Cape Town - Chief of state protocol Vusi Bruce Koloane said he was “under pressure from number one” as he tried to persuade other government officials that orders to allow a private jet to land at Waterkloof Air Force Base came from the very top.
The government’s report on an internal investigation into Guptagate was released to the public on Wednesday. As Justice Minister Jeff Radebe said in Parliament, it contained incontrovertible evidence that Koloane and Lieutenant-Colonel Christine Anderson - the other senior official implicated in the report - acted alone.
The report also implicates members of the Gupta family directly in trying to arrange for the landing, including approaches to Transport Minister Dikobe Ben Martins and Defence Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula.
Koloane was involved from the very beginning, according to the report.
As early as February, he was present at a meeting where Tony Gupta asked Martins and the Airports Company of SA for the use of facilities at OR Tambo Airport.
Later, after that request had failed, Koloane contacted Mapisa-Nqakula’s political adviser to ask about progress with an attempt to to obtain permission for a landing at Waterkloof. This was when he claimed to be under pressure from “number one”.
When this request was also denied by the Defence Minister, and the Guptas turned to the Indian High Commission, Koloane was again at the centre of proceedings.
He told a Sergeant-Major Ntshishi at the Air Force Command Post, who was dealing with the request, now coming from the Indian High Commission, that there would be ministers aboard the flight and that Martins had been instructed by President Jacob Zuma to “assist the Gupta family”.
When asked to put it in writing, he said “the challenge was that this could not be put in writing”, the report reads.
Koloane later told investigators the neither Zuma, nor officials in the Presidency, ministers or directors-general had ever instructed him to assist in the landing.
Political Bureau