State Capture Reckonings: What Accountability Actually Delivered

Between 2019 and 2025, a slow but real machinery of accountability delivered disciplinary findings, financial settlements and court rulings to some of the professionals who made state capture possible. The full picture of who has been held responsible, however, remains unfinished.

Luthando Swartz, a candidate attorney at Van Velden-Duffey Attorneys Inc, identifies the gap between findings and enforceable outcomes as the central problem. South African law offers several routes for holding professionals to account, she explains, and disciplinary proceedings do not require a criminal conviction. Three stages matter. A commission of inquiry can implicate conduct, but that is not a conviction. A professional body can find someone guilty of misconduct and impose fines, suspension or exclusion from membership. A criminal conviction requires a court to find guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

The biggest operational bottleneck, in Swartz’s view, is how long cases take to move between institutions. The Zondo Commission could investigate wrongdoing and recommend action, but it could not impose criminal penalties itself. Professional bodies, law enforcement agencies and courts must then run their own procedures, and delays arise from complicated evidence, limited investigative resources and lengthy disciplinary processes. When cases are not followed through, serious findings remain on paper.

The clearest delivered outcome involves McKinsey & Company, the international consulting firm that worked on projects at Eskom and Transnet during the years when corruption took hold at both state-owned companies. In December 2024, McKinsey Africa agreed to pay a criminal penalty of more than $122 million to resolve a US investigation into bribery connected to contracts at the two companies. American authorities said the scheme involved payments to officials in exchange for lucrative consulting work. Former senior partner Vikas Sagar pleaded guilty in the United States to conspiracy to violate anti-bribery laws, and McKinsey said it had dismissed him after discovering his conduct.

On the domestic side, the National Prosecuting Authority reported that McKinsey would pay R1.115 billion into the country’s Criminal Assets Recovery Account in December 2024. The firm has apologised, repaid fees and said it strengthened its internal controls. South African prosecutors withdrew charges against the company in January 2025 following the resolution. The timeline is telling: the misconduct occurred between 2012 and 2016, while the major settlement came only in 2024.

KPMG, the global auditing firm, faced consequences for its work for Gupta-linked companies and the South African Revenue Service. In 2017, an internal investigation found serious shortcomings in audits of some Gupta-linked businesses, including a failure to apply sufficient professional scepticism. The firm also withdrew the conclusions and recommendations of a controversial SARS report linked to allegations about a so-called rogue intelligence unit. Those allegations were later discredited, and SARS publicly apologised in 2022 to employees affected by the affair. The fallout included leadership departures, an acknowledgement of failures in its work, and an offer to repay the R23 million it had received for the SARS investigation.

Professional bodies delivered their own outcomes. Yakhe Kwinana, a former SAA board member and chartered accountant whose Zondo Commission testimony drew wide attention after she used a fat cake analogy while discussing a controversial catering contract, was found guilty of professional misconduct on 13 charges by the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA) disciplinary committee in April 2023. The committee concluded she was not fit to remain a member of the profession, excluded her from membership and fined her R6.1 million. The High Court dismissed her review application, and SAICA announced plans to recover the fine and legal costs.

Anoj Singh, former chief financial officer at Eskom and Transnet, had his SAICA membership suspended in 2019 while proceedings continued. The institute refused to accept his resignation during the investigation. After a disciplinary hearing, he was found guilty of 12 of 18 charges, and in 2020 SAICA’s disciplinary committee ordered his exclusion from membership and directed him to pay half the costs of the proceedings.

Meanwhile, the question of whether delivery has been sufficient remains open. These cases do not establish how many professionals implicated in state capture have faced disciplinary action overall, nor whether those who lost memberships have found employment elsewhere. Swartz argues that professional bodies should provide clear information about complaints, investigations, disciplinary outcomes and whether sanctions remain in force, because being investigated is not the same as being sanctioned, and a public apology does not necessarily establish personal accountability.

In September, Justice Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi raised the same concern at the University of Johannesburg’s Combating Corruption Summit, saying the Zondo Commission had demonstrated the role professional enablers played in facilitating corruption and calling on professional bodies to account for their responses to the commission’s recommendations. She argued that professionals found to have abused their positions to facilitate corruption should be prevented from continuing to practise.

The record so far shows that disciplinary and financial consequences are possible, sometimes years after the original wrongdoing. Until there is a clearer public accounting of all such cases, South Africans will struggle to establish whether the professionals who helped corruption happen have truly been held responsible, or whether the consequences on paper have yet to reach everyone they should.