The ANC Youth League (ANCYL) says its president Collen Malatji is apologetic for being among the 20 members of Parliament (MP) identified by the parliament’s Ethics Committee as having failed to declare their financial interests.
ANCYL spokesperson, Zama Khanyase, said although Malatji had declared his financial interests he did not submit them by the stipulated date due to his political workload.
“If you follow him throughout his term, he has been doing it without any delay. I think this is part of the reason why the president has said he was not available to go back to parliament, because I think the work of the ANC Youth League that he is currently engaged in, the rebuilding process of the youth league and also understanding that we have been absent for quite some time, so the issues that the movement was dealing with were too much.
“We must go down and engage with different stakeholders, different leaders in different places. All this work began to clash with the work that he was doing in parliament, and now he, as the President decided to be full time at Luthuli House and I think just this once he missed the deadline, but he submitted,” Khanyase added.
She said Malatjie would take responsibility for his actions, and if he needed to pay a fine he would gladly abide by the ruling as he respected the process of Parliament.
Khanyase added that the youth league president was under a lot of pressure, adding that it was a pressure that he was willing to take as he had availed himself in leading an organisation as big as the ANCYL.
“Moving forward with all other representative of the Youth League as we know that the youth has quite a huge number of representatives in the list of the ANC... there’s something we would learn from.”
The Deputy Minister of Water and Sanitation, Judith Tshabalala, and the Chairperson of the joint standing committee on intelligence, Jerome Maake, are among the parliamentary members found guilty of violating the ethics code by not disclosing his financial interests. Maake is currently chairing the ad hoc committee on the General Intelligence Laws Amendment Bill, known as the Spy Bill.
The rules of Parliament require its members to disclose their financial interests every year.
The Star