Tina Joemat-Pettersson can't take the heat

The infamous Tina Joemat-Pettersson has again demonstrated that she is not keen to account for her management of the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF). She has indefinitely postponed her scheduled appearance today before Parliament's Portfolio Committee on Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. 

The Minister was due to brief members on long-awaited plans for the allocation of high-value fishing quotas in eight commercial and artisanal fisheries next year. Applying for these quotas takes at least two years' worth of preparation. Despite noise to the contrary, it is demonstrably clear that the Minister does not have a plan and knows that she cannot credibly answer questions. The necessary research to establish the total allowable catch (TAC), on which these quotas are allocated, cannot even be conducted thanks to the institutional dysfunction in the DAFF that has left pristine state-owned marine research vessels idly tied up in Simon's Town Harbour.

We will today be writing to the leader of government business, Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe, to request that he direct the Minister to address the committee as soon as possible. We will also be asking the Public Protector to include this no-show in her investigation of Minister Joemat-Pettersson's breaching of the Executive Ethics Code. 

The Minister remains unaccountable to Parliament and the industries over which she is a key custodian. If performance was genuinely a criterion by which ministers were judged, Tina would have been fired a long time ago. 

The only logical inference is that she feels invincible. The only reasonable explanation for this is Tina's strong personal-political connections to the President. For instance, a planning document shows that her department was due to spend R808.5 million on President Jacob Zuma's Masibambisane rural development initiatives. Recently fired Jimmy Manyi's best effort at spinning this was that the document was a draft and ‘not endorsed' by the department. The concentration of the Masibambisane launch events associated with these initiatives in the Eastern Cape is particularly telling in light of Zuma's fight for survival at Mangaung.

For three years, the Minister has systematically destroyed her department, perpetually shifting the blame for its failures to advance the industries it has a mandate to support. If the Minister cannot take the heat, she really must get out of the kitchen. The DA will continue to push for her resignation.

Statement issued by Annette Steyn MP, DA Shadow Deputy Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, August 28 2012

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