PPE corruption vultures must be prosecuted

Judge Raymond Zondo was clearly so incensed about the scale of the corruption involved in the state capture project that his first report on it was dotted with language which can be best described as unjudicial.

A similar thing seems to have happened with the Special Investigating Unit (SIU), which has just presented its report on corruption in procurement of personal protective equipment (PPE) to President Cyril Ramaphosa.

Without sugar-coating it, the report said: “To a large extent the state institutions involved simply turned a blind eye to the rule of law and by doing so, they in effect allowed the public purse to be looted.”

It went on: “The sad result is that contracts to the value of R1.39 billion have been identified as having been irregularly procured by the state…”

Sad is not a word investigators normally use – but in this case it is entirely appropriate, because sadness and sorrow would have entered into the lives of ordinary South Africans, who would have lost their lives, or their family and friends to Covid, because ineffective PPE was supplied.

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That is the truth of the matter. This is more than theft. This is murder. Not that we expected anything different, but the SIU probe also confirmed that “political pressure played a role in the procurement of PPE; the names of the service providers/suppliers were determined before any SCM process commenced…” and that “substandard
PPE was supplied”.

The next steps will be legal – action will be taken to recover money from those involved and companies which benefitted could be blacklisted and never deal with government in future.

That, we would argue, does not go nearly far enough. There must be criminal prosecutions for those vultures who would use a national crisis as an opportunity to make money at the expense of the lives of their fellow citizens.