Jacob Zuma blames minister who died four years ago

Former president Jacob Zuma spent his second day of testimony at the state-capture inquiry denying outright that he was involved in wrongdoing and going as far as to lay the blame for one incident on a minister who died four years ago.

Zuma and his relationship with the Gupta family have

been central to allegations of state capture and corruption made at the inquiry, which is chaired by deputy chief justice Raymond Zondo.

Zuma, who reluctantly resigned as SA president in 2018, shortly after President Cyril Ramaphosa defeated former AU commission chair Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma in an internal ANC election, has left the ANC deeply divided.

His testimony, which is expected to continue until Friday, could play into the factional battles within the party.

The inquiry questioned Zuma on Tuesday about the testimony of former government communications head Themba Maseko, who said he was removed from that position because he butted heads with the Guptas, and former ANC MP Vytjie Mentor, who said the Gupta family offered to make her a minister. Zuma says Maseko’s allegation that he instructed then minister in the presidency Collins Chabane to transfer or dismiss him was "fishy". Chabane died in a car accident in 2015.

After admitting that he would "definitely" have been consulted about the transfer of someone in Maseko’s former position, Zuma maintained that it was Chabane who wanted Maseko moved.

"I think there was an issue between them," he said.

Maseko countered this on social media on Thursday, saying on Twitter that Chabane was "one of the best bosses I’ve ever worked with".

"The only problem I had with him is that he never paid me after I beat him in many rounds of golf."

Guptas

During his testimony in 2018, Maseko detailed how he was fired as head of the Government Communication and Information System (GCIS) shortly after refusing to abide by Zuma’s instruction to "help" the Guptas.

Maseko said the Guptas demanded R600m from the GCIS budget for media spending to be used on their now defunct newspaper, The New Age, which went to print for the first time in December 2010, and has now been shut down. Maseko said that Ajay Gupta told him that Zuma would "sort out" any ministers who refused to hand over their advertising budgets to him.

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Asked if there was any basis on which Ajay Gupta could say that, Zuma responded: "No, I don’t know."

Ajay Gupta has previously denied the allegation.

On Monday, Zuma said he could not recall making a call to Maseko to give him instructions to "help" the Gupta family.

"I don’t remember. I normally call [director-generals] to discuss a number of issues. I can’t remember making this call," Zuma told the inquiry.

The former president did not, however, dispute that he might have made the call.

No interaction

Zuma also denied having "any interaction" with Mentor, who testified previously at the state-capture inquiry that while at the Gupta’s compound in Saxonwold, Johannesburg, in 2010, she was offered the job of public enterprises minister on condition that she terminated SAA’s Johannesburg-Mumbai route. Mentor said that Zuma was at the compound at the same time. "I had no interaction with this witness, nothing," Zuma told the inquiry. He also denied that Ajay Gupta would have known about plans to reshuffle his cabinet, as he "was not part of government". The businessman did not play a role in the appointment of ministers, said Zuma.

On Monday, Zuma’s lawyer, Daniel Mantsha, queried why the inquiry was even asking the former president about Mentor’s account of her alleged meeting with Ajay Gupta.

Mantsha suggested that Mentor had been discredited after giving incorrect details about the Gupta’s Saxonwold residence, and argued that what she had testified had not been proved to be true.

Evidence leader Paul Pretorius said on Tuesday that Zondo had yet to make a finding about the "credibility and reliability" of Mentor’s testimony, and the questions still needed to be put to Zuma.