Johannesburg - ANC national chairperson Gwede Mantashe, who has been implicated by several witnesses at the state capture commission of inquiry, will lead the governing party’s delegation when it responds to allegations against it.
Zizi Kodwa, head of the ANC Presidency, on Tuesday said the ANC would respond at the end of the month to former public enterprises minister Barbara Hogan and the banks that implicated the organisation in efforts to stop them from closing accounts belonging to the Gupta family.
Kodwa denied that the ANC’s national working committee and the national executive committee discussed deployment into the government and state-owned entities (SOEs) as Hogan testified.
According to Kodwa, the commission can subpoena individual ANC leaders and members of the executive who have been implicated so far.
“Allow other people to come to the commission with their versions,” he said, adding that guilt should not be inferred on the basis of one witness.
Hogan yesterday described the great lengths to which former president Jacob Zuma went to influence appointments of executives in SOEs and shield those accused of wrong-doing from being held accountable.
Hogan, who was appointed by Zuma to the public enterprises portfolio from May 2009 until October 2010, told the commission that Zuma tried to protect former Eskom chief executive Jacob Maroga after the power utility accepted his resignation during a board meeting.
Maroga told an Eskom board meeting in October 2009 that he would resign and walk out.
The board accepted his resignation but he later claimed not to have resigned, triggering a crisis that saw Zuma intervening in what Hogan described as a “complete and utter nightmare”.
Zuma, according to Hogan, instructed her to ensure that Maroga was back in his job and for the Eskom board to halt the process of firing Maroga after he had made a U-turn on his resignation.
The Eskom board had been unhappy with Maroga’s performance and the turnaround strategy he had drafted for the power utility.
Hogan said Zuma even gave Maroga permission to return as the boss of Eskom.
She said on his return, Maroga displayed complete arrogance and wrote a letter that she described as a declaration of independence, stating that if anyone questioned his position they should direct their concerns to Zuma.
“We had a heated argument with the president,” Hogan said.
In 2010, while Hogan was preparing names of candidates for chairperson of troubled Transnet, Zuma demanded that he be sent their CVs.
She said she was surprised that Zuma also had an interest in appointments at state-owned forestry firm Safcol.
According to Hogan, Transnet needed a strong board to oversee the R84billion investment it was about to embark on.
Instead, Zuma told her in a meeting with Mantashe, then ANC secretary-general, that she was being redeployed to Finland to be ambassador.
Hogan told the commission that she declined Zuma’s offer as she could not leave her husband for five years and become a diplomat.
She said she and her deputy at the time, Enoch Godongwana, agreed that she should make a dignified exit.
Hogan said the Presidency drove a narrative that she and others removed from Zuma’s executive was due to their incompetence.