Sizani’s crisis of conscience a step in the right direction for accountability and the Constitution

4 March 2016

Stone Sizani’s remarks in this morning’s Mail & Guardian on the ANC Caucus’ position regarding the Nkandla matter is at best the former Chief Whip’s attempt to clear his conscience. While we welcome the fact that this crisis of conscience has culminated in this admission, there is still much to be done by the acting Chief Whip of the majority party, Doris Dlakude, moving forward to ensure that never again is Parliament made complicit in a plot to protect anyone from accountability.

At present we are awaiting the Constitutional Court’s ruling on the force and effect of the Public Protector’s remedial action and are hopeful that the highest court in the land will set aside Parliament’s conduct in this saga. To this end, Parliament, led by Ms Dlakude and the Speaker of the National Assembly (NA), Baleka Mbete, must give expression to section 55(2) of the Constitution and diligently consider the rescission of the NA’s adoption of the Police Minister’s report that erroneously absolved the President from all liability in this regard.

According to the newspaper, Sizani now claims that Police Minister, Nathi Nhlekho’s report on the security upgrades to President Zuma’s private home at Nkandla - which found that the President and his family did not unduly benefit from the upgrades in question - is now“irrelevant”, and that the ANC Caucus has been “consistent in  [our] position that President Zuma needed to pay back a portion of the Nkandla money in line with the public protector’s decision.”

During all three Nkandla ad hoc committees members of the ANC Caucus, led by him, went to great lengths to discredit the Public Protector, Adv Thuli Madonsela, and her report Secure in Comfort  both in Parliament and public. She was repeatedly denied an opportunity to brief the Committee on her report and the proposed remedial actions therein, and was berated by ANC MPs such as Mothole Motshekga whenever her office made budgetary presentations to Parliament.

Further to this, when the President told the NA in a sitting last year that he had, “[n]ever ever thought about the date when I will pay back the money” and that if a determination that he should was to be made, it would be by the Minister of Police, the ANC Caucus applauded.

It is most regrettable that Parliament, acting at the President’s behest, has allowed this matter to get to this point. In any event, we are pleased that the outgoing Chief Whip has seen it fit to put on the record the ANC’s Caucus’s position before he is deployed to the diplomatic corps. 

Parliament’s record will reflect that for the past three years the ANC Caucus, led by Chief Whip Stone Sizani, misused it’s majority in Parliament to protect the President instead of holding him accountable, and no amount of revisionism on Sizani’s part will change that. However, the ANC in Parliament must make it right and ensure that it never happens again if Parliament is to reaffirm its commitment to the Constitution to which all members are duty-bound to do.

Issued by John Steenhuisen, Chief Whip of the DA, 4 March 2016