Minister in the presidency Mondli Gungubele has received a scathing rebuke from Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, the speaker of the National Assembly, for not being present in the house to receive his reprimand for contravening parliament’s code of ethical conduct regarding the registration of members’ interests.
The rebuke is rich in irony. Though the speaker is required to deliver it, Mapisa-Nqakula was herself at odds with the rules on a number of occasions during her time in the executive.
Every year, MPs are required to submit forms detailing their interests, whether this be property or shares they own, or their directorships and any other financial interests.
These include consultancies, sponsorships, gifts and hospitality. A reprimand for a breach of this is handed down in the National Assembly, and MPs being scolded are required to be present for their dressing down.
“I note that you were not present in the house when the report was considered and did not have the courtesy to inform me that you would not be in attendance,” Mapisa-Nqakula wrote to Gungubele. “Your failure to consider the gravity of your breach of the code of conduct and the casualness with which you treat this matter are disappointing and regrettable.”
Gungubele was appointed to the presidency in President Cyril Ramaphosa’s cabinet reshuffle in August 2021. Before that, he was chair of parliament’s social development committee.
In his 2019 and 2020 declarations of interests, Gungubele declared owning a house in Boksburg, while for 2019 he declared shares worth R6,000 and gifts of a pen and a bottle of wine.
Two other ANC MPs — Moloko Tlou and transport committee chair Mosebenzi Zwane — received letters of reprimand.
When it comes to Mapisa-Nqakula’s own misdemeanours, there are plenty.
There was a chorus of discontent over her record as minister when the ANC redeployed her as speaker. At the time of her redeployment, she was one of the longest-serving ministers, having served for nearly 20 years as a deputy and minister of home affairs, correctional services, and defence & military veterans. She left a litany of poorly explained breaches in the various ministries she headed.
In January 2014, she illegally brought a young Burundian woman, Michelle Wege — allegedly the girlfriend of her late son — into SA on a state-owned jet in alleged violation of the Immigration Act.
The minister said she was saving Wege from an abusive father. Wege had been arrested at the airport of the Democratic Republic of the Congo for using a false SA passport.
As minister of defence & military veterans, Mapisa-Nqakula was found guilty of taking ANC leaders with her on an official SA Air Force flight to Zimbabwe in September 2020. She was reprimanded by Ramaphosa for her “error of judgment” and billed the ANC R105,000 for the flight. The ANC delegation travelled to Harare to meet Zanu-PF officials on party — not government — business.
She was accused of being asleep on the job during the looting, devastation and unrest in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng in July 2021.
On her watch, the SA National Defence Force procured the unregistered Covid-19 drug Hebron for R260m from Cuba, which has since been sent back.
She also faces allegations — which she denies — of receiving bribes of R5m from a defence contractor and living it up in luxury hotels.
In her letters, Mapisa-Nqakula noted that on December 7, the National Assembly adopted the 2019 and 2020 reports of the joint committee on ethics and members’ interests detailing late and non-disclosures and the contravention of the code of conduct.
The National Assembly agreed that the three MPs should be reprimanded but they were not present when the report was considered and when the reprimand was supposed to be handed down, so they were reprimanded by way of letters from Mapisa-Nqakula.
“By your breach of the code of conduct you have gravely undermined the principles of trust and transparency and hindered parliament’s efforts to build and maintain public trust in democratic institutions. I must inform you that failure to observe the letter and spirit of the code of conduct is totally unacceptable and I therefore issue this reprimand for your failure.”
Gungubele had not responded to a request for comment on the nature of his breach of the code of conduct and the reasons for his non-appearance in the National Assembly at the time of publication.
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