President Cyril Ramaphosa will give testimony to the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture, probably in March 2021, Judge Raymond Zondo has revealed.

In a final briefing for the year, Zondo, who chairs the commission, also said he would seek a high court extension to the commission’s terms to the end of June 2021.

The commission is scheduled to finish by March 2021, but the hard lockdown had delayed its proceedings, the judge said.

Ramaphosa and the ANC are likely to testify in March next year, while former president Jacob Zuma has been summoned to appear for a week in January and another week in February.  A Constitutional Court hearing to compel him to appear by Zondo will be held on December 29. 

Zondo said Ramaphosa will be asked a wider set of questions than only those related to where his name has been heard in the 303 days of testimony, the commission has already heard.

“Ramaphosa was part of the executive; he was deputy president of the country and the ANC [during the State Capture era]. [We want to know] what he knew, what happened and what the challenges were,” said Zondo.

The president’s name has been raised about his son, Andile Ramaphosa, being paid a consultancy by the State Capture company Bosasa and about the funding of his CR17 campaign to become ANC president.

Zuma’s lawyers have written to the Commission, saying he will not cooperate with it and he has also indicated, through his advocate, that he may take the path of silence if compelled to testify.  “The commission needs to put questions to him [Zuma]. If we did not have questions we need to put to him, we might have left him alone,” said Zondo.  “That is quite important because he was the president of the country at the time…if he indeed played the role that people said [in testimony to the commission], it may be said he abused his powers. It is vital that he is questioned and that the commission has an opportunity to do so. He is one of the persons specifically mentioned, as well as the Guptas, because of the position he held.”  He said he did not expect the Guptas to come back to South Africa to testify, but the commission had sufficient testimony and evidence of money flows.

If granted the extension, the commission will complete hearing oral testimony by the end of March and will write its report to deliver to Ramaphosa at the end of June.

Zondo said that staff were already preparing summaries to ensure the writing was efficient and swift.

The commission’s secretary, Professor Itumeleng Mosala, said it had assembled 1 gigabyte of information about corruption and this archive alone was a deterrent to future corruption. 

The commission has heard from more than 200 witnesses, who have provided more than 159,000 affidavits and documents. These witnesses have given evidence over 323 days and its investigators had issued 2,736 summons and 2,330 notifications to persons to provide information or to testify. 

Testimony about capture at SAA, SABC, Transnet, Eskom and Denel was largely complete and testimony about SARS will be heard in January.    

Civil society organisations will make recommendations on how to improve the protection and support of whistle-blowers, while evidence will also be led on how to ensure the tender system is not so easily open to abuse and how to build better parliamentary accountability, said Zondo. DM