Johannesburg - Political experts anticipate that former president Jacob Zuma will exercise restraint when he takes the stand for the second time at the Zondo Commission of Inquiry into State Capture next week.
According to political analyst Ralph Mathekga, Zuma has been suffering extensively in his court challenges, such as with the defamation case brought against him by former tourism minister and ANC national executive committee member Derek Hanekom, who Zuma called an enemy agent in a tweet.
“I’m expecting to see him quite subdued, but relentless in the same attitude of not believing that there was state capture,” Mathekga said.
He said that the way in which Zuma engaged the commission in answering questions showed he had no intention of lending it credibility.
Zuma’s upcoming appearance at the commission comes barely a week after he appeared before the Pietermaritzburg High Court on corruption charges.
During his July appearance before the commission, Zuma said that some of his own ANC comrades had plotted to remove him from the political scene. He also denied state capture allegations levelled against him by several government officials including former deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas.
Zuma’s prominent supporters, the Radical Economic Transformation Champions (RET), have expressed little faith in the credibility and intentions of the commission.
Nkosentsha Shezi, RET Champions chairperson, said that state capture was being driven by white monopoly capital companies who dominated government business with state-owned companies and that the focus of the commission should be on them.
Shezi said that they expected Zuma to continue sharing information about his comrades who “undermine our revolution”. He said there had not been much evidence that Zuma had acted in a corrupt manner.
“We know that the state is captured, was captured and has never been independent,” he said. “In any society, the state is a system of the ruling of one class by another class in a democratic dispensation; unfortunately, in the South African situation that ruling class is white,” said Shezi.