Former President Jacob Zuma is “showing the middle finger” to South Africa, a minister in the country has said after it emerged Zuma had met one of the Indian businessmen allegedly at the heart of a huge corruption scandal.
A photograph of Zuma and Ajay Gupta in an Indian temple was shared by Indian media this week.
Around a decade ago, the Gupta brothers were accused of profiting from their close links to then-President Zuma and influencing South African policy.
Both parties denied wrongdoing, while the family left South Africa in 2018 after a judicial commission began investigating allegations they were involved in massive fraud, known as “state capture”.
South African authorities cancelled their arrest warrant for Ajay Gupta the following year.
The two younger Gupta brothers, Atul and Rajesh, went to the United Arab Emirates where a court in 2023 turned down a South African request to extradite them.
In a press briefing on Friday, cabinet minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni said it was “very disturbing that a former state president openly and unapologetically shows the middle finger to South Africans who have lost a lot of money through the Gupta brothers’ shenanigans”.
Zuma, a long-standing member of the African National Congress (ANC), was forced out of office in 2018 following a string of corruption allegations concerning the Guptas. He has always denied any wrongdoing.
In 2022, a commission investigating state capture concluded that Zuma had hired and fired ministers central to the running of the country’s economy at the behest of the Gupta family.
In particular it describes the 2015 sacking of Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene because he would not comply with the Guptas’ wishes, and the appointment of two subsequent ministers – Des van Rooyen, and Malusi Gigaba – who were friendly to the family’s interests.
The commission also detailed a web of corruption at the state electricity utility Eskom, culminating in key members of the company’s executive being put in place by the Guptas.
After meeting Ajay Gupta at the temple in India, Zuma, who now heads the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party, reportedly said he would stand for re-election in South Africa’s next elections.
In response, Ntshavheni said 84-year-old Zuma “continues to show a middle finger and claim that he wants to run this country again”.
She also said it was a “disgrace” that the South African high commissioner to India, Anil Sooklal, had accompanied Zuma to the meeting with Gupta.
South Africa will launch an investigation into the meeting, international relations minister Ronald Lamola said.
Lamola said it seemed Zuma was running “a parallel foreign policy”.
Under Zuma’s leadership, the MK party got about 15% of the vote in the 2024 elections that saw the ANC lose its majority for the first time since the democratic era began in 1994, when Nelson Mandela became president.
