“I’ve been done in by the public protector. It was the very same person who was supposed to protect me against the onslaught of my name.”
FORMER Transnet and Eskom group chief executive officer Brian Molefe has blamed former public protector Thuli Madonsela for his numerous appearances before the Zondo Commission to answer allegations of his involvement in fraud and corruption at state agencies.
In apportioning blame to Madonsela, Molefe told the commission of inquiry into state capture on Monday that the former public protector had never given him any opportunity to respond to allegations of impropriety made against him before the compilation of the State of Capture report.
Molefe made these allegations when faced with a barrage of questions from evidence leader Anton Myburgh.
During the early stages of the hearing, Myburgh insisted that the Guptas had influenced the appointment of Molefe as GCEO of Transnet in February 2011.
In support of his version, Myburgh read out a newspaper article of the now defunct Gupta-owned newspaper The New Age on December 7, 2010. The paper issued its maiden publication on December 6, 2010.
In its second publication, Myburgh said, the paper published a story saying they had had it on good authority that Molefe was going to be the new GCEO of Transnet.
Myburgh submitted that Molefe was appointed on February 11, 2011 as GCEO of Transnet.
He said another incident happened in May 2014 when Gupta-linked businessman Salim Essa told another Eskom employee that Molefe was due to become the new GCEO of Eskom and indeed he was appointed in April 2015.
Myburgh used all these narratives to submit that Molefe was indeed aware of it and theft of millions of public funds in these two state agencies happened under his watch, but he vehemently denied it.
In his response, Molefe said: “I’ve been done in by the public protector. It was the very same person who was supposed to protect me against the onslaught of my name. The Guptas may have done what they did. I was not part of it.
“It was the public protector who put this machine gun on rapid fire and destroyed everything before her, including me. The person who betrayed me is the public protector,” Molefe said.
He said that in his opinion, the Guptas had done nothing wrong, adding, unless “there is proof beyond any reasonable doubt”
“If there is a finding of wrongdoing, I will be in a position to say that they’ve betrayed me,” he said.
He appeared to irk Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo – who chairs the commission – when he said that “guilt has already been ascribed to the Guptas despite them being subjected to a proper legal process of ascertaining their guilt.”
– Political Bureau
