Zuma was the Guptas’ puppet, Zondo finds: The former president’s dismissal of Nhlahla Nene as finance minister for spurious reasons showed the veracity of the Gupta family’s claim that he would do anything for them
“It seems true that the Guptas were taking care of him,” he added, before detailing some of the “extraordinary things” the four, with the alleged collusion of others, did for Molefe as an illustration of how far those embroiled in the state capture scandal would bend over backwards to indulge the family.
This meant, Zondo said, that the ANC allowed him to jump the queue and must have persuaded the person who was next on the list not to avail him or herself so that Molefe could secure a seat. “In terms of that plan, the Eskom board, led by another Gupta associate, Mr Ben Ngubane, rescinded the agreement in terms of which Mr Molefe had left Eskom — namely an early retirement agreement.”
Zondo asked again, as he did in the first tranche of his report in January, why the ANC leadership failed to do more to halt state capture. Turning to Molefe’s appointment at Transnet after the Guptas’newspaper predicted it would happen, he asked why the top six did not question this or his subsequent secondment to Eskom to proceed.
The report notes that the then energy minister, Tina Joemat-Pettersson, had presented Nene with draft letters destined for the Russian government and had fretted about Zuma’s reaction when the finance minister refused to sign off on these. The then president not only misled the country about the true reason for firing him, but was prepared to “falsely implicate” the top six officials of the ruling party, several of whom, including President Cyril Ramaphosa had confirmed to the commission that he had never, as he claimed, consulted them about the alleged plans to redeploy Nene to the bank.
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