‘Jobs for Cash’: SACE must answer for whitewashed report

21 November 2016

Following pressure from the Democratic Alliance, the SADTU-dominated South African Council of Educators (SACE), has reluctantly provided us with its report into the selling of teacher posts.

Now we can see why SACE withheld the report for so long.

Despite investigations taking place from 2014, the SACE report – if you can call it that – is a grand total of four pages. The ‘methodology’ is vague, the specific allegations are not documented and it is not clear on what evidence the ‘findings’ are based on.

The result is an amateurish whitewash that absolves everybody of wrongdoing, to the advantage of SADTU.

The SACE report cements the perception that SADTU had pressurised SACE to sweep the ‘jobs for cash’ allegations under the rug. As the City Press reported in July last year, SADTU executives allegedly approached SACE’s Chief Operating Officer Tsedi Dipholo (a member of the investigating team) and instructed her to drop the investigation to protect SADTU leaders.

SADTU’s domination of SACE meant that this was never going to be an independent investigation. SACE Chairperson Veronica Hofmeester is also the Vice-President of SADTU, while SACE CEO Rej Brijraj is a former SADTU media convener. The majority SACE’s councillors are also SADTU members.

We cannot allow SADTU to claim that an independent investigation has absolved the union and its members of wrongdoing. I have therefore written to the Chairperson of the Basic Education Portfolio Committee, Nomulengelo Gina, to call the leadership of SACE to appear before the Committee to explain its defective report.

The onus is on SACE to defend the methodology and findings of its ‘jobs for cash’ report in Parliament. We cannot stand by while public money is abused to whitewash allegations of SADTU corruption.

Issued by Gavin Davis, DA Shadow Minister of Basic Education, 21 November 2016