- The Guardian Monday 2 May 2022
(^20) World
Family of
Hotel Rwanda
hero sue over
his alleged
abduction
Zuma accused of plans
to give business allies
control of state assets
Agence France-Presse
The family of the Hotel Rwanda hero
Paul Rusesabagina has fi led a $400m
(£318m) lawsuit in the US over his
alleged abduction and torture.
Rusesabagina is serving a 25-year
prison term on terrorism charges
after a trial his supporters say was a
sham and riddled with irregularities.
“The complaint alleges that the
government of Rwanda and high-
ranking Rwandan offi cials conspired
Jason Burke
Johannesburg
Jacob Zuma has been accused of sys-
tematic and “unlawful” eff orts to give
business allies control of billions of
dollars’ worth of state assets by the
judge charged with investigating
wrongdoing during the former pres-
ident’s years in power in South Africa.
Raymond Zondo, who was
appointed in 2018 to lead an inquiry
into allegations of systematic corrup-
tion under Zuma’s rule, handed his
latest report to the current president,
Cyril Ramaphosa, on Friday.
The 1,000-page document accuses
businessmen brothers Atul, Ajay and
Rajesh Gupta of being the benefi ciar-
ies of Zuma’s eff orts to fi re competent
offi cials, intervene in management
decisions, appoint compliant min-
isters and infl uence the award of
contracts worth huge sums.
Zondo said the Guptas, who came
to South Africa from India in the
1990s and built a sprawling com-
mercial empire, had identifi ed Zuma
as someone “whose character was
such that [the Guptas] could use him
against the people of South Africa,
and his own government to advance
their own business interests”.
Zuma won power in 2009. A pop-
ulist who was expected to reconnect
the ruling African National Congress
(ANC) party to increasingly disillu-
sioned voters, he was forced out nine
years later amid growing public anger
at economic failures and a series of
graft scandals.
He is currently on medical parole
while serving a 15-month prison sen-
tence following his conviction last
year of contempt of court for defying
a constitutional court order to testify
before Zondo’s inquiry.
Zuma was jailed for contempt in
July last year, a move that set off days
of rioting in the KwaZulu-Natal and
Gauteng provinces in which shops,
warehouses and factories were
looted and many burned. More than
300 people died in the unrest , the
worst in South Africa since the end
of the repressive, racist apartheid
regime in 1994. ANC offi cials loyal
to Ramaphosa described the violence
as “political sabotage” and a poten-
tial attempt at a coup d’etat.
After three months behind bars,
to facilitate and execute an elabo-
rate plot to lure Paul Rusesabagina
from his home in Texas to Rwanda ,
where he would be tortured and ille-
gally detained for the remainder of
his life,” the family and his lawyers
said in a statement on Saturday.
The lawsuit, which is seeking at
least $400m in compensation as well
as punitive damages, names the gov-
ernment of Rwanda, its president,
Paul Kagame, and other figures
including a former justice minister
and intelligence chief. Rusesabagi-
na’s family will announce further
Zuma, 79, was released on medical
parole for an undisclosed health con-
dition. A subsequent court judgment
ruled the medical parole was inva-
lid, but his lawyers are appealing that
judgment.
Zuma and the Gupta brothers, who
left South Africa after Zuma’s fall
from power and are believed to be in
Dubai, deny wrongdoing. They have
said the allegations against them are
politically motivated.
The commission has interviewed
hundreds of witnesses, viewed tens
of thousands of fi les and obtained
phone records among other evidence.
The latest report also found that
ministers and other offi cials knew of
alleged eff orts to steal vast sums from
Eskom, the state power utility. Other
scandals involve the national airline,
which no longer fl ies, and a series of
other state-owned companies.
The charges of wrongdoing related
to Eskom – plagued with chronic lack
of maintenance, under investment
and management failures – are par-
ticularly sensitive in South Africa,
and will cause new problems for the
ANC party, in power for 28 years.
In the report, Zondo asked why
the ANC government had not acted
to prevent the alleged corruption.
“Were they aware of everything but
lacked the courage to stop President
Zuma and his friends, the Guptas,
in what they were doing? Were they
looking the other way?” the judge
wrote. “The ANC and the ANC gov-
ernment should be ashamed that this
happened under their watch.”
Ramaphosa was deputy president
from 2014 but the report will harm
his enemies and rivals within the
ANC more than it damages his own
reputation. Analysts say the former
union leader and business tycoon has
a good chance of winning a second
term at polls in 2024.
details of the suit at a press confer-
ence in Washington on Wednesday.
Rusesabagina, then a Kigali hotel
manager, is credited with saving
hundreds of lives during the 1994
genocide, and his actions inspired
the Hollywood fi lm Hotel Rwanda.
He used his fame to denounce Kag-
ame as a dictator and has been behind
bars since his arrest in August 2020 ,
when a plane he believed was bound
for Burundi landed instead in Kigali.
The government did not imme-
diately respond to a request for
comment.
▲ A scene from Hotel Rwanda, which
was inspired by Paul Rusesabagina
▲ Jacob Zuma was convicted last
year of contempt of court