Ramaphosa buckles under relentless DA pressure – but is too cowardly to fire the ANC’s Bonnie and Clyde

13 August 2020

After months of sustained pressure by the Democratic Alliance (DA), President Cyril Ramaphosa has finally caved in and implicitly acknowledged that the Director-General of the Public Service Commission (PSC), Dr Dovhani Mamphiswana, is a criminal ANC cadre.

However, instead of acting decisively by outright firing Mamphiswana for illegally hiring his mistress as the head of professional ethics in our most important public sector ethics watchdog, Ramaphosa continues milking desperate taxpayers by placing Mamphiswana on “precautionary suspension with full pay.”

If Ramaphosa cared more about the country than his rapidly disintegrating political party, he would not have forced struggling South Africans to continue paying this disgraced ANC cadre’s multimillion-rand salary.

A real leader who puts country over party would have immediately fired Mamphiswana, and launched criminal and civil proceedings to claim back the millions that Mamphiswana and his mistress, Boitumelo Mogwe, defrauded from taxpayers.

Even for a President as weak as Ramaphosa – who has publicly admitted that he prizes ANC unity above the interests of the country – there is absolutely no reason why Mamphiswana should continue receiving his nearly R2 million annual salary.

A completed investigation by advocate Smanga Sethene from the Office of the State Attorney already confirmed on 8 July that Mamphiswana and Mogwe were guilty of “nepotism par excellence” and “premeditated deceit, dishonesty, fraud and corruption calculated to deceive…the citizens of the Republic of South Africa".

Incredibly, Ramaphosa is at pains to state that “the President’s suspension of the Director-General does not in any way constitute a judgement on the part of the President".

Why does the President steadfastly refuse to pass judgement and act decisively against the ANC’s Bonnie and Clyde pair who have committed “premeditated corruption"?

If Sethene’s report is not enough for him, then what will it take for Cyril Ramaphosa to ever decisively do the right thing?

Ramaphosa’s latest half-hearted attempt to make it appear like he is acting against Mamphiswana comes six months after Sethene originally recommended that he be suspended.

By sitting on his hands for half a year, Ramaphosa caused an additional R1 million in taxpayer money to be wasted on Mamphiswana’s salary.

That figure will now continue to increase as Ramaphosa’s government inevitably drags out the disciplinary process against Bonnie and Clyde for as long as possible.

Unlike Ramaphosa, the DA acted immediately upon conclusion of Sethene’s report. We laid criminal charges against both Bonnie and Clyde over a month ago.

We have also confronted Ramaphosa and public service and administration minister, Senzo Mchunu, at every turn about this government's revolting failure to act despite overwhelming evidence against the two criminal cadres.

The DA will pose a series of parliamentary questions to Ramaphosa about his dereliction of duty by continuing to waste taxpayer funds on a criminal cadre.

We also reiterate our demand that Ramaphosa must follow in the DA’s footsteps by personally laying criminal charges against the ANC’s Bonnie and Clyde.

If Ramaphosa fails altogether to fire Mamphiswana, we will brief our lawyers with an eye to holding the President legally accountable for breaking his Constitutional duty to promote and sustain a high standard of professional ethics in the public service.

Issued by Leon Schreiber, DA Shadow Minister for Public Service and Administration, 13 August 2020