“In July and August of 2018 – eight years ago – Kyle Cowan started pulling at a thread. It was a couple of months after Cyril Ramaphosa ousted Jacob Zuma as head of state, and the new president had started to try and clean house. He’d announced a couple of commissions of inquiry – the Nugent commission into SARS and the high-level investigation into the SSA had been confirmed – and in an era of post-state capture there certainly was an air of optimism.
Late August, the Zondo commission of inquiry into allegations of state capture sat for the first time, and in his opening statement, Advocate Paul Pretorius spoke about the relationship between the state, the citizenry and the importance of accountability. “The essence of representative government is that the elected government act in the interests of those that it governs. Essential to that relationship is that officials can be held accountable when they fail to act according to this obligation and in particular, they can be called to account if they act fraudulently and corruptly.”
Three weeks after Pretorius said those words, Cowan was ready to publish. He had enough information that proved Vincent Smith, an ANC MP and chairperson of Parliament’s portfolio committee on correctional services, was bent. Smith took money from a company called Bosasa. And Bosasa received contracts of billions of rand from the Department of Correctional Services.
Vincent Smith got cash, CCTV
Why is this a problem? Smith was responsible for the committee in Parliament that oversaw the country’s prisons, which ensured that public money was spent honestly and efficiently. Bosasa was a business whose success depended on contracts to supply the country’s prisons with goods and services. Bribing Smith would go a long way to ensure the continued health of the company – and its leaders.
So, Smith succumbed. And he took hundreds of thousands of dirty money.
When Kyle confronted him with the evidence, he lied. He told Kyle it wasn’t true.
We published the story, told the country that he was bought and paid for, and that set in motion a train of events that culminated this week in Smith being sent to jail.
REPORTING NOTES | Smith goes down – now Mantashe must face the same Bosasa music
The slow grind of the criminal justice system is frustrating for everyone. It is particularly frustrating for us, who wrote about the corruption and malfeasance perpetrated by people like Smith almost a decade ago.
But Smith’s conviction is a major milestone on the journey to shape a country where the rule of law is supreme and accountability is the norm. Since writing his first expose about Smith all those years ago, Kyle has gone on to break some of the most important investigative stories in the post-state capture era. And he’s won the famed Taco Kuiper Award for investigative journalism twice. Alongside his colleague Jeff Wicks, he won the Nat Nakasa Award for Bravery in Journalism.” NEWS 24
Interesting that it has taken so much time for justice to be served. This is what accountability looks like – Saturn in Aries – consequences to actions. This is first State Capture individual in orange overalls. Nowhere to hide. Moon in Libra – the scales of justice. Ordinary people can see justice being done.
