POLITICS

Opposition excluded from important DPW meeting - Patricia Kopane

DA says only ANC members attended meeting to discuss, among other things, Nkandla upgrades

Public Works Committee excludes opposition as Nkandla upgrades remain in question

9 May 2017

Today, opposition parties walked out of the Portfolio Committee meeting on Public Works after members of the opposition were completely excluded from last week’s key meeting about the Department of Public Works’ (DPW) Annual Performance Plans and Budget for the 2017/2018 financial year.

Last week, only ANC members of the committee were notified to attend a meeting to deliberate the DPW’s budget and Annual Performance Plan. The meeting proceeded with only ANC members present, and members of opposition political parties were excluded. This is highly suspicious at a time when the Department is reported to be soon undertaking new upgrades and improvements to President Jacob Zuma’s private homestead at Nkandla, yet again at public expense.

Today, at a scheduled meeting of the committee, members were asked to adopt final versions of the Annual Performance Plans and Budget report, considered at the previous “ANC-only” meeting, meaning that all other parties had been cut out of considering the original drafts of the Department of Public Works’ 2017/18 budget and performance plan. This is a fundamental assault on our multi-party democracy.

Opposition members, therefore, refused to adopt the budget, considering that it had not undergone the proper channels of debate and deliberation – and walked out of the meeting.

We are led to ask: What was in the original budget documentation that Minister Nathi Nhleko did not want the opposition to see? Surely, if there is nothing to hide, the opposition should have been present, to scrutinise the full and original budget and performance plan documents, rather than reports thereon?

The ANC’s secretive approach to this meeting also raises suspicions at a time when further improvements and upgrades at Nkandla are apparently in the works, and after the Minister mysteriously cancelled his press briefing on the Nkandla upgrades and is still to this day yet to reschedule it.

Minister “Fire Pool” Nhleko played a leading role in defending the greatest memorial to the rot of corruption that has manifested in Jacob Zuma’s ANC government, Nkandla. Now that there are possible planned upgrades to the President’s palace of corruption, we cannot take the deliberate exclusion of the opposition from this meeting lightly. It is possible that these document contained details on the latest Nkandla improvements, which the ANC simply do not want us to see.

The DA members of the Portfolio Committee on Public Works have reported this matter to the Office of the Chief Whip of Parliament, Jackson Mthembu, and we expect that he will urgently address this affront to democracy.

Issued by Patricia Kopane, DA Shadow Minister of Public Works, 9 May 2017