Former Director of the Justice Department, Nonkukuleko Sindane, who investigated the Gupta plane landing at the Waterkloof Air Force base, has again implicated former State Protocol Chief Bruce Koloane as a key figure in the controversial saga.
Sindane says Koloane abused power by using the names of the President (Jacob Zuma) and other ministers to facilitate the landing at the Air Force base in 2013.
She was giving testimony at the State Capture Inquiry in Johannesburg on Wednesday.
“Perhaps, I could add, even the Defence Minister at the time did not link the President to the landing of the aircraft. Where No.1 comes through, it’s in this telephonic conversations between Ambassador Koloane and Lieutenant-Colonel Anderson.”
The Commission of Inquiry into State Capture has heard that the team investigating the Gupta Waterkloof landing saga had no basis to interview former President Zuma about the matter.
Sindane and three other officials, including then Correctional Services Commissioner Tom Moyane, were appointed to probe the Waterkloof landing.
They interviewed and received statements from several people allegedly involved.
Sindane says the team appointed to investigate the Waterkloof landing saga was faced with limitations. She says the team had a lot to do within a short period.
“There were two limitations that we were dealing with; one is that the matter is already unfolding in the public space and that is the context. And secondly, we were given a little over a week to do this whole investigation of the whole event that even if some people were aware of. We, in the team, were not aware of. So, to go back and establish this would take time.”
Sindane says there was no direct evidence that the former President instructed the landing. She told the Commission that Koloane ignored critical rules and protocols to facilitate the landing.
Koloane, who is now South Africa’s Ambassador to the Netherlands, attending Wednesday’s proceedings.
“We found that Ambassador Koloane and Anderson ignored a lot of things that needed to be done before the landing … up until serious knowledge of what was going on.”
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