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JEREMY MAGGS: Twelve months after submitting the State Capture Commission’s final report, the Chief Justice Raymond Zondo has hit out at lawmakers saying nothing has changed. He goes on to say that he’s worried that Parliament is incapable, his word, of preventing another bid to capture the state. Parliament in response says, it’s not the place of a chief justice to make such public remarks.
So who’s right? Well, Lawson Naidoo is from the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution (Casac), and Lawson, a sense of deep frustration from the chief justice. Do you think his observations are correct?
LAWSON NAIDOO: I think they’re largely accurate. I think the chief justice certainly vented his frustration I think at the slow progress. I think it would be incorrect to say that nothing has happened. I think there have been some attempts to rebuild institutions and to heed some of the lessons that came out of the State Capture Commission of Inquiry.
But clearly far too little has been done …
There has been a level of inertia, both by government and by Parliament, in implementing the recommendations that they say that they’re committed to doing.
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JEREMY MAGGS: Do you think that level of inertia exists? Why would Parliament be incapable of acting with more haste?
LAWSON NAIDOO: Well, Parliament put forward a set of proposals as to how it was going to deal with the recommendations from the Zondo Commission in two ways. Firstly, the recommendations that pertained to the executive and for Parliament to monitor and oversee how that was going to be done.
Then secondly, the recommendations that were directed at Parliament itself by the commission, and on both of those, it has been found wanting. Progress has been very slow, they’ve set up committees, it’s not clear whether those committees have met, what the outcomes of their deliberations have been.
But what is clear is that there have been no tangible measures that have been taken either by Parliament or by government to actually put mechanisms in place for implementation.
Just to give an example, government committed to strengthening legislative protection for whistleblowers, that has yet to come. From a Parliament side, Zondo recommended that a dedicated committee of the National Assembly be established to oversee the presidency. Again, no action has been taken.
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All that Parliament has said is that they will study international best practice, go on a study tour or two to look at that. I think that’s really inadequate.
This is a crisis of governance that the country faces that we would expect both government and Parliament to act with a greater sense of urgency.
JEREMY MAGGS: And because of this tardiness, do you think it’s a capacity issue, a protocol issue, or simply political unwillingness?
LAWSON NAIDOO: Well, it could be a combination of all three of those. In fact, Jeremy, it probably is, but I think that it’s quite clear that the political will to take these steps is lacking. I think if there was the political will, we would’ve seen action being taken much more quickly in both instances, in the response from government as well as Parliament.
It’s a very process-driven approach that they’ve taken. We’ll deal with it, but we’ll deal with it in our own time.
Now, I don’t think the country has the luxury of that time. We’ve already seen the implications of state capture on our denigration to junk status by the ratings agencies, by being put on the grey list of the Financial Action Task Force. All of this hampers the ability for us to grow our economy, create jobs and address the inequalities in our society.
So the impacts are wide ranging, and they flow directly from the issues of state capture. One would therefore expect that government would act with a greater sense of haste in trying to fix these things that have been clearly pointed out in the reports of the Zondo Commission and by many, many others as well.
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JEREMY MAGGS: Do you think the slow speed of change or the inability to act quickly has diminished the currency and the importance of the commission 12 months on?
LAWSON NAIDOO: Well, I certainly hope not because I think the commission did an incredible piece of work over the four years of its existence, it heard pages of evidence and information that is now publicly available that wasn’t before, that the law enforcement agencies in particular need to be processing with a view to investigating and prosecuting those implicated in the reports.
Now, those issues may take time and yes, there is a level of impatience …
And I think rightly so because we saw, all of us South Africans, from the Zondo Commission on our television screens on a daily basis, the evidence and information directed against those implicated and we want to see action taken. We want to see those who are responsible being held to account.
So I think the commission’s work is valuable, it should not be dismissed, and we need to use that body of work to increase the pressure, both in government and in Parliament, to take the necessary corrective steps.
JEREMY MAGGS: All right, so we’ve had this standoff then between the chief justice and Parliament, this response from government, and I quote from the statement, the principle of separation of powers fundamental to our democracy, it requires each branch of government to respect the roles and responsibilities of others. Chief Justice Zondo’s public attack on Parliament, the statement says, encroaches on this doctrine. What do you make of that or is that simply a dog whistle response?
LAWSON NAIDOO: Well, it’s a bit of a dog whistle response and it’s a bit of a deflection from the real issue. So obviously Chief Justice Zondo was speaking in his capacity, not as head of the judiciary, but he was speaking in his capacity as someone who spent four years of his life listening to this testimony, putting together the report, painstakingly so, and clearly and rightly feels a sense of frustration that his report and recommendations have not been taken seriously enough.
So I think speaking in that capacity, one can certainly understand it.
But obviously, the chief justice does need to tread warily because he is also the head of the judiciary.
As I say, he was certainly not speaking, in my understanding, as the head of the judiciary, but that is a position that he holds and therefore needs to be somewhat careful in terms of how he says things.
Although I see no problem with what he said yesterday because a year on from him handing over his final reports to the president, as we we’ve discussed, very little has happened, and I think Parliament would be better advised to actually tell us exactly what it has done.
It has established committees that it says are going to report quarterly. Well, more than a quarter has passed since Parliament took those resolutions and I’m not aware of any committees either having met or produced any reports.
JEREMY MAGGS: Advocate Lawson Naidoo, thank you very much.
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