EFF calls for Khumbudzo Ntshaveni to step down after being implicated in State Capture report
6 February 2022
The Economic Freedom Fighters calls for Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies, Khumbudzo Ntshaveni to step down after damning findings that implicate her in the capture of the state-owned arms manufacturer Denel.
In the second part of the report given to the Presidency, which deals with the capture of State-Owned Enterprises, Ntshaveni is implicated as part of the board members who purged three executive employees at Denel, as a result of them resisting the nefarious influence of the Gupta family.
As one of the top performing State-Owned Entities in recent years, Denel was corrupted by Ntshaveni and her fellow board members, in collusion with then Board Chairperson Daniel Mantsha. The pair led the charge in suspending the then Denel CEO Raiz Saloojee, CFO Fikile Mhlontlo and the company secretary Elizabeth Africa, on grounds of breaching the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA).
These allegations have not been proven to date.
These executives were subjected to a year without any disciplinary proceedings being instituted against them, and this was followed by a payout to them to leave the company to the tune of millions of Rands. This is without a doubt not only irregular but reveals a corrupt intention by Ntshaveni and her cronies on the board, who paid millions to executives they accused of misconduct.
This affirms the findings by the State Capture Commission that the sole intention was to get them out of the company to ease the business interests of the Guptas.
In a damning revelation, this is proven true by the fact that after purging the CEO, the corrupt board appointed a junior executive, who was a Gupta stooge and was at one point a Group CEO for the Guptas.
Ntshaveni is not only corrupt, but willfully arrogant, as the commission found that she still thinks what she did at the time was above board.
The EFF calls for Khumbudzo Ntshaveni to immediately step down as the Minister of Communications and Digitial Technologies, for aiding and abetting State Capture.
She must be immediately investigated by law enforcement agencies as per the recommendations of the inquiry, for failing to convene a timely and legitimate disciplinary process for those she purged.
Further to this, she must be held personally liable for the millions lost by Denel in the payout her and her board members made to the executives they victimised, in order to allow the Guptas to infiltrate the entity.
These investigations must happen immediately, to show that not even those closest to the levers of power by being allies of Cyril Ramaphosa, are above the law.
Issued by Vuyani Pambo, National Spokesperson, EFF, 6 February 2022
