Today’s oral submission at the Zondo Commission by Dikeledi Magadzi, Chairperson of the Transport Portfolio Committee (PC) in the fifth parliament (between 2014 and 2019), has been a cacophony of obfuscation and shirking of responsibility. Her testimony reaffirms and confirms my oral testimony to the Zondo Commission last week.
In her testimony, Magadzi’s spoke as if the PC had no authority, power or recourse to do anything to bring alleged corruptors or alleged criminals to book. On numerous times, Magadzi simply did not respond to the questions posed. Her testimony goes further in that she claims that correspondence that I had written to her was tabled at PC meetings and that members of the PC collectively agreed that my correspondence should be ignored. My assertion is that this is simply not true.
Should Ms. Dikeledi Magadzi stick to her version of events, then she should be able to back this up with records of this in the parliamentary official minutes of the meetings of the PC or even from the Parliamentary Monitoring Group (PMG) who record more detailed minutes of the same meetings. In both instances this is not recorded.
However, should Magadzi version of events be taken as correct, by her own admission the oversight by the PC of the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA) was “found wanting” and that matters were dealt with in a “superficial way”. This is despite me constantly alerting the committee of issues that were taking place before our eyes and splashed brightly in all mainstream media.
It is clear that Magadzi and the ANC members of the Transport PC were complacent in all the corruption and looting taking place in PRASA. Magadzi again reiterated that the “mandate and instructions of the ruling party” (ie: the ANC) and that all ANC members would always “toe the party line”, ahead of South Africa and its Constitution.
This remains the case as Magadzi, who is the current deputy minister of transport, is allowing the looting, corruption and total dissemination and destruction of rail and PRASA.
Through the Zondo commission, the spotlight is on what continues to take place within PRASA today.