The DA wants the National Assembly to establish a parliamentary ad hoc committee on state capture by no later than the end of October, failing which it will go to court to force it to do so.
DA leader Mmusi Maimane has written to speaker of the National Assembly Baleka Mbete, asking her to ensure that the party’s draft resolution establishing the ad hoc committee be placed on the order paper by no later than October 31. He has called on her to show the "leadership and direction" in the matter as befits her role.
In addition the DA has asked Mbete to establish a disciplinary committee to investigate breaches of duty and oaths of office by five ministers: Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba; Public Service and Administration Minister Faith Muthambi (when she was minister of communications); Local Government and Co-operation Minister Des van Rooyen; Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown and Mineral Resources Minister Mosebenzi Zwane.
They have been implicated in wrongdoing in former public protector Thuli Madonsela’s state of capture report, as well as in the leaked Gupta e-mails.
In his letter to Mbete, DA leader Mmusi Maimane points out that Cabinet ministers are accountable collectively and individually to Parliament and the Constitution obliges the National Assembly to hold them to account. He notes that the allegations against the five ministers are of an "extraordinarily serious and far-reaching" nature.
Maimane also argues strongly in favour of an ad hoc committee to investigate state capture rather than the separate inquiries by the transport, mineral resources, public enterprises and home affairs committees as proposed by National Assembly chairperson Cedric Frolick.
Maimane believes that having four separate committees to conduct inquiries is a "deliberate attempt to undermine the responsibility of the National Assembly to hold the executive to account.
"An ad hoc committee would be the best accountability mechanism to hold the various members of the executive to account since it would be able to establish a holistic picture of the extent of state capture as well as to determine whether there were links or patterns in the activities of members of the executive implicated by the report or the correspondence," Maimane said.
He noted that the four committees had proceeded with their work at a snail’s pace with only the public enterprises committee proceeding with an inquiry.
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