PIC Report: What are you scared about, President Ramaphosa?
3 March 2020
Media reports that President Cyril Ramaphosa received the Mpati Commission Report into the PIC in December 2019 and handed the report to the PIC in February 2020 but has still failed to table the report in Parliament indicate that President Ramaphosa has acted in bad faith.
During his SONA address, Ramaphosa promised the nation that he would publish the Mpati Commission Report into the PIC within days. He said: "I have received a detailed and voluminous report on the Commission of Inquiry into the Public Investment Corporation. I will make it available to the public together with a plan on taking the findings and recommendations forward in a few days".
Two and a half weeks have now passed and whilst the PIC appears to be acting on the contents of the report by dismissing its executive head of listed investments, Fidelis Madavo there has been no tabling of the report by President Ramaphosa.
What is in the report that Ramaphosa appears to be so scared about? Yet another scandal involving the ANC, more particularly members of his hugely compromised cabinet?
The PIC has been under a cloud since 2015 when the DA forced the then Minister of Finance to publish the full details of the PIC unlisted investments. This list exposed the nearly R2 billion “investment” in Independent Media which is far from independent, apparently on the brink of bankruptcy and owned by Iqbal Surve, a close ally of Jacob Zuma, the former and disastrous ANC president of SA.
The members of the Government Employees Pension Fund have suffered huge losses because of bad PIC investments such as the investment into Independent Media that is currently probably worth nothing at all and R 4.3 billion into AYO Technologies with a real value of approximately R 620 million. Now COSATU wants to put a further R 250 billion of hard-earned pensioner money at risk with yet another mad scheme and hugely risky investment in Eskom to compensate for ANC cadre corruption and complete maladministration that has brought Eskom to its knees.
I have written to Cyril Ramaphosa to urge him to meet his commitment made to the nation on the 13th of February 2020 to release the Mpati Report into the PIC. If Ramaphosa can’t even meet this simple commitment, how on earth is he ever to meet the R160 000 billion public service wage bill reduction commitment made in his 2020 Budget by Tito Mboweni, the Minister of Finance?
Issued by Alf Lees,DA Member of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, 3 March 2020
