ANC top brass meeting banks ‘suggested siding with Guptas’

The political context under which commercial bank executives were summoned to appear before the ANC party top brass to explain why they closed the bank accounts of Gupta companies would have been intimidating and overwhelming to the bankers, a political analyst has said.

Political analyst Professor Susan Booysen, research director at Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection, said it’s more what the ANC did not say than what it said to the bankers that mattered.

“The ANC said it was concerned about job losses that would accrue from the closure of the bank accounts, but it was the whole political context that said subtly or even silently that the banks must be careful. It put pressure on the banks to reinstate the accounts although the ANC could not have said it in so many words,” Booysen said.

The analyst was commenting on yesterday’s testimony given to the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture.

Gwede Mantashe, who testified on behalf of the ANC as its national chairperson, was asked by the commission’s evidence leader, Advocate Phillip Mokoena, whether it was not prudent for the ANC in light of what was already known about the Guptas to instead deal with the regulator instead of the banks.

Mantashe’s response was “as the governing party, the ANC deals with the good and the bad”.

Mantashe, who is minister of mineral resources in the Cyril Ramaphosa Cabinet, admitted that he led an ANC leadership delegation that comprised party deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte and the ANC head of subcommittee on economic transformation, Enoch Godongwana.

They met the bank executives at the ANC head office at Luthuli House in 2016 with Mantashe as party secretary-general.

The analyst said the ANC’s motive for its effort to invite the banks was clearly to persuade them differently with regards to their decision to close the Gupta companies accounts.

“It suggested they were siding with the Guptas. The banks knew that too, even if they were concerned about job losses. They knew the sub-text of the ANC,” Booysen said.

The bottom line was that the ANC top structure were in bed with the Guptas.

“That was Zuma’s ANC, the Guptas had to be pleased, they had to be protected,” she said.

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