Mpofu calls Zondo commission a factional tool to fight ANC battles

The EFF’s former national chairperson, Dali Mpofu, has added to the criticism of the Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture, saying the inquiry has turned into a factional tool to fight internal ANC battles.

“The state capture commission is something that fascinates me because it has quite frankly moved into something completely different,” Mpofu said in a wide-ranging interview with The Insight Factor published on Sunday.

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“I think that whole thing has become political [and] even the term state capture has become politicised. So state capture is something the [Jacob] Zuma faction did but if it’s done by the [Cyril] Ramaphosa faction, then it’s not state capture,” he added.

Mpofu’s remarks follow that of EFF’s deputy president Floyd Shivambu last week in which he accused the commission of being a fishing expedition to fight ANC factional battles. Mpofu is a member of the EFF’s central command team.

“If there is corruption, that has to be dealt with in relation to all these hearings that are being entertained there. The criminal justice system is well capacitated to deal with those issues, but the manner in which the commission has been happening has been a fishing expedition,” Shivambu said.

Mpofu said the party fought for the commission to be established but some people had forgotten that.

“The EFF was actually the only organisation that took up the cudgels and fought at a point when the state capture report could have been buried forever and as a result of that, the commission was established. The EFF had to go and fight again to ensure mechanisms of appointing the state capture commission are not tainted by conflicts of interest. And now the commission is here and everyone has suddenly forgotten how it got here,” Mpofu said.

He said he was also “ambivalent” about the expanded mandate of the commission, which was originally tasked with probing the Gupta family and their close proximity to former president Jacob Zuma.

“In a way, it’s a good thing because it means you look wider, but the reality is that the state capture commission was supposed to look into a particular specific issue which we might call Gupta corruption. And the jury’s still out as to whether if we had focused on that issue… wouldn’t it be better off than having to look at every municipality, government department and so on, because you might end up with a wide focus but actually, the product might be meaningless,” Mpofu said.

Last week, the Pretoria high court granted the commission a three-month extension.

This follows a delay in the commission’s proceedings in January after a staffer who worked closely with Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo tested positive for Covid-19.

Zondo then asked the high court to extend the inquiry’s tenure until the end of June in order to complete its work.

Watch Dali Mpofu’s full interview below, courtesy of The Insight Factor:

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