This saga has all the usual signs of a cover-up to perpetuate corruption, writes Mcebisi Ndletyana.
Cash Paymaster Services (CPS) might well pay social grants on April 1, 2017. That would mean its contract, which the Constitutional Court found was illegal, would have been extended beyond the initial five-year period.
This could possibly go on for another year or two, enabling CPS to amass even more profit under an illegal contract. Bathabile Dlamini, Minister of Social Development, would certainly not be disappointed with the decision to have CPS continue issuing social grants, under an extension of an illegal contract.
Her contentment would have little to do with 17 million people receiving their grants, but more with personal benefit. CPS did not secure the contract fairly, but the tender process was manipulated in order to favour the company. The manipulation came from inside the department.
In other words, CPS was an internal favourite in return for personal benefit. Assuming all this is true, it then goes without saying the insider would have subsequently ensured CPS retained the contract in order to continue securing the benefit.
This was certainly the impression of the Constitutional Court (Concourt) in its initial ruling back on April 17, 2012, as it noted in the judgment: “Sassa has adopted an unhelpful and almost obstructionist stance. It failed to furnish crucial information to AllPay regarding the implementation of the tender and to Corruption Watch in respect of steps it took to investigate irregularities in the bid and decision-making process. Its conduct must be deprecated”
Having secured the contract for CPS, in return for a possible benefit, it was inevitable the insider would ensure the company retained it. The contract has been mutually beneficial.
What of that fact that the tender was re-run and only three companies submitted bids? Their applications were apparently inadequate, forcing the department to continue with CPS. That may be true, or false. It is difficult to take the department at its word, given the dubious manner in which the CPS contract was awarded in the first place.
In fact, the department knew that, as per the 2012 Concourt ruling, if the re-run failed to yield a new appointment, then CPS would automatically continue as the distributor of grants until March 2017. Given the vested interests of the insider in CPS, who says that the re-run was not itself manipulated?
The possibility that the re-run was also tainted appears even likelier considering recent events. For instance, Sassa realised last May that it would not be in a position to take over the disbursement of grants from April 1, 2017, upon expiry of the CPS contract. It had made that undertaking back in 2012.
Yet, the Concourt was not told, nor were there any preparations made to avoid CPS extending an illegal contract. Nine months was sufficient time to look for alternatives, which would also have meant the department was complying with the order of the Concourt. We all discovered just a few weeks ago that Dlamini is planning on continuing with the illegal contract.
This saga has all the usual signs of a cover-up to perpetuate corruption. Thokozani Magwaza, the chief executive officer of Sassa, for example, has disappeared. He is reportedly on sick leave. Who takes sick leave in the middle of a crisis? And, why would the minister, or board, approve a CEO’s application to stay home over flu - I’m guessing - when the poor in our land might just rise up if they don’t get their monthly grants?
My guess is that Magwaza has been pushed aside, to silence him. The reports that he wanted the Post Office to take over the distribution of grants are possibly true.
CPS may well continue beyond March. But that won’t be the end of this saga. This is just the beginning.
It smells of a scam, and the Concourt appears to have picked that up. The questions it has sent to the department, in preparation for a hearing next Wednesday, seek to establish if, at all, the department ever made preparations for Sassa to take over from CPS; who took the decision that Sassa would not take over and on what basis; and what plans did Sassa come up with upon realising this.
Apart from seeking the truth, the Concourt is just not happy. Its court order has been defied. This has been a source of unhappiness within the judiciary. That’s why Mogoeng Mogoeng, accompanied by his former deputy, Dikgang Moseneke, went to complain to the president that his government’s defiance of court orders made a mockery of our constitutional democracy. Zuma promised that the government would comply. Dlamini has clearly not complied.
The Concourt will ensure that it not only registers its disapproval of this persistent defiance, but also uncovers the malfeasance so that the culprits are held accountable. Jurists are fed up with public officials abusing state resources without any consequences. Now they even award costs against officials who lose cases that should never have been brought to court. Dlamini may be in for a surprise.
Regardless of what comes out of the Concourt, one can’t see how Dlamini can come out of this unscathed. The trail of deceit is just too palpable. She can’t even fabricate a convenient story. That’s why, until recently, she’s been avoiding Parliament and the media.
Now she’s taken to being defiant in ignominy - uqin’ enyaleni!
Not only that, she’s gone native in the hope of enlisting racial solidarity. She doesn’t want to address white journalists because, according to her, they don’t know anything about social grants.
Dlamini prefers black journalists instead and her spokesperson, Lumka Oliphant, insisted on speaking isiXhosa on an English-medium radio station. Racial solidarity is not a cover to conceal ignominy.
Equally worse is that CPS’s Serge Belamant is not remorseful at all. He got the initial contract illegally, and wants it continued because no one else can distribute social grants, he says. The Frenchman is telling us that no one can do what he does. That’s what Dlamini brought us, and she claims to be pushing a radical economic agenda. What a fuss!
* Ndletyana is an associate professor of politics at the University of Johannesburg.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.