President Cyril Ramaphosa has clarified in a letter to parliament that he will deliver his plan to implement the recommendations in Chief Justice Raymond Zondo’s state capture inquiry report on October 15.
Zondo has four weeks remaining until he must submit his fifth and final report on state capture.
The Presidency has written to parliament clarifying the deadline, following two statements with incorrect dates, and in the light of a court order in April granting Zondo an extension to submit his ultimate report.
This week, Ramaphosa's office sent parliament a letter indicating the date. Several court high court orders were attached as supporting documents.
Zondo has delivered his findings and recommendations with regard to state capture, corruption and fraud in batches over several months. His concluding instalment must, per a court order, be handed over to Ramaphosa on June 15.
Parliamentary spokesperson Moloto Mothapo corrected two previous and incorrect statements, which listed the mistaken date for Ramaphosa’s input.
Mothapo said: “In terms of the high court order of February 23 2022, the president needs to submit his report to parliament four months after the receipt of the complete report from the judicial commission.”
In his submissions to the high court in April, motivating for an extension, Zondo explained that issues with drafts led to a five-week delay in the fourth instalment’s finalisation.
He told the high court that topics in the upcoming bundle presented “serious challenges” and some sections were so unsatisfactory that he revised them.
The commission’s chair was adamant “any delay” was not due to neglect, instead asserting that the tardiness was due to hearing “a lot of important evidence” demanding analysis and inclusion.
He said the inquiry would do its work properly until the day it was all completed. Zondo said that “no-one wishes to see that day” more than he and the inquiry team do.
“We have gone through a gruelling four years of work,” he wrote.
He argued that if the commission’s term had ended on April 30, it would lead to “unwanted consequences” and render all the efforts and resources spent “futile and against the public interest”.
Zondo told the court that what remained on the commission’s “to do” list for the final report were the Estina dairy project, SABC, the Passenger Rail Agency of SA, the 2013 landing of a Gupta-owned jet at Waterkloof air force base, the State Security Agency, one chapter on state capture at large and an executive summary of the total report.
“There are drafts that have already been prepared on all the above topics except the summary,” Zondo said to the court.
He added that volumes on the SABC and Waterkloof landing were reasonably short. He explained that a “document on parliamentary oversight” was excluded from part three “because it belongs at the end” of the submissions.
Zondo believed an additional six weeks “should be” adequate and optimistically suggested “we might be able to be done by the end of May”.
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