Resistance to the government’s efforts to fight and prevent future corruption is driven by those who desire to continue plundering state resources, public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan says.
“The fightback is about retaining the right to steal, to stay out of an orange uniform. In trying to avoid the orange uniform, they do not care what they destroy in the process,” Gordhan said. “They don’t care about unemployment or inequity or economic exclusion, what they care about is themselves.”
Gordhan was speaking at the memorial service of anti-apartheid activist Max Coleman, who died in January at the age of 95.
“SA today is indeed characterised by state capture and corruption in many quarters that undermine the pillars of institutions of democracy and law enforcement, as well,” he said.
Gordhan’s comments come as law enforcement agencies push to prosecute those implicated in corruption and state capture as laid out in the Zondo commission of inquiry’s report. It details the capture of various state-owned enterprises (SOEs) for the benefit of a few politically connected individuals.
The commission found that many SOEs, including Denel, Transnet and SAA, were embroiled in state capture and senior government officials connived with members of the Gupta family to hollow out the capacity of these entities to deliver on their developmental mandates, to the detriment of the SA economy.
“The ultimate victims of these acts are not the people who sit at these SOEs, or in the various institutions of government, but the ordinary people in our townships and rural areas,” Gordhan said. “The SOEs that were a pride of SA have become a very poor reflection, a shadow of what they used to be in the past.”
To deal with the cases emanating from the state capture report the justice department on Wednesday announced the opening of two additional specialised commercial crimes courts in Mthatha and East London in the Eastern Cape.
“When one looks at the number of matters heard and the conviction rate to date, it is clear that the specialised commercial crimes court is a crucial mechanism to ensure that complex commercial crimes which often extend to corruption and white-collar crime are prosecuted effectively in dedicated courts,” justice minister Ronald Lamola said.
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