Africa-Press – South-Africa. Former standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) chairperson Themba Godi has accused ANC MPs of having played an instrumental role in the weakening of Parliament and its inability to hold the executive to account.
Godi was testifying at the Zondo Commission on Monday on the refusal of ministers and accounting officers in departments and state-owned entities to implement corrective action recommended by his committee to remedy financial mismanagement and ensure consequence management.
According to the former MP, oversight was marred by politics as MPs came to committees armed with political mandates from their respective parties, with reason and facts doing little to change the stance they were mandated to adopt by parties.
“Many of our comrades in the portfolio committees were very pliable and acted like useful idiots of the executive, if I can use that word, in terms of not playing oversight but having instances where they would actually defend officials instead of assisting oversight… Whatever the political dynamics were, there were a lot of our colleagues who were actually an embarrassment to the notion of public representation,” he said.
Godi maintained that ANC MPs, who were speaking with him in corridors, indicated that being outspoken and taking a hard line against the executive negatively impacted political careers, adding that many Scopa members of the governing party were not returning to Parliament after elections.
“We would talk in the corridors that the stand they were taking was going to have negative consequences for their political careers and those that I had in the fifth Parliament, not even one of them had gone back to Parliament. Tell me that it is mere coincidence,” he said.
Godi also noted that Scopa had focused on departments and entities with the largest budgets and where financial mismanagement was also rampant, especially through supply-chain deviations.
“This is another form of non-compliance where, to circumvent going through the tendering process, departments would always do deviations or expansions from normal processes. This has become the favourite route through which departments avoid compliance.”
He said deviations and expansions were “frighteningly high in amounts” and remarked that the process was given a veneer of legality by National Treasury as it had the powers to give the green light to it.
The inquiry continues.
Political Bureau
