President’s Covid-19 corruption committee already showing signs of dithering

21 August 2020

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s newly established Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC) investigating corruption and fraud connected to Covid-19 procurement is already showing signs of dithering.

The IMC was first supposed to brief Parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA) on work relating to Covid corruption on Friday, 14 August 2020. That meeting was postponed to Tuesday, 18 August 2020.

However, it then turned out that the Chairperson of the IMC and Justice Minister, Ronald Lamola, was not available resulting in a further postponement to today, 21 August 2020. Finally, at the meeting held this morning, SCOPA was informed that National Treasury, which is responsible for 50% of the Committee’s work, was not available as they were committed to another meeting.

This back-and-forth and lack of coordination are reminiscent of the lack of progress of a previous IMC set up to deal with outstanding Eskom debt.

The Eskom IMC was originally chaired by Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and now chaired by Deputy President David  Mabuza, who himself yesterday missed questions in Parliament due to apparent long-standing ill health.

That IMC has achieved exactly nothing and there seems to be a precedent that IMCs set up by the President are merely smokescreens. The dithering that is already on show from the Covid corruption IMC, is a sign of things to come.

The delays and lack of coordination to show up for a meeting in Parliament, raise very worrying questions about the commitment of the President and his Executive to actually deal with this scourge of Covid-19 corruption.

When the President first announced this IMC, the DA called it out for what it is - a toothless gathering of ANC cadres that has no real capacity to investigate and prosecute those involved in the Covid looting spree.

Judging by their poor showing in SCOPA over the past week, it is now clear that the IMC is already battling to measure up to the comments made by Minister Lamola on 6 August 2020 that the Committee would be tough on corruption and will "act without fear or favour".

The DA reiterates our call for President Ramaphosa to abandon this IMC and focus instead on empowering law enforcement agencies to stop corruption in its tracks.

Issued by Benedicta Van Minnen, DA Member of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, 21 August 2020