery," she said.
"The report was important because it pointed to security fault lines beyond Anderson’s case. We interviewed everyone, including task team members [including then correctional services commissioner Tom Moyane] and got the radio record."
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