No shred of evidence I was captured, says Jacob Zuma

Former President Jacob Zuma says none of the multiple commissions of inquiry investigating alleged state capture and corruption committed under his leadership has found a “shred of evidence” against him. 

And the former president continues to question whether state capture actually exists. 

“Right now there are commissions that are sitting also motivated by the fact that Zuma is a corrupt man, Zuma has wrong friends but as these commissions are going, no shred of evidence has come to say: yes Zuma did this and that,” he told Business Day on Friday. 

This is part of what he describes as “the false face that is being shown, that this Zuma is a terrible man”. 

Zuma has, as yet, not applied to cross-examine a single witness at the inquiry into state capture, headed by Judge Raymond Zondo and which was initially focused on investigating claims that the Gupta family and their associates were influencing the appointments of ministers and senior office-bearers in state-owned enterprises in order to ensure that pliant officials do their bidding. 

Former finance minister Nhlanhla Nene linked his shock December 2015 axeing by Zuma — which sent the rand into freefall — to Zuma’s unhappiness over his resistance to a R1-trillion nuclear deal with Russia. 

Zuma this year told Business Day that he continued to support such a deal, which he is adamant would not have been the financial suicide predicted by analysts and multiple Treasury officials but would have “saved” SA from its ongoing energy crisis. 

Most recently, former Bosasa COO Angelo Agrizzi detailed how the controversial facilities management company — implicated in multibillion-rand tender rigging — allegedly made large cash payments to the Jacob Zuma Education Trust and sponsored a lavish birthday party for the former president. 

Zondo in March reportedly told SABC that he would like Zuma to appear before his inquiry. 

“Former president Zuma was the president during a certain time. There are allegations about certain things that are said to have happened during the time that he was president of the country. He has himself, as I understand from his lawyers, made it clear that he will co-operate with the commission in every way; there should be no problem whatsoever in him coming forward,” Zondo said. 

“We will hear more evidence and at a certain stage, I believe he will come.”

Zuma has however made it clear that he does not believe any of this testimony implicates him in wrongdoing. He has also questioned the existence of state capture itself, saying that he has “been finding it very difficult that you are using such a big word when you are dealing with a few individuals, that some of them may be in the state, and you call it a state capture. 

“I think it’s a way of trying to create a huge thing out of the information that is not so huge,” he told Business Day.  

“Because you say there is a family that captured the state, but even when the commission had been going, I haven’t found somebody who says ... there were judges who were captured ... I haven’t heard that there were people in parliament who were captured, or in government. 

“If there are individuals within these three arms of the state who were either talked to or interfered with or captured, it does not mean the state is captured ...  why should we say there’s a state capture when it is not? When you are talking about individuals who were interacting with certain people or a certain family? Why do you call it a state capture? What are you trying to do?”

Zuma has criticized former public protector Thuli Madonsela’s investigation into state capture as being a “rush-rush thing”.

He maintains he didn’t answer Madonsela’s questions about his alleged relationship with the Gupta family, who are in business with his son Duduzane, because he needed more time to consider those questions. 

“How do you answer questions when you have not prepared? That was not very normal.”

Madonsela’s report withstood Zuma’s legal attack on its remedial action, with the Pretoria high court ordering that he personally pay the estimated R10m legal costs of that challenge. 

Zuma’s open suspicion of that investigation, which led to the Zondo commission, as well as his clear belief that he has nothing that he needs to explain, sends a very strong message about his attitude to the state capture inquiry. One that clearly puts him on a direct collision course with Justice Zondo.