Zondo would be happy if Parliament could admit failures in preventing state capture
Chief Justice Raymond Zondo said it would make him happy if Parliament were to own up to its failure in preventing state capture.
He said the African National Congress (ANC) must also get to the bottom of what it should have done – but it did not.
Commemorating International Anti-corruption Day on Thursday, Zondo said it was not enough to make promises that state capture won’t happen again if there was no plan in place to prevent it.
January 2023 will mark five years since former president Jacob Zuma appointed Zondo to chair an inquiry into state capture.
It was under Zuma’s administration that state capture flourished.
But Zondo warned that avoiding a repeat takes actual commitment.
“We must not mislead ourselves. We must not say it will never happen again when we don’t have a clear plan that will make sure it will never happen again. We must not mislead ourselves and say it will never happen again if the foundation that provided a fertile ground to state capture in the first place is still there.”
Zondo said state capture was not only about particular individuals.
A thorough societal review is required of where the country went wrong and what it should have done better.
“I would be very happy if Parliament is able to come out in due course and say this is what we did wrong last time – which prevented us from stopping state capture when we could have.”
If the ANC had heeded the advice of its own integrity commission that Zuma step down in 2013, state capture may not have flourished in the way that it did – added Zondo.
-EWN
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