Welcome back to the podcast, Bribes, Swindler Steel. I'm Alexandra Ragi, and today I'm speaking with Paul Holden.

Some of you will recall that Paul has been on the podcast previously. He's the director of

investigations at Shadow World Investigations, where he researches cases of grand corruption,

corporate malfeasance, and excessive militarism, and the arms trade. Paul is originally from South

Africa and lives now in the United Kingdom. Today we're talking about the Zondo Commission,

South Africa's public inquiry into the state capture and looting that occurred across almost a decade

in that country. Paul, thank you for joining me. Thanks for having me. At a very high level for the

listeners who might be unfamiliar with this story, although it's been grabbing some headlines,

how did the Zondo Commission come about? What was the initial goal?

And perhaps you can talk a little bit about how you got involved. The Zondo Commission is the result

of a political accident, if you will, under Jacob Zuma, who was the president of South Africa

from 2010 up until his resignation in 2018, South Africa has an office called the Office of South Africa from 2010 up until his resignation in 2018.

South Africa has an office called the Office of the Public Protector, which was created by

the constitutional drafters back in 1994 when South Africa became a democracy.

And the public protector, anybody can write into the public protector and say,

I think state money is being misused and

please can you investigate on my behalf. And obviously the public protector has a lot of discretion

about what they investigate. During Jacob Zuber's time as president and his party of the African

National Congress or the ANC effectively controlled all of the levers of power

in South Africa Parliament was under its control, what they called Chapter 9 institutions were

under its control, officers like the Public Protector.

And they appointed, I'm not quite sure how it happened, but they appointed this remarkable woman

...