INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPERS
Justice Minister Jeff Radebe gives feedback to the media about the Guptas plane landing at Waterkloof Base. Picture: Sharon Seretlo
The last time cabinet ministers lined up to solemnly declare “I didn’t know” and then watched civil servants take the rap was when FW de Klerk, Magnus Malan and Adriaan Vlok appeared before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1997.
I didn’t believe De Klerk and Co then and I don’t believe Jacob Zuma, Jeff Radebe, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, Siyabonga Cwele and Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula when they feign outrage at the insult to our national pride that was the Gupta wedding plane flying into our top air force base.
These politicians had known for months that the Gupta wedding was going to take place and that it was going to be a grand affair – they were, after all, invited to attend as guests of honour. They had all been wined and dined by the Gupta family on many occasions.
They, or at least Nkoana-Mashabane (Minister of International Relations), Mapisa-Nqakula (Defence) and Cwele (State Security), knew early in February that the Guptas had applied for special landing rights for their plane full of guests. The ministers had denied these requests, says Radebe.
One wonders what they thought was going to happen next. That the Gupta guests were going to come by ship? That the wedding was going to be cancelled? Surely as guests they would have been told?
Zuma, his wives and son and cousin, who are both in business with the Guptas, had all accepted invitations to the Sun City wedding.
Then, according to Radebe, a secret conspiracy followed between the Indian High Commissioner, the head of protocol of Nkoana-Mashabane’s department and a senior officer in Mapisa-Nqakula’s department to wangle permission anyway to land at Waterkloof Air Force Base. Many other officials from Home Affairs to the SANDF and the SAPS – 194 people, according to Radebe – were drawn into the conspiracy concocted over weeks.
And yet not one of the ministers – not Zuma, nor even Cwele as minister of state security, got wind of it. What is it that State Security does, then?
A plane full of civilians and many private helicopters were breaking every rule in the book by landing at Waterkloof Air Force Base.
Dozens of policemen and traffic officers took time off to take them to Sun City in convoy – and it remained a secret until after they landed and a journalist got wind of it? Not agents of the National Intelligence Agency, Crime Intelligence or Military Intelligence, no, a news reporter.
Not one of the 194 officials and officers (or the 296 private security people) involved in the conspiracy said a word to any of their superiors? Not even the dozens of customs officials who had to check the guests’ passports?
Not one of all these people told their colleagues or friends or wives or husbands about their involvement in the celebrity wedding of the year?
Yes, this is what Radebe and Co want us to believe.
Two hundred foreigners fly into South Africa’s main air force base and get a friendly reception from many dozens of officials and no-one in state security or intelligence got wind of it until after the fact, is what they’re saying.
They also appear to want us to believe that the two central figures in the conspiracy, an air force colonel and the head of protocol, thought they would get away with their dirty secret.
That follows, doesn’t it? Or could it be that the two senior career civil servants thought they were simply doing the right thing; that what they were doing was what the president and the government wanted? That they would have been stopped if that wasn’t the case?
There was a lot of name-dropping, says Radebe, Zuma’s name among them.
And that explains it all.
When the news about the plane and the blue-light brigade leaked out, it provoked national outrage, even from Luthuli House.
And yet several cabinet ministers and several members of the Zuma clan attended the wedding days after they realised that the people of South Africa regarded the events as a national insult.
Despite all the smoke and mirrors, the simple, undeniable truth is that Zuma is at the heart of Guptagate and he should be the one facing Parliament this week.
Cwele should stand right next to him.
Not only because he says his many hundreds of spooks knew nothing of the affair, but also because he stopped an earlier investigation into the Gupta family and fired senior people who had instituted it, clearly only to protect Zuma and his clan’s interests.
Richard Nixon did not have to resign because of what happened at the Watergate office complex, but because of the way he lied to cover it up.
The Mercury
