Testifying to the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture recently, Transnet board chairman Popo Molefe said it was encouraging to have found that certain top-flight managers were incorruptible.
Sometimes senior managers simply couldn’t go along with what they saw, he told commission chair Judge Raymond Zondo.
Speaking with contempt about former chief financial officer (CFO) Anoj Singh, Molefe said the current board had found during its own inquiry at least one senior manager who couldn’t go along with “a CFO that colluded with a consultancy to marginalise executive oversight and get millions as a capital-raising fee from South China Rail”, one of the companies implicated in benefiting from state capture.
Singh’s legal representation was conspicuously absent as Molefe testified to his detriment.
So was representation for Siyabonga Gama, one of the most recent former Transnet CEOs who also didn’t come off lightly.
Brian Molefe, Gama’s predecessor, and Singh were also not alone in being identified as state capture operatives.
Recalling former home affairs minister Malusi Gigaba and his naturalisation favours for choice associates, Popo Molefe said “he was a buddy of the Guptas” – the notorious family who fled the country after Cyril Ramaphosa came to power.
Together with Gupta business associate Salim Essa and Iqbal Sharma, a former tender boss at the SOC, “billions were siphoned from Transnet”.
But it was “Cryin’ Brian”, the former parastatal boss who famously burst into tears when the Gupta heat got to him, as well as Gama and Singh that were “the key architects of state capture”, Popo Molefe said.
“They signed off on tenders in order to facilitate companies that were the darlings of the Guptas.
“They clearly worked towards an abrogation of corporate governance rules and gross violation of senior fiduciary duties at Transnet.”
- Eugene Goddard
