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It feels like the Zondo Commission, or to give it the full name, the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture, has been going on forever.
August 21, 2018, was the first day of action, for those keeping count, and mountains of evidence have been presented showing how our leaders sold our nation down the river to line their own pockets.
This week has been a particularly wild ride, with Jacob Zuma front and centre, as the exploits of the State Security Agency (SSA) are laid bare.
Mufamadi also touched on the SSA’s efforts to shield him from legal woes, crush political opponents, and spread propaganda through the African News Agency (ANN).
Well, yesterday the commission was back at it, and there was far more drama to come as current SSA Acting Director-General, Loyiso Jafta, spilled the beans
Here’s The Daily Maverick:
With regard to Project Justice, an alleged operation aimed at influencing the judiciary, Jafta said, “You have to assume that the judiciary was a target for intelligence operations and that could only be political.”
The commission heard from Jafta that there was circumstantial evidence of one judge having accepted a bribe to rule in favour of Zuma…
The commission also heard on Tuesday that former first lady Nompumelelo Ntuli had possibly been held “against her will” in a R5-million safe house [Zuma’s minister of state security, David] Mahlobo had secured in “Operation Tin Roof”.
The matter was investigated by the SSA and, “in essence then, Mrs Zuma was put into the custody of the SSA. She was kept against her will,” said Jafta.
Sheesh, as if Tin Roof needed more bad press.
It’s tough to stress just how loose the SSA was with our money, but this passage from City Press stands out:
Jafta detailed how on his appointment he started to follow the money and found that there was no corporate governance in many respects.
“You could walk in and request R20 million [for a project], come back and say mission accomplished or say you need another R2 million, get it and walk out, then come back and say you have completed the project,” he said.
That’s taxpayer money in action.
How much, in total, are we talking about here?
Jafta revealed how the SSA could not account for at least R9 billion worth of assets, and that R125 million could not be accounted for during the 2017/2018 financial year.
R9 billion just vanished into thin air.
Think about the homes, the schools, the hospitals, the everything else that money could have done. All of that, just to enrich a select few and shield them from any form of accountability.
I know we’re at the stage now where we’re pretty much immune to hearing about this level of criminality, but we should still be shocked and horrified by revelations like these.
One man who knows about Zuma’s misdeeds more than most is Jacques Pauw, author of The President’s Keepers, and he spoke with CapeTalk’s Lester Kiewit earlier in the week.
You can listen to that interview below:
