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It is done: Zondo hands over fifth and final part of the state capture report

Amanda Khoza Presidency reporter
Chief justice and state capture inquiry chairperson Raymond Zondo has handed over the final report to President Cyril Ramaphosa. File photo.
Chief justice and state capture inquiry chairperson Raymond Zondo has handed over the final report to President Cyril Ramaphosa. File photo.
Image: Veli Nhlapo

President Cyril Ramaphosa finally received the fifth and final part of the state capture commission report on Wednesday evening. 

Chief justice and commission chairperson Raymond Zondo handed over the report to Ramaphosa at a ceremony at the Union Buildings in Pretoria at about 6.30pm — two and a half hours later than scheduled. 

Addressing the media at the official handover ceremony, Zondo said his team had had sleepless nights finalising the report. 

“Let me start where I should start and where I should start is to apologise ... I apologise to you, Mr President, for keeping you waiting. I apologise to all of you for keeping you waiting,” he said.

“There were certain challenges but we were determined that the handover should happen today. I really appreciate your patience and understanding. For the past more than two to three hours. I really apologise,” Zondo said.

He said the delay was not intentional and was unavoidable. 

The report was initially meant to have been delivered at the end of April, but Zondo  headed to court and said in court papers the commission would not be able to deliver all the outstanding sections of the report by then.

The court had granted him an extension to last week but again, his office gave the presidency reasons why it could not deliver.

The work of the commission comes to an end after over four years of hearings, hundreds of witnesses, thousands of summons and over eight million pages of documents. 

It has implicated dozens of high-profile business people, companies, SOEs and politicians. 

The commission cost over R1bn of taxpayers' funds. 

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