The presence of dubious characters in parliament goes beyond mere inappropriateness. It poses a threat to efforts to restore confidence in public institutions devastated by state capture.
Several of those either charged or against whom allegations were made in the report of the Zondo commission of inquiry are now MPs — Lucky Montana, Malusi Gigaba, Siyabonga Gama and Brian Molefe among them.
Former chief justice Raymond Zondo called in his report for the police to probe Montana’s role in overseeing corrupt contracts and profiting from suspicious property deals, allegations he rejects. The report accused Gigaba of allowing state capture at entities such as Denel when he was minister of public enterprises and of abusing his influence to award tenders to the Gupta brothers. Molefe, a former Transnet and Eskom CEO, has been charged with fraud and contravening the Public Finance Management Act, while Gama has also been charged with fraud.
MPs have considerable influence over the way public entities are managed. A recent example was the call by several members of parliament’s trade, industry & competition portfolio committee — Gigaba among them — for the board of the National Lotteries Commission and its commissioner to be dismissed. From the available evidence it appears that both have made efforts to tighten internal controls to prevent a repeat of the corruption which saw millions of rand looted from an organisation that supports NGOs, among other beneficiaries.
The MPs in question may have sound reasons for their call, but apparently little evidence was presented to the committee to justify it, which is a source of concern.
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