Johannesburg - Former State Security Agency (SSA) officials tried to seek the backing of former president Jacob Zuma in ensuring that a high-level intelligence investigation into the Gupta family could go ahead, the State Capture Inquiry heard.
Mzuvukile Maqetuka, the former director-general at the SSA, testified at the inquiry on Friday.
He told the inquiry that the SSA had decided to investigate the Gupta family and its possible links to former president Jacob Zuma. Maqetuka had also been alerted by the US of the infamous family's possible links to the purchase of a uranium mine and the possible involvement of the Iranian government.
The agency was also concerned about national security, focused on allegations of the Guptas' intimate knowledge of former president Jacob Zuma’s 2010 Cabinet reshuffle.
Maqetuka said while the investigation was to get underway, former state security minister Siyabonga Cwele had found out about the investigation. Cwele summoned Maqetuka, and his intelligence counterparts, Mo Rieaz Shaik and Gibson Njenje, to a meeting in 2011.
Cwele was adamant that there was no basis for investigating the Gupta family and would not listen to reason.
"No, he (Cwele) did not do that (ask about the investigation). Had he perhaps done that, he would have been more rational in his approach. I would have explained to him that no you are wrong and this is the sequence to this," Maqetuka explained.
He said after they had failed to convince Cwele, it was decided that they would meet with Zuma and appeal to him about the importance of the investigation.
Maqetuka, Njenje and Shaik met with Zuma in 2011. He said the former president did not outrightly state that he was against the investigation but remained silent as the group briefed him on the need for this investigation. Maqetuka said Zuma wanted access to the investigation's intelligence report, but he declined to provide him with a copy because he was implicated.
Maqetuka said Zuma sought to explain his relationship with the Gupta family. Zuma said the family had assisted his son, Duduzane, when he was unemployed.
When asked by the commission's chairperson Deputy Cheif Justice Raymond Zondo on whether Zuma objected to the investigation, Maqetuka said the former president did not.
But he explained that following that meeting it was clear to him that Zuma had taken a stance against the investigation. Maqetuka said even though Zuma did not outrightly object to it, but his demeanour showed he had taken a stand.
"After that meeting, it became difficult for us to get a meeting with the president. He never asked how far we had gone with that report. After the meeting with the president, we realised that this thing about us being there (at SSA) was not working. Our relationship with the minister had completely broken," Maqetuka said.
Maqetuka said had they been given a chance to investigate the Gupta family, the former president would not be in a position where his political career had been "tarnished" because of his relationship with the family.
"It is important because we wanted to protect the president and we feared that his relationship with that family would tarnish his name. That is why I am saying we were right in altering him (president Zuma) and we were right to say that it would tarnish his name."
"Had the president listened to THE merits of the investigation, perhaps it would have helped him stop his relationship with the Guptas. When you look at it in retrospect, would he have been in the situation he is in now? Because he is dead in the mud because of that relationship," Maqetuka said.
Maqetuka left the agency in 2012.
The commission resumes on Monday.