It took four years, more than 300 witnesses, 8-million pages of documents and R1bn in taxpayer’s money to expose the true extent of SA’s crippling years of state capture under former president Jacob Zuma’s watch alongside his circle of friends in the now notorious Gupta family.

Chief justice Raymond Zondo on Wednesday released the final part of the state capture report, a mammoth task pointing fingers at hundreds of culprits, ranging from politicians to businesspeople and organisations. But most notably, Zuma and the Guptas themselves — and not forgetting those who stood by and watched as it happened, including our current President Cyril Ramaphosa.

As Zondo and Ramaphosa smiled at the cameras during the official handover — delayed, again, this time by more than two hours — and solemnly swore that the president had not interfered with the content, almost 2,000 pages were being prepared for release on the presidency’s website to close the chapter of a commission of inquiry the likes of which have never been seen before in SA’s history...