Cape Town - Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini said on Friday that she did in fact meet a deadline to submit an affidavit to the Constitutional Court on personal costs in the social grants case. This after reports that she had missed the 16:00 deadline.
Her attorneys served the 140-page affidavit before 16:00 as per the order but had some difficulties emailing it because of its large file size, said Dlamini's spokesperson Lumka Oliphant.
"Twenty-six copies of the same had to be hand delivered so as to be filed at court. The court could not accept the filing without confirmation of the electronic service," she said.
"Unfortunately due to the large size of the file some of the electronic service bounced back and all parties could not be served before 16:00. The electronic service has now been effected to all the parties."
Oliphant said that the court was copied in on the email.
The attorneys would make a condonation application on Monday in this regard.
Democratic Alliance's social development spokesperson Bridget Masango did not buy Dlamini's explanation.
"It is irresponsible of her and confirms the view that she is incompetent and disdainful."
Collective responsibility
Earlier in the month, the court handed down a judgment extending Cash Paymaster Service's (CPS) unlawful contract with the SA Social Security Agency (Sassa) for 12 more months. It suspended its declaration of the invalidity for that period.
The court had ordered Dlamini to submit an affidavit by Friday at the latest to explain why she should not be joined to the case in her personal capacity, and why she should not pay the costs of the parties who brought the case out of her own pocket.
When previously asked how she felt about the order, Dlamini paused for a moment before saying that no one individual could be singled out for the situation in which Sassa had found itself.
"This is the work of a collective, but if a court says at the end of the day: 'Take responsibility', we are going to ask: 'How should we take responsibility for the whole thing that has happened?'"
"Therefore, I personally think this time is not a time to say: 'No, I would not have agreed to this, I would have agreed to this [instead].'"
"I think this time is more precious and important because it's giving us an opportunity to apologise and to recommit ourselves and understand that if you are given an instruction by courts, you must take it very seriously," she said.
Dlamini retained her position after President Jacob Zuma made major changes to his Cabinet in the early hours of Friday morning.
