Wheels of justice turn
THERE was a seismic shift in the tectonic plates of our politics this week with the news that the Asset Forfeiture Unit (AFU) was about to serve preservation orders on Gupta-linked companies McKinsey and Trillian.
These companies are believed to hold R1.6 billion, allegedly illicitly gained through state capture.
They are apparently the tip of an iceberg that the National Prosecuting Authority’s AFU, the SAPS’s Specialised Commercial Crimes Unit and the Hawks, as well as officials from the National Treasury, the Financial Intelligence Centre and the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission, are working on.
Ultimately, this task force is looking to recover an estimated R50 billion of state money illicitly siphoned off the national exchequer through the entire gamut of state capture from corrupt practices to dodgy tenders.
It’s an immense sum of money that would go some way to fixing the shortfall in the government budget, to say nothing of the latest headache of funding tertiary education for all poor South Africans.
However, it is more than the money, so much more.
We have been unwilling witnesses to an almost industrial level of looting, as kleptocrats raided the coffers of state-owned enterprises, perverted laws and processes to buy assets and would then be given tenders to provide services back to the state.
Indeed, we are on the cusp of official investigations; a commission of inquiry into state capture, and the deputy president ordered by court to appoint a new national director of public prosecutions – since our sitting president, Jacob Zuma, is too compromised to appoint someone who will effectively have to investigate whether or not to charge him.
For far too long, Zuma has used every legal gambit in the book to avoid ever returning to the dock – while passionately pleading to have the chance to clear his name.
There are still many legal hurdles to be overcome before that happens, but neither his son nor his friends will have the same luxury.
The best part of all is that there is no political interference or agenda in the process.
On the contrary, it is the lack of it that appears to have emboldened officials to do their job.