State Capture 2.0 has metastasized in its malignancy

IN A week when South Africa’s attention was on foreign threats — swingeing US tariffs and a stumbling BRICS summit — the menace turned out to be locally manufactured. In KwaZulu-Natal, to be precise, a province with a long history of putting a spoke in the national wheel.

- WILLIAM SAUNDERSON-MEYER

A charismatic young police general, dramatically flanked by heavily armed bodyguards, held a surprise press conference where he made explosive allegations of political interference and criminal collusion at the highest levels of the law enforcement and justice systems. This is a crisis that could kneecap President Cyril Ramaphosa’s administration in much the same way that State Capture abruptly ended Jacob Zuma's presidency.

If the allegations are true — they viscerally resonate with the ANC’s record on corruption and institutional capture, as well as public perceptions that the rot continued post-Zuma -they would expose the past six years of Cyril Ramaphosa’s presidency to have been a hollow sham. Not only has the ANC governmentand now the ANC-led Government of National Unity (GNU) - failed to bring to book any of ministers and high-ranking officials identified by the Zondo Commission as deserving of prosecution, it appears to have allowed the corruption to continue and spread.

If true, the revelations would collapse the already eroded moral authority of the police (SAPS) and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), as well as further tarnish the judiciary. The criminal justice system would have to be revamped from top to bottom, a task that is well nigh impossible.