Cape Town - The National Assembly is considering setting up an ad hoc committee to start afresh the appointment of the board of directors for the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA).
This emerged on Thursday when EFF MP Hlengiwe Mkhaliphi asked the National Assembly programme committee for an update on the NYDA board appointment, which was referred back to the portfolio committee on women, youth and people with disabilities.
Speaker Thandi Modise said they were still engaging with the committee on the matter.
"We would need the chief whip of the majority party in that meeting," she said.
Mkhaliphi said she hoped that there would be a report at the next meeting of the programme committee.
"There has been no board since May (2019). The NYDA is operating in a vacuum. I hope they update us next week," she said.
Modise said the NYDA matter was complicated in the sense that there was contention over whether processes had been correctly followed.
"The matter is contested by various parties who are threatening to take us to court. As I said in the last meeting, fewer people are in defence of the process," she said.
"The correct thing to do is to review the process taking into consideration what every complaint that is placed before us is saying and in that process being sensitive to the vacuum we talk about," Modise said.
She, however, said that they should be honest that even before there was the vacuum, there had been issues at NYDA.
"We don't want to delay any further so that the matter gets exacerbated but we do need to do the right thing once and for all about the NYDA. I must be honest we are leaning to have an ad hoc committee but we need to have the buy-in from that committee," Modise added.
In September, the National Assembly sent back the report recommending the candidates to serve on the board to the committee.
This was after Modise received complaints on the selection process that was followed by the committee amid legal threats in some quarters.
The selection process was mired in controversy amid surfacing of a letter purported to be from the interim ANC Youth League task team forwarding a list of preferred candidates, including some of those recommended, to the office of ANC deputy secretary general Jessie Duarte prior to the interviews.
Among those nominated were daughter of former president Jacob Zuma, Thuthukile Zuma, political analyst Lukhona Mnguni, former NYDA board chairperson Sifiso Mtsweni and Avela Mjajubana, a community outreach officer in the office of Public Service and Administration Minister Senzo Mchunu and former Sasco president.
Others were former Tshwane University SRC president Karabo Mohale, former Young Communist League spokesperson Molaoli Sekake, Paballo Ponoane, who is the volunteer assistant to the ANC Women's League Gauteng secretary.
Political Bureau