Jacob Zuma presided over a mountain of sleaze in South Africa

IT WAS MEANTANC to last no more than six months, but the more muck it raked, the more it found. Four years after it was appointed to investigate allegations of “state capture” during the presidency of Jacob Zuma (2009-2018), a judicial commission headed by South Africa’s deputy chief justice, Raymond Zondo, has released the first volume of its findings. It is damning, alleging in forensic detail that Mr Zuma and his friends set about taking over state-owned firms and government institutions in order to siphon cash out of them.That the commission uncovered a mountain of corruption will not surprise many South Africans. Nor will the allegation that the former president seems to have been in the thick of it: well before he reached the top, Mr Zuma was already facing charges of fraud, bribery and money-laundering relating to an arms deal signed in the late 1990s. Ordinary South Africans are used to being ripped off by their rulers, after decades of dodgy dealings under the old apartheid regime and then decades of naked cronyism and rotten contracting under the African National Congress (), the current ruling party, to which Mr Zuma belongs. But even the most jaded observers were shocked by some of the commission’s findings.