'I had no authority to approve Gupta’s Waterkloof landing'
The former head of state protocol Bruce Koloane has told the commission of inquiry into state capture that he had no legal authority to approve the landing of the Gupta wedding guests at the Waterkloof Airforce Base.
About 200 guests landed on a private jet at the military base in April 2013 without proper procedures being followed en route to Sun City.
Koloane, who is now South Africa’s ambassador to the Netherlands, was fingered as the person who approved the landing despite the lack of proper documentation. This led to a disciplinary hearing being instituted against him and his subsequent suspension.
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He, however, says he was contacted by the Indian High Commissioner at the time, who complained that they had requested to land at the military base and approval was taking longer than expected. In his role as a diplomatic facilitator, he contacted the South African National Defence Force to deal with the matter.
"I have got no authority chairperson because if you think about this there are certain things that should be met to be able to issue a flight clearance. One of them is that you must have access to civil aviation information otherwise if anybody can just issue that bodies would just be falling from the sky because flights would be crashing. So I don't have access to that so I cannot issue such approval."