Pravin Gordhan is a hardworking man. He's the finance minister of South Africa, which is a difficult job these days, what with
the President's two-hundred-and-something million dollar home upgrades and so on.
Then he has to deal with a family of businessmen known as the Guptas who used to own substantial amounts of money - and a few large companies - in South Africa. (And there are very persistent rumour that they owned a few politicians as well, with the name of President Zuma often mentioned in such circumstances - though nothing's ever been actually
proved yet, you understand). Proved or not, though, a few months back most (perhaps even all) local banks decided that they very much didn't want to have anything to do with the Guptas anymore and basically refused them service and closed all their accounts. (I assume they let the Guptas withdraw the contents of said accounts first). The Guptas themselves are, so far as I know, no longer in the country - nothing suspicious about that, mind you, they
do live in Dubai.
But rumours of the President being in someone's pocket are a horrible thing for a country to have, which is why the Public Protector, Thuli Madonsela, has recently finished a report on allegations that the Guptas had pretty much captured the state. She's retired now, as of this last weekend, and has passed the whole mess onto her successor, Busisiwe Mkhwebane. (Busisiwe initially said she was going to focus on the backlog of cases, but after
being officially handed the State Capture report and (presumably) discussing the matter with the previous Public Prosecutor she's decided to prioritise that instead... which says something, I think.
So. What's in the report? We don't know, it hasn't been publicly released yet. This is because President Zuma went to court to seek an interdict against the release - which hasn't been heard yet, but they can't release the report until the court proceedings are over.
Zuma's party, the ANC, is
in favour of releasing the report, as are
opposition parties.
So. That sets the stage. Now we go back to Pravin Gordhan, finance minister. He was arrested on charges to do with approval of someone's pension payout. (One gets the impression someone spent a while hunting through his record to find something to charge him with). The timing, however, is suspicious - not only is the State Capture Report sitting in the public protector's office, ready to be released as soon as the court says so, but the finance minister is due to give his medium-term budget speech soon...
Oh, and now that he's in court, he's taking the opportunity to - in a very public way - list a
list a lot of very suspicious transactions which have the Gupta name attached. (Total monetary value, approx. R6.8
billion. That's close to half a billion dollars).
Interestingly, the vice president, Cyril Ramaphosa, a man who tends to keep a very low media profile, has come out
very firmly in support of the Finance Minister; while Zuma is looking
to be in a rather poor position overall.
(Oh, and Gordhan would also like the courts to please rule that he
can't force the banks to do business with the Guptas, no matter how much the Guptas might want him to do so. I gather they don't like taking 'no' for an answer).
The wheels of justice grind slow, but it certainly looks like Zuma's chickens are coming home to roost...