Please find attached English soundbite by Dr Leon Schreiber MP, DA Shadow Minister for Public Service and Administration.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) will tomorrow lay criminal charges against the ANC’s very own Bonnie and Clyde, who turned the country’s premier public service anti-corruption watchdog, the Public Service Commission (PSC), into a cesspit of corruption. A whistleblower has supplied the DA with a copy of a report compiled by advocate Smanga Sethene, which shows how the ANC policy of cadre deployment has destroyed the very institution tasked by the Constitution with safeguarding ethics and good governance in the Republic.
Advocate Sethene was appointed in February by the Office of the State Attorney to investigate media reports that the Director-General (DG) of the PSC, Dr Dovhani Mamphiswana, had in December 2019 illegally appointed his mistress and the mother of his child, Boitumelo Mogwe, to the powerful position of Chief Director: Professional Ethics. According to whistle-blower reports, Mamphiswana is an openly biased ANC cadre who regularly attends ANC lekgotla meetings. Mamphiswana’s status as a party lackey alone should have disqualified him from leading the country’s most important and supposedly nonpartisan governance institution.
In his report, entitled Professionally Unethical, advocate Sethene confirms that the two lovers had conspired to have Mogwe illegally appointed to the position of Chief Director, which comes with a hefty annual salary of nearly R1.3 million. Both members of the couple failed to disclose their mutual entanglement, and Mamphiswana even had the audacity to chair the panel that appointed Mogwe.
Even more disgusting is the fact that Mamphiswana ensured that his patently unqualified partner-in-crime was appointed above another applicant, Dr SCJ Hoogenraad-Vermaak, whom Sethene concludes was vastly more qualified than Mogwe. By abusing his power to eliminate Hoogenraad-Vermaak and instead appoint his mistress, Mamphiswana not only broke the law, but also robbed the South African people of the service of yet another skilled public servant.
In fact, the couple’s malfeasance at the PSC appears to date as far back as 2012, when Mamphiswana was part of another panel that interviewed Mogwe for a different position at the PSC. This brings into question Mamphiswana’s entire tenure at the PSC, and suggests that he may have been involved in more, as yet undisclosed, instances of mismanagement and illegal cadre deployment.
Sethene’s scathing report concludes that “The appointment of Ms Mogwe to the position of Chief Director: Professional Ethics constitutes a premeditated deceit, dishonesty, fraud and corruption calculated to deceive other members of the [appointment] panel, the Chairperson of the PSC, public service and the citizens of the Republic of South Africa. Through this appointment, the image of the PSC and its recruitment process have been put into disrepute by the DG, who ought to have been the custodian of ethics, integrity and anti-corruption.”
Sethene further finds that “The conduct of Dr Mamphiswana to brazenly shortlist, interview and recommend for appointment, the mother of his own child, is professionally unethical. So is Ms Mogwe’s conduct in that she agreed to be interviewed by the father of her child and failed to disclose that material fact. This was nepotism par excellence. It was dishonesty calculated to disadvantage other applicants who applied for the position. It is, in fact, criminal.”
On the basis of Sethene’s findings, the DA believes that Mamphiswana and Mogwe are nothing but revolting ANC criminal cadres who must be permanently exiled from the public service and go straight to prison.
As the institution tasked with ensuring good governance across national and provincial government, the PSC is supposed to be one of the most sacred institutions in our public sector. “Bonnie” Mogwe and “Clyde” Mamphiswana have defiled the PSC, and ANC cadres have once again spat in the faces of the people of South Africa.
They have plunged the organization into an existential crisis at a time when the PSC should be acting against ANC cadres in the public service, who are currently engaged in an orgy of looting relief funds meant to feed the hungry and save livelihoods in the face of the lockdown crisis. How could South Africans possibly trust the PSC to act against corruption when its most senior officials are themselves criminal ANC cadres?
The report notes that Mamphiswana and Mogwe’s conspiracy breached various provisions of the Public Finance Management Act, as well as the Prevention and Combatting of Corrupt Activities Act.
It is for this reason that the DA will tomorrow lay criminal charges against both Mamphiswana and Mogwe at Cape Town Central Police Station. We will submit a copy of Sethene’s leaked report along with our criminal complaint, and we urge the police to prioritise this investigation, as South Africa faces a national crisis if our premier public sector anti-corruption institution is allowed to go up in flames.
We also expect the Chairperson of the PSC, advocate Richard Sizani, to immediately comply with the report’s recommendations, including by launching civil claims against Mogwe and Mamphiswana to pay back all the money paid to Mogwe since her appointment in December 2019, and by launching an audit investigation into all senior appointments at the Commission.
At the same time, we salute the brave whistle-blowers exposing malfeasance in the public sector, and specifically urge whistle-blowers at the PSC to come forward with any additional evidence against Mamphiswana, Mogwe or any other ANC cadres who have been illegally deployed to capture the institution.
Sadly, unlike whistle-blowers who love South Africa,President Cyril Ramaphosa has entirely failed to take action against these two disgraced cadres even though advocate Sethene submitted his report to the President a week ago already. What exactly is Ramaphosa waiting for? Every day that cadres like Mamphiswana and Mogwe continue to be paid by taxpayers is another slap in the face for long-suffering citizens. If Ramaphosa fails to immediately fire Mamphiswana – who as DG reports directly to the President – on the basis of advocate Sethene’s report, the DA will investigate launching court action to declare the President constitutionally delinquent for his failure to act against such brazen corruption.
With ANC cadres like Bonnie and Clyde having captured and corrupted an institution as vitally important as the PSC, South Africa now more than ever needs a decisive leader, rather than a spineless spectator.
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