Oliphant labours at something, but what?

Where is Mildred Oliphant? The labour minister has been absent for a while, but featured on Wednesday in a court judgment describing her removal of labour registrar Johan Crouse as “irrational” and “invalid”.

This is the second court to deliver an indictment on the minister’s actions over the same matter.

“Mildred Oliphant, who still remembers her?” a colleague quipped. Rumours swirl in political circles that she is the “model employee” — present every day, in her office, on time. But then she locks her door. The caveat: “No one knows what she does.”

Granted, the minister has a deputy, a director-general and four — yes, four — deputy directors-general, so perhaps she has all her bases covered?

Oliphant popped up in 2016 when she was appointed to an “interministerial task team” to find out why the supposed enforcers of white monopoly capital, the banks, closed the accounts of our most famous import, a family at the forefront of the greatest fight for economic freedom, or financial liberation, in our lifetime: the Guptas.

We know she attended meetings with the banks on this matter, even though she hasn’t appeared before Parliament for years.

Crouse was removed by Oliphant in July 2015 after he had tried to place Cosatu affiliate the Chemical Energy Paper Printing Wood and Allied Workers Union (Ceppwawu) under administration. Ceppwawu is a special case as Cosatu unions go — deeply factional, allegedly corrupt and it has not accounted for how it has used workers’ money for years. Oh, and its elective conference is long, long, long overdue, so clearly internal democracy is nonexistent.

The allegation was that the minister intervened in the matter because Ceppwawu’s leadership also happens to be loyal to the federation’s president, Sdumo Dlamini, who is a member of the ANC national executive committee. So it appeared to be a case of protecting one’s family at the expense of workers’ subscriptions and the union they helped to build.

A group of leaders from Ceppwawu who were fighting the minister’s decision had this to say at the time: “We note with serious concern the underhand tactic being used to undermine this application by those in power, particularly at the ministry of labour.”

It said stripping Crouse of his position demonstrated the minister’s political proximity to a Cosatu faction led by Dlamini and her action was intended to shield the general secretary of Ceppwawu.

Crouse and his own union, the Public Servants Association, took the minister to court, which ordered that he be reinstated. In October 2015, the Labour Court handed down a scathing judgment against Oliphant, saying she ignored materially relevant facts in removing the registrar and as a result, the decision was unreasonable, irrational and procedurally unfair.

Wednesday’s Labour Appeal Court judgment was similarly unforgiving.

More than a year has passed since his initial reinstatement and the Ceppwawu matter, too, has been languishing in court, with a faction trying to remove its politically sheltered general secretary, Simon Mofokeng. Another fun fact is that he was elected in 2011 and the union has not held an elective conference since.

Perhaps in a bid to prove she can indeed be tough on Cosatu, Oliphant dropped a bombshell at the 2015 Cosatu congress a month after the Labour Court judgment was delivered, commenting that some Cosatu unions that were supposedly against labour broking, were in fact running labour-broking companies themselves. Her comments scandalised delegates at the gathering and Dlamini abruptly stopped her from naming the union.

With hindsight, it appears Oliphant’s real intention was to intervene in the factional fight raging at the time between supporters of former general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi and Dlamini. Depending on which side of the factional divide one spoke to at the time, the union she may have been referring to was the expelled pro-Vavi National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) or Ceppwawu. If it was Numsa, her comments were factional and if it was Ceppwawu, one wonders why she broke the law to ensure that the union was not placed under administration.

In another odd twist around the elusive Oliphant, it emerged that the department’s chief financial officer, Bheki Maduna, who was suspended in 2016, was reinstated last week after an independent disciplinary panel found that the charges against him were spurious. The department was ordered to reinstate him within five days, but when he arrived for work on Friday, he was locked out and prevented from entering. It is all just too odd. Oliphant needs to emerge from the shadows and tell us what she has been up to. Labour is too critical a portfolio to have a minister who pops up now and again under circumstances that just get curiouser and curiouser.

RUMOURS SWIRL SHE IS THE MODEL EMPLOYEE — PRESENT EVERY DAY, IN HER OFFICE, ON TIME … BUT THEN SHE LOCKS HER DOOR