For three years, Cyril Ramaphosa sat on the State Security Agency report, doing nothing. Qaanitah Hunter asks if we are likely to see him doing something similar when the Zondo Commission releases its report.
If any state entity can tell the complete picture of state capture, it is the State Security Agency. It was so captured, you risk capture through osmosis by simply entering its Musanda headquarters, known as "The Farm".
It is the godfather of state capture if you like.
Skeletons have been lying all around the SSA since 2007, and bodies of impunity, misconduct and corruption have been piling up. It got worse in the Zuma years, and there was an armed private army of spooks loyal to no one and nothing else but Jacob Zuma. They had bags of cash, guns - some of which were automatic rifles - and a good amount of impunity.
We have known the sordid details of this since 2018, and the State Capture Inquiry got some added value from first-hand accounts of people who saw it all.
Capture of SSA continued under Ramaphosa
I have heard so much about the High Panel Review Report led by now security advisor to the president, Sydney Mufamadi, in the last three years that I am frankly bored of it. But what made me sit at the edge of my seat was evidence leader advocate Paul Pretorius pointing out something we have seen unfolding, but no one dared say anything.
The capture of the SSA was not hampered under Ramaphosa, despite the Mufamadi report, and the president's inaction may have led to the deadly and violent unrest we saw in July.
"It would be very sad indeed had those activities had a relationship to what happened in July. And it is not unreasonable to suspect that it is a matter that should be investigated," Pretorius said.
Ramaphosa could not even try to deny it.
He replied:
It is a proposition and not unreasonable. And may I add, it is part of the investigation that is under way because all these things need to be gone into, and as Mr Pretorius correctly says, it's about the security of the people of our country.
"There was a lapse, and we now need to investigate, and we need to find out how it happened and how it manifested itself from a certain beginning right up until what happened in July."
The reality is that three years after the report was submitted to him, the politician most implicated by the rot in the SSA, David Mahlobo, is still a deputy minister in Ramaphosa's executive.
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The official under whose watch malfeasance at the SSA was at its peak, Arthur Fraser, is a senior official in government. And the top spy who ran an illegal and armed unit, Thulani Dlomo, is still roaming free on the streets of Durban. But that is not even half of it. Pretorius was right. It was not an "oopsie" or a "lapse", as Ramaphosa likes to call it.
"The events of the state security saga from 2007 to now could hardly be termed a lapse. They were a concerted exercise of state governance and executive control. These weren't mistakes. These weren't slip-ups. Minister Dlodlo didn't arrive one morning and say: 'Oops, forgot to do this, or I made a mistake here'. This was a deliberate pattern of misgovernment, which has possible had the most serious consequences for our state," Pretorius said.
Muofhe given the keys
Despite all talk about reform, Pretorius pointed out that the investigation into the allegations at the SSA, under the famed Project Veza, had stopped under Ramaphosa's watch. This was after agents who testified before the Zondo Commission were removed from the investigation, the acting DG Loyiso Jafta was told to go, and Ramaphosa's childhood best friend and key ally Mahlodi Sam Muofhe was given the keys to the investigation.
I wish Pretorius had asked Ramaphosa specific questions about whether he endorsed the blocking of the investigation at SSA, and whether he had given a silent nod to his pal Muofhe blocking the NPA from accessing documents.
READ | Aubrey Matshiqi: If the head of state constitutes the chief threat to national security - what then?
The thing is, everything points to the fact that state capture at the SSA is alive and thriving. And it doesn't matter if, on paper, the SSA now reports to the Presidency or there is no longer a minister to blame.
Capture has eaten the agency alive like vengeful cancer.
Nothing done about the report
Ramaphosa's "oopsies" and "we didn't know" will not fix anything - in fact, they have made it worse.
He had a report that painted a complete picture of what happened and what he should do and, for three years, he did nothing.
The story of the SSA makes me worried that the report of the Zondo Commission, when Ramaphosa eventually gets it, is going to be treated the same way.
And if capture was allowed to thrive at the SSA under Ramaphosa, it will rear its ugly head elsewhere in the state under a different guise if it is allowed to.
- Qaanitah Hunter is News24's political editor.
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