Johannesburg - The ANC will appear before the commission of inquiry into state capture to explain how billions of rands were stolen from government departments and state-owned entities under its watch.
Commission chairperson Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo on Thursday said the governing party would appear before the inquiry and is co-operating and filing affidavits.
”If the ANC was intolerant of corruption, wanted proper oversight, Parliament could have stopped the things that are wrong,” Justice Zondo said.
According to the country’s second most senior judge, the governing party may be responsible for some share of its MPs not having performed their oversight functions over the executive effectively and properly.
”The ruling party may be responsible for a certain share of blame as to why its own MPs might have felt that they were limited in a very serious way in discharging their functions,” he said.
Justice Zondo said had the ANC allowed its MPs to perform oversight over the executive using their own judgment, it may well be that they could have done a lot to stop the widespread looting that has been detailed at the commission since 2018.
”Maybe they could have stopped... or not happened at the level they happened. Maybe the billions of taxpayers’ money that were taken away through corruption from government departments and state-owned entities, maybe it would not have been that many billions of rands,” he said.
Justice Zondo said the ANC was bound to deal with certain matters relating to state capture, what it did, could have done and what it did when it acted against rising levels of corruption.
He said the executive was the ANC’s, and the president of the party was the president of the country.
”What did they do about all of those things? If they were giving instructions that their MPs should not perform their oversight functions, they will put their side of the story. It is quite concerning if the ruling party was conducting itself in a manner that it was wrong to perform oversight functions properly,” said Zondo.
He also expressed his concerns that ANC MPs were not allowed to call ministers and other members of the executive to account about serious allegations of corruption.
Justice Zondo said this amounted to not taking parliamentary committees seriously, and ANC MPs not being vigorous in their oversight functions because a minister was from their party.
Former ANC MP Dr Makhosi Khoza said the governing party’s MPs were hindered from doing their functions properly.
Testifying at the commission on Thursday, Khoza said the ANC was instrumental in crippling the parliamentary oversight function, and even gave them (ANC MPs) unlawful instructions.
”It seemed to me that the ANC had adopted corruption as its policy, it was its policy,” Khoza said.
She said Parliament was such an important institution in curbing rampant corruption, and proposed that the standing committees on public accounts and finance should be chaired by the opposition.
Khoza said a number of ANC MPs wanted to do good, but felt constrained.
She singled out former chairperson of the National Assembly’s portfolio committee on public enterprises Zukiswa Rantho, late ANC MP Feziwe Loliwe and herself as trying to do their best.
”We felt we could not allow this to continue. What happened to those women is tragic,” Khoza said, adding that she was not suggesting that the party was involved in Loliwe’s death in a car accident in 2018.
Rantho, who also gave evidence this week, did not return as an ANC MP after the 2019 national and provincial elections.
”All those were at the forefront, who had no ’smallanyana’ skeletons, were strangled and discarded,” Khoza said.
Khoza said ANC MPs doing their work were warned it was very cold outside the ANC.
”People who perform oversight are severely punished,” she said.
Political Bureau