The Zondo Commission of Inquiry into State Capture is duplicating an existing state function – that of investigating and prosecuting individual crimes. Rather than looking into the systemic cause of state capture, it seems preoccupied with the escapades of ‘capturepreneurs’.

State law adviser Advocate Ben Cronin adds as this ‘liturgy of quasi-litigation goes on, the real state entities tasked by our Constitution with investigating and prosecuting acts of crime are steadily defunded, depopulated and increasingly rendered defunct’.

Writing on the Daily Maverick site, Cronin says there are signs both in the character and direction the Zondo Commission has taken that ‘it may fall into the very mess it seeks to clean up’.

If the aim of the commission is just to secure the prosecution of a few individual acts of corruption, then it is both misdirected and a missed opportunity.

‘The real need for the commission is to examine the underlying cause(s) of state capture. Commissions of inquiry are precisely needed for intersectional, multi-disciplinary and macro-investigations into complex societal ills that purely legal processes like the courts are not suited for. Thus, while the Zondo Commission is useful for uncovering why an event or particular outcome occurred, it cannot really be used to hold individuals accountable.’

He says should the commission attempt the macro task of uncovering the root causes of state capture, it would need to ask: Why is the state liquidating itself?

Cronin says politicians have completely embraced outsourcing and downsizing, with endless bouts of austerity being imposed on the state.

This process, he says, began in the 1980s and continues unimpeded to this day. While the Zondo Commission has rolled on for more than 400 days, the NPA – which has suffered years of constrained spending and for several years was not given the budget to train new prosecutors – has had its budget cut again in this 2021/22 financial year.

‘Across the state, the persistent defunding and denuding of capacity can be seen,’ he says, adding the Zondo Commission has been a boon for private legal services.

He argues the only sustainable vehicle to defend the state from private capture is a well-funded and professionally run civil service, saying that if the Zondo Commission ‘is merely envisaged to act as a topical ointment to bleach away the most recent blemishes of corruption, then it will fail to diagnose the true cause of state capture: the anti-democratic policy of austerity and backdoor privatisation’.

Full analysis on the Daily Maverick site