South African-born British politician Lord Peter Hain will appear before the State Capture Commission when it resumes its public hearings on Monday morning.
Hain, a former anti-apartheid activist and frequent visiting lecturer at the Wits Business School, is a well-known anti-corruption campaigner. Since 2017, he has been at the helm having international companies alleged to be involved in State Capture investigated by international governments including Britain.
Hain outlines the focus of his forthcoming testimony, “I am not so much naming names as calling out the failures of governments like Britain of corporates, of banks like HSBC and Bank of Baroda. Standard Chartered who have provided the conduits, provided the pipes through which this money was stolen from South African taxpayers and sent into the international financial system, and then spent by the Gupta brothers in a lavish way… that is where I think the real outrage is, beyond the outrage that has already been exposed in South Africa.”
Hain explains why he has volunteered to testify before the commission: “…as the son of two white South African anti-apartheid activists together with my involvement in the freedom struggle has meant that I was absolutely outraged by the shameless looting under former President Jacob Zuma, and the Gupta brothers in particular, because they betrayed all the values of the freedom struggle. All of those values of justice and equality and integrity that Nelson Mandela epitomised in his leadership, and it was that when I was asked to get involved in exposing the international dimension to this that I was very happy to assist those who were fighting it within South Africa.”
