Special Investigating Unit

• No one except academics will read the commission’s 4,750 page report, but many will read Holden’s book, Zondo at your Fingertips.
• Holden is a former director of investigations at Corruption Watch, the South African corruption watchdog.
• He has worked with the investigative organisations Shadow World and Open Secrets for many years.
• Holden has written a good and solid book, selecting and explaining the significant Zondo findings.

How the story is told

• The commission’s 19-volume report totals 4,750 pages.
• It heard 300 witnesses over 400 days of hearings, spread over four and a half years between 2018 and 2021.
• How South Africa stacks up

  The book is well structured in 10 parts.

Commissions of inquiry

• The most ambitious commission of inquiry set up in South Africa was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
• The great majority of the recommendations of commissions of inquiry, such as the Farlam Commission into the massacre of striking miners and other killings at Marikana, North West province in 2012, remain unimplemented and ignored by the government.
• Sceptics argue that commissions of inquiry merely provide governments with a pretext to stall any remedial actions for years, until the politics of the front page has moved onto other issues.

Recommendations

• Holden notes that the Zondo Commission made a number of recommendations.
• Key among these are to professionalise all appointments to the boards of state-owned enterprises, and prevent cabinet ministers from appointing political cronies and other unqualified or compromised persons.