Johannesburg – Accusations of state capture cannot be limited to the Gupta family, when Afrikaner capital continues to capture the state, former ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe wrote in his organisational report, delivered to delegates at the ANC national elective conference.

In the report, Mantashe stated that the debate over how far back the judicial commission of inquiry should start its investigation on state capture required the participation of party members.

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He said that there were some within the party who wanted it to begin with the arrival of Dutch colonial administrator Jan Van Riebeeck; some who wanted the probe to start in 1994 when the ANC took power; and a third group that wanted it limited to an investigation of state capture by President Jacob Zuma’s friends, the Guptas, like the one conducted by former Public Protector Thuli Mandonsela.

“At the heart of this confusion are the divisions among comrades, boxing each other into solidified factions. This deprives our movement of space and the capacity to enrich the debate, and coming up with appropriate conclusions,” he writes.

Speaking to journalists, Mantashe said the debate around the existence of state capture continued to divide the ANC.

The debate, however, he says, imposed a responsibility on the leadership to engage and find a common, coherent and cohesive response.

“It’s facing us, it is there. We can’t hide our heads and say it does not exist. It exists, it is debated by society,” he told journalists.

He said that, while confronting the phenomenon may be painful, the challenge of state capture posed a threat to the movement.

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The ANC could not be perceived as confused and defensive, under a dark cloud of recent revelations that are in the public discourse, such as the #GuptaLeaks, the KPMG, Bell Pottinger, and MultiChoice scandals, he said.

“This conference must provide concrete guidance to the leadership, not only on the position the ANC must take, but also how should it engage this debate. At this point in time, the ANC is divided in this debate, to a point of seeing our disagreements as boxes of enemy camps.”

Mantashe cautioned against using “white monopoly capital” as a counter argument to state capture, saying that, while that line of reasoning might be popular, it was not scientific, but self-defeating.

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“It removes our eyes from the reality that white domination, in all aspects of our lives, is the essence of the revolution. That the white section of society remains dominant owners of the economy, controlling and managing it, and cannot be accepted.

“Deracialising the economy should be at the heart of the programme of the liberation movement. It should not be reduced into a new phenomenon that constitutes an immediate problem facing our movement; nor one to counterpose different comrades in the movement.”

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