If you had to choose, what would you rather know: that the Gupta family businesses had been involved in more than R6bn worth of transactions that big banks in SA have reported to the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC), or that Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Des van Rooyen dined with the Guptas at their Johannesburg home the night before President Jacob Zuma fired then finance minister Nhlanhla Nene last December 9 and appointed (briefly) Van Rooyen in his place?
For me, the latter wins hands down.
The deposition that Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan made in the High Court in Pretoria last Friday, seeking a declaratory order that he cannot be expected to intervene in the row between the Guptas and the banks that have closed their accounts may be sexy, but it isn’t, I think, decisive in the state capture affair.
Yes, it will be fascinating to hear the Guptas explain the 70 or so transactions Gordhan listed. But if they are laundering money, is it theirs or are they proxies for even bigger money back home?
If a South African bank reports a large withdrawal to the FIC, does it also report to whom the money goes? Does it know? And can the FIC track where it goes next? We may be about to learn a lot more about the limits of financial intelligence in SA than about Gupta wealth.
The fact is, more likely, that the Guptas haven’t made money in SA by stealing. They’ve made it by diligently and smartly courting Jacob Zuma and, in return, reaping the benefits of his political favour. Their great strength is that Zuma is weak.
It was the Guptas who flew Zuma around the country day after day in their jet as he stitched together his political comeback before Polokwane. It was the Guptas who hired the children of his late wife, Kate. It was the Guptas who bought a house for one of his wives. It was the Guptas who arranged for Zuma’s lapdog, ANC Youth League leader Collen Maine, to get a 100% bond on a house he cannot possibly afford nor be paying for. It was the Guptas who gave Zuma a fawning daily newspaper.
The fact is the Guptas are smart merchants who do their homework. They probably know our political landscape and its players better than the CEOs of our 50 biggest companies combined.
And the money to do all this comes from Zuma, or, rather, the state he controls. That’s the way to do it. Want to buy a uranium mine? The Industrial Development Corporation will make you a loan and convert it to equity when you can’t repay. A coal mine? The Department of Mineral Resources and Eskom will chase out the owner, then double the price of coal from the mine and lend you working capital until you flog off the export rights for so much money you get to pay for the whole thing without spending any of your own.
Want to change the management at Eskom? Pick whoever. Get the board to suspend the management, get the president to tell the Department of Public Enterprises to be quiet about it. And do it all while the minister is out of the country (this happened last year, before Lynn Brown got Brian Molefe to go to Eskom from Transnet).
Want to fly guests over for a family wedding, but discreetly? It’s so easy, it’s all a bit like clubbing seals.
Well, up to a point. The Guptas are also their own worst enemy. Had they appreciated South African conservatism, they would have been more circumspect all these years.
Had they not boasted about their ties to Zuma, appeared with him at important functions or started a media business simply to support him, perhaps there’d be no public protector report lying in a safe waiting to be set free by a court on November 1. Perhaps there’d be no need for a declaratory order for Pravin Gordhan.
But they have become so entitled through Zuma they may have forgotten their manners. A letter sent to Thuli Madonsela by Ajay Gupta before she left the public protector’s office earlier this month warned her that she would release her state-capture report "at her peril" if it didn’t include Gupta input.
I am still astounded by this effrontery, especially as Ajay is the brother who didn’t take out South African citizenship.
Obviously, Gordhan’s bid for a declaratory order was strategic, in that he was able to disclose details of what the banks have told the FIC (which is in the Treasury). He puts the Guptas under pressure to explain themselves and allows the banks through the Chinese Wall of client confidentiality.
I can’t wait for the case. But waiting for Madonsela’s final report is harder. State capture isn’t all about the money. It’s about distortion and lies. And discovering you’re not crazy.
• Bruce is editor in chief
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