PETER BRUCE: What if Guptas are just a cog in a wheel?

So, Brian Molefe’s about to be kicked out of Eskom, barely weeks after returning to a ululating, albeit hastily assembled, staff.

Duduzane Zuma owns a 175m² apartment (that’s bigger than my house) in the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the world’s tallest building. Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba has as a chief of staff and an adviser in his past two ministerial jobs a fixer for the Gupta family.

Mineral Resources Minister Mosebenzi Zwane flew with the Guptas and a known Indian money launderer to Switzerland in December 2015, the same month he "negotiated" Glencore out of its Optimum mine and into the Guptas’ waiting arms with Glencore boss Ivan Glasenberg, Duduzane and members of the Gupta family in the room.

The Guptas, meanwhile, have tried to buy Grindrod Bank, which is used by the Department of Social Development to distribute grants. We know all this because of a slew of sensational stories in the media.

Apparently, the leak about the extent of state capture, mainly by the Guptas, is about 8GB. By way of comparison, the complete King James edition of the Bible runs to about half a gigabyte. This bears all the hallmarks of a WikiLeaks special and it will take weeks to plough through.

Get out the popcorn, this is going to get much, much better.

Some of you may recall how close to hysteria Atul Gupta came when Eyewitness News discovered his family had landed a party of wedding guests at a South African Air Force base a few years back. I can only imagine the shock these leaks have caused them.

Apparently, the leak about the extent of state capture, mainly by the Guptas, is about 8GB. It bears all the hallmarks of a WikiLeaks special 

I have had no sight of any of the e-mails, but some of what is to come will no doubt be profoundly embarrassing, even to people so rich they needn’t care. A lot of it will hurt President Jacob Zuma politically and make the prospects of him successfully crafting his succession as ANC party leader in December even more difficult than they are now. Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa must be an acutely happy man, if only for a few days.

I also suspect that unless Gigaba is able to extricate himself from the many clear associations with the Guptas, to which the e-mails have generously added, his career will be short-lived. He cannot dance between the shadow government and the elected government much longer. This music will soon stop.

But I need to dedicate this column to the one guy who, twice now that I have heard, asks the only question that truly matters. "What," agonises the excellent Xolani Gwala in the 6am slot on Radio 702, "what is behind it all?" It’s all that matters. The rest of the stuff is gossip. Superior gossip, because it is all true. But what is behind it all?

I have two possible answers, both pure conjecture. First, the Guptas have managed to capture Zuma (and thereby his government) simply by paying him a second salary. That might explain his aggressive response to the big banks closing the Gupta accounts.

Zuma paid a visit to Saudi Arabia in March 2016 and made an unexpected diversion to Dubai. About a week later, news broke of the Gupta accounts being closed. But they would have had warning of those moves.

In this scenario, the Guptas help the president open a bank account in Dubai. There is nothing illegal about having an account overseas.

But, Xolani Bhai, there’s an even bigger piece of conjecture, and it was the Indian money launderer in the plane with the Guptas, Duduzane and Zwane that got me thinking.

What if the Guptas are merely a front for bigger money far away? Money for which the expense of capturing an economy the size of ours is a mere coin you throw to the builders? What if they’re reporting to vast enterprises abroad?

It’s sometimes hard to believe people as ordinary as the Guptas could sustain a complicated strategy without guidance. We will see. Most of it will come out at The Trial (date to be announced).

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Browse the full collection of our journalists' investigative reports into the leaked Gupta emails

My colleague Tim Cohen calls the state-owned companies the "soft underbelly" of the economy and he is right. But it took the Guptas some time (and a few hard knocks, like the fight at Sishen) to realise this.

The fact is, state-owned enterprises are big spenders. They have weak balance sheets and often need Treasury funding. But if you have the boards and the senior management in your pocket, you’ll be sure to get all the business you want from them.

Pour taxpayer money into one side and out pops superbly washed profit on the other. And to make sure the state-owned enterprises never run out of money to spend on you, get your man into the Treasury to keep the taps open.

So simple. I’m genuinely dejected to appreciate just how central Gigaba has been to this project but we must celebrate every victory as it comes. On Wednesday, Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown instructed the Eskom board to rescind its reappointment of Molefe as CEO. Right on!