The report of the Human Rights Commission on its probe into open-air toilets in the ANC-run Moqhaka municipality in the Free State will not be made public this week.
Commission spokesman Vincent Moaga said the report was tabled before the commission’s legal committee on Monday but would not be released “any time this week”.
The legal committee was considering the report, compiled by the commission’s Free State office.
“We understand the urgency in dealing with human dignity issues and the urgency we showed in the Makhaza, Khayelitsha, report should be evidence of how seriously we take these issues,” Moaga said.
While the DA had accused the commission of double standards, it would not release the report until it felt ready to do so, he said.
The DA laid a complaint with the commission in September, asking it to investigate delivery of sanitation services in Rammulotsi informal settlement in Moqhaka, where there were “many open toilets, where residents do not have adequate access to enclosed alternative sanitation”.
On Sunday, DA spokeswoman Lindiwe Mazibuko implied that the commission was dragging its feet in investigating the 1 600 open toilets, while it had been quick to investigate open toilets built by the DA-led City of Cape Town in Makhaza informal settlement in Khayelitsha.
“When the ANC complained to the commission about the Makhaza toilets early last year, its report was finalised and released to the media within about three months.
“It is now seven months since the complaint was laid with the commission about the ANC’s open toilets in Moqhaka,” Mazibuko said.
Once a report was endorsed by the commission’s legal committee, it had to be signed off by a commissioner before it was released.
This process normally took about two days, Mazibuko said.
“It is therefore important to ask: will the report be signed off and released before May 18?”
DA leader Helen Zille charged in October that the ANC was using the commission and other Chapter Nine institutions to target the opposition.
On Monday, the ANC chief whip in Parliament, Mathole Motshekga, accused the DA of bullying the commission and trying to drag it “into mudslinging election politics”.
“The DA’s accusation that the commission was quick to make a ruling on the Makhaza open toilets, yet was taking longer with the alleged Free State toilet matter, is a worrying attempt to question the commission’s political impartiality.”
Motshekga said the allegation could not be substantiated by fact. It was a DA tactic to divert attention from “the damaging effects the Makhaza open toilets court ruling had on the party’s election campaign”.
Instead of abiding by the court ruling and enclosing the toilets the DA was “(in) attack mode to tarnish the (commission’s) integrity“.
Motshekga said: “The DA’s bully tactic on the commission is dangerous as it is designed to erode the trust people have in this institution.”
Cope on Monday said it too would lay complaints with the commission and the public protector against the Moqhaka municipality today for general lack of service delivery and the open toilets specifically. - Political Bureau