Former state security minister Bongani Bongo is granted bail of R5,000

Former state security minister Bongani Bongo appeared in the Cape Town Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday charged with corruption and was granted bail of R5,000.

In 2021, now impeached Western Cape Judge President John Hlophe acquitted Bongo of the charge, but that decision was overturned by the Supreme Court of Appeal.

It is alleged that in October 2017 Bongo tried to bribe advocate Ntuthuzelo Vanara, the evidence leader of Parliament’s Public Enterprises Committee inquiry into State Capture at Eskom.

He allegedly offered Vanara a blank cheque to halt the investigation and requested that the advocate “take sick leave on the day of the commencement of the commission with a view to derail proceedings”, Hawks spokesperson Brigadier Hangwani Mulaudzi told Daily Maverick in 2019.

The corruption case against Bongo is similar to a retrial. The facts and evidence that the State will submit are the same as when then DA Chief Whip John Steenhuisen filed charges against Bongo under the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act in 2017.

In February 2021, Hlophe ruled that the State did not have a case against Bongo.

The State challenged the decision, but in 2022 Hlophe denied the State’s plea for leave to appeal against his acquittal. However, the Supreme Court of Appeal overturned Hlophe’s decision.

Read more: Hlophe refuses State appeal against Bongo corruption acquittal, but NPA may fight on

The case against Bongo 

In its submission, the State said Bongo met on 10 October 2017 and told him he had been sent by the acting chairperson of the Eskom board to ask for Vanara’s assistance.

Bongo allegedly told Vanara that some Eskom staff members were worried that incriminating evidence would be led against them at the committee, and that they would be arrested.

The State also contends that Bongo told Vanara that the inquiry could not continue and that Venara should help them stop the inquiry by faking illness and taking sick leave, which would derail the proceedings.

Bongo is back in court on 5 March. DM