It’s strange, but the near deluge of corruption being revealed through all the many commissions of inquiry we are having in the wake of the presidency of Jacob Zuma is not having the effect I thought it would. I thought it would be like a cleansing, a catharsis.
But listening to former Bosasa executive Angelo Agrizzi tell the Zondo Commission last week about the huge web of bribes and payments made to ANC politicians and civil servants and political acolytes since way before the Guptas ever became a feature of our political life was really not cathartic at all.
It was depressing. Is there simply no corner of the ANC or the state that is clean? What is worse is that the onset of the election season means that instead of hearing testimony and a hopefully soon-to-be-rejuvenated National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) then prosecuting on the basis of what it hears, evidence from people like Agrizzi will become part of the election.
Agrizzi’s testimony is the equivalent of the 2017 cache of leaked e-mails about the Guptas. It is huge. He implicates everyone from Jacob Zuma through to Armscor head Kevin Wakeford. He implicates officials in the NPA and the police. All of them received money from the Watsons.
And the thing is it isn’t going to take a potentially reluctant police force to investigate and draw up charges. The Revenue Service, Sars, can move more quickly and more effectively. It wasn’t, remember, murders and violence that got Al Capone sent to jail. It was his taxes. He hadn’t paid them.
Yet we have it from the guy (Agrizzi) who paid him that Zuma was given R300,000 a month by the Watsons. It makes Roy Moodley’s R100,000 monthly payments to Zuma seem almost mean-spirited. But the Watsons had a bigger problem than Moodley. They were trying to get a prosecution dropped and they needed Zuma to make a call. Their intermediary? Hello Dudu Myeni!
“I was well aware that Gavin Watson had committed to paying R300,000 in cash to Myeni for onward payment to the ‘Jacob Zuma Foundation’,” reads Agrizzi’s testimony. “On occasions I would have to pack the money for him in this regard.
“One morning (I can’t remember the date) Watson asked me how he could impress Myeni. He asked for my wife’s advice. My wife said he should purchase her a nice handbag. She arranged with Louis Vuitton Sandton to procure one. The handbag was delivered. R300,000 in cash was placed in the bag. The bag was then given to her by Watson. I know this because of my discussions with Watson and because Myeni thanked me personally.
“These payments continued regularly on a monthly basis. I was well aware of them because I was at times present when the cash was packed by Watson for her. I was present at a few deliveries to Myeni.”
What a grubby, lowbrow bunch they all are — the Watsons and the Zuptas. Though perhaps not quite as crass as our current environmental affairs minister Nomvula Mokonyane. Agrizzi’s testimony contains the Christmas shopping list Watson had arranged to give her when she was Gauteng safety & security MEC. After meeting her in 2002/2003, Agrizzi says: “Towards the end of every year I was tasked by Watson to see to her family’s Christmas needs. This would include (approximately): 120 cases of cold drinks; 4 cases of high-quality whisky; 40 cases mixed beer; 8 lambs; 12 cases of frozen chicken pieces; 200kg of beef (and well as various braai packs) and numerous cases of premium brandy and speciality alcohol.”
Ugh … Agrizzi is obviously a crook himself but I almost feel sorry for him. “Soon after 2002 I was tasked by Watson to supply her and her family or friends with provisions during the course of the year. I was instructed to contact her personal assistant Sandy Thomas. This included:
“Paying and organising funerals in respect of deceased family members; arranging for the rental of a vehicle for periods of three months at a time (through Blakes Travel, a premium vehicle such as an Audi A3) for her daughter when she visited from China where she was studying.
“Catering for several ANC rallies on her instruction; providing catering for supporters at President Zuma’s birthday parties at among others Luthuli House and for his private birthday parties …”
In other words while the Watsons sucked up to the ANC they got huge contracts. Agrizzi has obviously given it to the Zondo Commission investigators chapter and verse and you can see how he has been coached into telling his story. In less than two weeks a new NPA boss, Shamila Batohi takes charge. Her work has basically been done for her.
Agrizzi’s testimony will also have a political fallout. First, it clearly damages the ANC. Mostly the Zuma crowd but not exclusively. But it will also make it harder for the ANC to leverage evidence that EFF leaders benefited directly from the looting of the VBS Mutual Bank in Limpopo.
I’ve been surprised how quiet the EFF has been through the start of the year but they may simply be keeping their powder dry. They launch their election campaign on February 2.
Obviously for President Cyril Ramaphosa, Agrizzi is mostly a blessing. The more his opponents in the ANC, in the cabinet and in the party’s national executive are implicated the way Mokonyane has been, the easier his job becomes. Batohi, if she knows her stuff, could have her behind bars before the year is out.
But the Watsons, we know from the president himself, has already touched the Ramaphosa family. He said as much when trying to explain late last year the transfer of R500,000 from a Bosasa source into a Ramaphosa account. Ramaphosa said it must have had something to do with a contract he’d seen between his son, Andile, and Bosasa.
Ramaphosa later retracted that, revealing that the money had actually been a donation by Watson to his ANC leadership. It has since been returned. Even if we suspend disbelief and agree a candidate would not necessarily know who was contributing what into whatever lawyer’s account was collecting money, what business was his son doing with Bosasa?
You see, when you take just a little bit of money from a criminal, you’re done for. There’s no going back. The president needs to come absolutely clean about his and his family’s links to the Watsons. If I were him I’d be pushing for time before Judge Ray Zondo right now. Andile Ramaphosa will certainly have to account for himself. He is not just any kid. His dad’s the president.
The president is off to Davos. He surely cannot leave with Agrizzi’s testimony so far unacknowledged. And he needs to be sure that Agrizzi stays alive long enough to testify not only before Zondo but at the trials his testimony will surely trigger. Including his own.
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