PIETERMARITZBURG, June 3 (ANA) – Deputy Finance Minister Sifiso Buthelezi has accused big white-owned companies of double standards for denouncing corruption when they themselves “embarked on corruption of the highest order”.
Speaking at an African National Congress cadres’ forum in Pietermaritzburg on Friday evening, he suggested that in future big companies should be charged with fraud and corruption for colluding.
“Most of these companies demonise those who seek government contracts by giving them all sorts of names and demeaning tags, including labelling them tenderpreneurs. But who benefitted massively in the construction of stadiums ahead of the 2010 Soccer World Cup? Big companies of course; they are the biggest tenderpreneurs,” Buthelezi said.
Large construction companies had to pay back a fraction of the billions of rand they made in contracts in which they were found to have colluded.
“Yet we continue to hear about the millions [of rand] that were spent in Nkandla [on President Jacob Zuma’s private homestead], but very little is said about these big companies when they embarked on corruption of the highest order,” he said.
Calls for Zuma to step down were an indication that the ANC had “touched a nerve of white capital” and it was up to party members to defend the ANC and its leadership against attacks, he said.
Over the past two months, the National Treasury “team” had visited many parts of South Africa and the world in a bid to “convince everyone that everything was in order”.
“It feels like two years already, given the amount of work that has had to be done, and Treasury is still intact despite what some were suggesting would happen,” Buthelezi said.
– African News Agency (ANA)
