Inquiry highlights level of contempt

It appears, on the evidence – or lack of it – at the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture that the former South African Airways (SAA) board member and chair of SAA Technical (SAAT), Yakhe Kwinana, could be a graduate of the Firepool School of Excuses.

Her ducking and diving, accompanied by flat-out denials of something as obvious as the nose on her face, then her changing testimony, along with her lapses of memory and her portrayal of herself as a simple person, bore the hallmarks of the behaviour common to ANC apparatchiks trying to explain away dodgy actions.

This indicates two things about the Zuma era, when state capture was initiated and expanded: the looting and malfeasance was of a weapons-grade scale; and that those with the dirtiest fingers never had the faintest belief they would ever be called to account for their conduct.

Hence, their stumbling amazement at the grilling they get by the likes of the tenacious evidence leader at the commission, Kate Hofmeyr. Commission chair deputy chief justice Raymond Zondo, ever the epitome of calmness and patience, has been pushed to breaking by Kwinana’s sometimes absurd responses.

Yet, he has at all times been letting her know, in no uncertain terms, that her failure to answer questions and her evasiveness may be looked upon in a negative light, because they are not the natural conduct of an honest person.

The picture emerging throughout the commission – and the SAA and aviation section is but one fraction – is of a pack of hungry political hyenas, slobbering as they contemplate the ways they can feast off the carcass of taxpayer money.

That is the really infuriating aspect of the commission hearings – that it shows how the rest of the country and its ordinary citizens, were viewed with contempt by the looters.

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