South African President Cyril Ramaphosa returned to the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture hearings on Thursday, his second day to do so following his admission his ruling African National Congress party had fallen short of fighting corruption among its cadre.
Speaking in his role as the ANC leader, Ramaphosa told the commission that the party could have done more to combat corruption both in the party and the country under its rule but this was not the case.
“As I said in my opening statement or the bulk of my affidavit, some of these state capture issues were only evident in time as we moved on,” he told the commission.
The ANC took six years before acknowledging the phenomenon of state capture and backing investigations into it despite reports of its creeping and corrosive effect within its own structures and the government, he told the commission.
Ramaphosa also admitted that it took time for the governing party to take notice of the state capture allegations concerning the Gupta brothers – the India-born family that used its companies to milk millions of state funds in connivance with ANC cadres deployed in state-owned firms.
One area where things had “gone horribly wrong” was the party’s “cadre deployment” of its senior members to work in government ministries and state-owned firms, Ramaphosa added.
Most of the cadres deployed to these entities were not qualified enough to carry out the required assignments at hand efficiently, he said, resulting in the firms having government to financially bailed them out from bankruptcy.
The hearings continue.
NM/jn/APA