Hain takes aim at Zuma

A new chapter was today added to the extraordinary story of a former anti-apartheid activist who returned to SA with guns blazing and aimed squarely at former President Jacob Zuma. Legalbrief reports that Lord Peter Hain’s dramatic childhood in SA shaped his development as an influential UK politician. At the age of 11, his parents were detained for supporting Nelson Mandela in his case against the government. When Hain was just 15, he spoke at the funeral of John Frederick Harris, an anti-apartheid activist who was hanged for murder for the bombing of the Johannesburg main railway station. The following year, his family emigrated to the UK where Hain became chairman of the Stop The Seventies Tour campaign which disrupted visits by the SA rugby union and cricket teams in 1969 and 1970. In 1972, the South African Security Services sent him a letter bomb that failed to explode because of faulty wiring. Four years later, Hain was tried for – and acquitted of – a 1975 bank theft, having allegedly been framed by the South African Bureau of State Security. He later became a UK Labour Party Cabinet Minister and served under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

Hain’s return to SA follows his appeal to UK Finance Minister Sajid Javid to impose a series of debilitating sanctions against the controversial Gupta family which is accused of fleecing millions of dollars from the SA Government coffers. His request followed a US Treasury announcement in October that sanctions had been imposed against the family and its associate Salim Essa in October. In his letter to Javid, Hain accused the Gupta family of robbing South African taxpayers of more than £500m in a corruption and money-laundering scheme linked to former President Jacob Zuma. A report on the News24 site notes that he said the family, along with Zuma, plundered the fiscus ‘on an industrial scale’. He added that it also betrayed ‘Nelson Mandela's legacy and the values for which so many of us fought for in the anti-apartheid struggle’.

Full Fin24 report

Hain today told the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into State Capture that government’s Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) programme has been a ‘convenient mechanism for looting’. The Citizen reports that he said he was ‘strongly supportive of the principle of BEE as part of the transition of the historic discrimination under a white-owned and controlled economy during apartheid’. However, he told commission chair Deputy Chief Justice Zondo that he believed that there was an increased need to protect the programme and ensure that its legitimate aims ‘are not undermined and distorted by corrupt manipulation by a few corrupt individuals. Hain said a whistle-blowing hotline should be created to report instances where BEE was exploited. ‘Obviously, to all of us … the BEE programme is really important to the future of South Africa,’ he said.

Full report in The Witness

He also said corruption under Zuma was enabled by international banks, corporations and governments which should now seek to recover the loot they helped launder. Hain said his submission was ‘very critical of global corporates, especially banks, and states including the UK, Dubai, Hong Kong and India’. A TimesLIVE report notes that Zuma, who was last year removed from office, has agreed to cooperate with the commission even while dismissing the probe as prejudiced. Part of its brief is to investigate accusations that the Gupta brothers (Atul, Ajay and Rajesh) influenced Zuma over political appointments and state contracts. His submission states that a number of international banks helped the Guptas cloak the source of their funds by allowing them to open and maintain bank accounts, even after allegations of their involvement in corruption became public. In addition, they allegedly allowed them to transfer illicit funds into these accounts.

– TimesLIVE

Zuma was last week meant to appear for the second time before the commission, but his legal representatives said he was ill. In his first appearance in July, Zuma told the commission that Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) council chairperson, General Siphiwe Nyanda, and Ngoako Ramatlhodi were spies. A report on the News24 site notes that the commission has not yet issued dates detailing when he will appear again. Despite his absence, Zuma continues to make headlines for all the wrong reasons. A prestigious KwaZulu-Natal school has had to obtain a default judgment against him for his failure to pay school fees of US$850, Rapport reports. Attorney Reona Ramnarain, who acted on behalf of the school, said the debt has still not been paid despite the court order being granted in July. The fact that the school cannot get such a small amount from Zuma doesn’t bode well for the bid of VBS Mutual Bank to recoup a loan of US$400 000 for his Nkandla home, the report notes. Lawyers who scrutinised the Nkandla bond say there is very little that could assist the liquidators of VBS to recover the loan.

Full report in Rapport