PETER BRUCE: Why Malusi Gigaba just has to go

It is becoming almost impossible to follow quite what home affairs minister Malusi Gigaba is in the most trouble for — aiding and abetting state capture, being called a liar by senior courts, having the public protector agree that he lied and directing President Cyril Ramaphosa to sanction him, or having a sex tape featuring him maliciously released into the public arena.

There’s no doubt in my mind by now that Gigaba should be removed from the government and that if the president doesn’t use the public protector’s sanction window to fire him he should resign. Sadly, there’s a very strong possibility that neither will happen. Gigaba, sans job, would find it hard to get a job in the private sector. He is a lifetime politician. What Ramaphosa wants to avoid is having Gigaba pop up alongside Jacob Zuma the next time the former president makes a court appearance.

Nonetheless, I think Gigaba should go because of his role in state capture. It’s his big sin. It was direct, overt, deeply enabling and its effects we will live with for decades. He shows no remorse for it and, while he has not yet been called before the Zondo commission of inquiry into state capture, his appearance before parliament earlier this year gives a clue about what to expect when he does finally give testimony. He will be defensive and sanctimonious. He will admit to no mistakes, except possibly for those now visible “with hindsight”.

I’ve written before that state capture, as a visible, tangible, project, began a few weeks before a meeting of the Zuma cabinet back in June 2011. On June 8, in Cape Town, Gigaba presented his cabinet colleagues with a list of sweeping changes that he, as minister of public enterprises, proposed to make to the boards of big state-owned enterprises, including Eskom, Transnet and Denel.

What I’ve tried to draw into the list of references here are stories from around that time to give you an idea of what it must have felt like to be the chair of, say, Eskom, on the morning of Thursday June 9 and, then watch Gigaba and his department blatantly lie and fall over themselves to apologise for the manner of their axing and then to bring you back to the present and watch how he defends what he did eight years ago.

I was editor of Business Day that Thursday when this story ran as our front page lead. It was written by me and I am responsible for all of its many deficiencies. But I’m glad to say the Guptas made it into the story even back in 2011.

The following day this appeared: “A statement by Gigaba’s office said he ‘expresses regret over the fact he could not officially inform current board members impacted by the changes beforehand owing to the premature publication of the cabinet decision’.” That’s nonsense. Gigaba’s office knew well in advance that what would be put to cabinet had been leaked to Business Day. 

But after getting away with the pathos then, he earlier this year explained to a parliamentary committee that “As the minister back then, like anyone else I was not aware of the links to the Gupta family and I did not have a crystal ball to know the problems they would do in later years.” 

Which is weird because if even I knew Iqbal Sharma was close to the Guptas, as clearly did his cabinet colleagues who rejected Sharma’s nomination as Transnet chair in place of Mafika Mkwanazi, then he should sure as hell have known too. Here’s the full statement Gigaba put out after the Business Day story appeared.

The thing I’ve always asked myself about the list of names he put to cabinet is simple. Did he know all these people (Zola Tsotsi, Gigaba’s new Eskom chair was a complete nobody working in the Lesotho state sector. Gigaba chose him to replace a really wonderful South African, Mpho Makwana) or was he simply receiving lists from Zuma who, as we know, would get lists of appointments from the Guptas in Saxonwold? I’ve always gone with the lists theory.

I used to think that sort of let him off the hook a bit. But if you’re ignorant in what you do you should not be allowed to do it. And the more I think back the more I can smell that Gupta stench way back to 2011. He knew what was afoot even if he didn’t know the people he was appointing.

How could he possibly have known Salim Essa, the mastermind behind almost the entire state capture project, when a few weeks after that cabinet meeting he appointed Essa to the board of another company under the DPE’s control, Broadband Infraco? And yet how could he not know that the sudden appearance of “procurement committees” on SOE boards was a departure from the norm. Essa became head of Broadband Infraco’s procurement committee upon joining the board. He didn’t stay long.

Anyway, sorry to jump around time a bit but here is Gigaba again in parliament earlier this year, farming out responsibility for all his appointments to the cabinet. “Once the minister has applied his mind to these candidates, and given his approval, the preferred candidate’s profile then serves before the relevant cabinet committee, and only then does it serve before cabinet. Cabinet approves all board appointments, including executive directors who are ex-officio,” Gigaba said. At one stage the report, you’ll note, says he denied getting involved in board appointments and then that he defended his appointments of Anoj Singh and Sharman to the Transnet board because they were “qualified”. 

And back to 2011, the Mail & Guardian reports on the fallout from the original Gigaba purge. Knowing exactly how the news came to be in Business Day in the first place I had to bite my tongue when I published the letter in this piece. And, please, read to the end. Read the words of Sibusiso Sibisi, the man being upended by Gigaba as chair, and weep.

It’s hard to find old links but to finish off this matter, somewhere in this last link is the Business Day column I wrote after the Gigaba announcement. I’m surprised how obvious the Gupta links were back then to me. Gigaba wasn’t paying a mere columnist much attention then, it seems. He knew nothing about the Guptas even though, by recent accounts his colleague Rob Davies at the department of trade & industry had been around to Saxonwold for tea by June 8 2011? Don’t ministers talk to each other? 

On another matter entirely, I just loved this piece in Business Day from Adrian Gore, the Discovery CEO and all-round genius. Here he asks us South Africans to confront our inner pessimist and let it go. We’re a country full of promise.