Suicide in parliament highlights lack of integrity at democracy’s heart

Family of a manager who loved learning say they want to expose corruption and a politicised administration

On Friday, September 14 2018, Lennox Garane arrived at parliament, where he had been working as a public sector manager for nearly four years, and made his way through the building’s familiar rooms and passages, knowing it was for the last time.

No-one who encountered the 57-year-old, whose passion for learning had seen him obtaining two master’s degrees after starting his education in a mud school in rural Eastern Cape, could have had any idea of what he planned to do that day. We have no insight into the last thoughts of Garane as he locked the door of his office on the second floor, took out the gun he had smuggled through multiple security systems, and shot himself. But we do know one thing: he had decided how he wanted his death to be explained. “This is a protest suicide,” he wrote.

Now, months later, Garane’s suicide and the investigation into what led to it has become a rallying point for civil society and former parliamentary staff, who believe it highlights how parliament’s administration remains almost entirely unaccountable for its conduct. Those accusations have been met with angry denials from parliamentary officials, who accuse the Forum for Accountability for the Parliament Administration (Fapa) of trying to “exploit the tragic situation for narrow personal ends”.

Garane’s suicide is the subject of a Public Service Commission (PSC) investigation, which is examining testimony from his family, current and former parliamentary staff, union members and other witnesses to establish “whether relevant legislation, organisational policies and guidelines were properly applied in relation to his conditions of employment”. The PSC is thus focused on determining whether parliament stuck to the law in the way it managed Garane as an employee.

His family, however, has argued that this approach is too narrow and does not address the fact that Garane himself chose to define his death as a protest suicide.

As his son Joya stated in a recent interview: “My dad’s end goal out of this whole act was to shine a spotlight on systematic corruption in parliament and the overpoliticisation of parliament’s administration.”

Garane’s other son, Sithembiso, told a civil society gathering his father’s death clearly showed how parliament, constitutionally empowered to pass laws and hold the government to account, is itself not being judged by the standards it demands of others. “There is no integrity. There is no accountability. There is no openness.”

While parliament has actively sought to undermine accusations that this alleged politicisation has led to it becoming “toxic”, there has been an unfortunate and well-documented history of such accusations being made. The Jacob Zuma presidency was defined by parliamentary incompetence at best, and abuse at worst. The Constitutional Court slammed parliament for bending over backwards to override remedial action contained in then public protector Thuli Madonsela’s Nkandla report, in an ill-fated and illegal bid to stop Zuma from being forced to pay millions in public funds squandered on nonsecurity upgrades at his homestead.

Unlawful signal jamming during Zuma’s 2015 state of the nation address by the department of state security, which prevented journalists from reporting on his speech, and a 2017 brawl between security staff and EFF MPs portrayed the seat of SA’s legislative power as unable to control its own environment, and far too willing to submit to the whims of the politically powerful.

Add to this the fact that parliament’s former head of security Zelda Holtzman and her deputy head were suspended shortly after she raised concerns about the unauthorised use of blue light vehicles by secretary to parliament Gengezi Mgidlana, and the appointment of members of the SA Police Service to parliament’s protection services. Parliament later suspended and instituted disciplinary processes against Mgidlana, and subsequently reached a legal settlement with Holtzman. The deal was described as a “vindication” for Holtzman, who argued that she had been victimised for blowing the whistle.

Parliament’s annual reports reveal that the employment of 145 managers and technical specialists ended in the last three financial years: 63% due to resignation, 18% due to early retirement, 12% due to ill health and 6% through death. While parliament maintains that its retention of staff is above industry norms, these statistics suggest that this may not be the case within managerial and specialist ranks.

But, while Fapa and organisations such as the Helen Suzman Foundation and Dullah Omar Institute continue to raise alarm about how Garane’s death demonstrates the need for far greater legal oversight and accountability by parliament’s administrators, the institution itself does not seem to be buying those arguments. It has suggested that Garane’s death was not driven by the 20 months of bullying he claims to have suffered under a former ANC MP appointed to head his department in January 2017, but by the fact that his employment contract was not going to be renewed.

In his suicide note, Garane detailed how he had sought the intervention of multiple managers as well as parliamentary speaker Baleka Mbete and her deputy, Thandi Modise but they repeatedly failed, or refused, to resolve his increasingly desperate complaints against his new boss.

The man had been appointed despite having being fired from his previous post at the City of Johannesburg for persistent insubordination. At the time of the former MP’s appointment, and in response to protests from opposition parties, parliamentary spokesperson Moloto Mothapo defended the deployment, saying the man’s dismissal had been ventilated during the interview and “a conclusion arrived at was that [his job history] won’t have any effect on his new role”.

According to Garane’s suicide note, the opposite was true. He described his new boss as an “unrepentant, insubordinate bully” who appointed him to a position he had made clear he did not want. It was parliament’s failure to address his grievances over this unlawful change to his employment contract, Garane said, that ultimately led to his suicide.

The PSC inquiry is not open to the public, or the media, so we have no way of knowing what evidence has or will be led about the days, weeks and months before Garane took his own life. It is also unclear whether that report will be released to the public as that decision lies in the hands of Mbete and Modise. Garane’s family has appealed to them to make the document available. Mothapo tells Business Day this appeal will be considered when the decision is made.

Whatever the PSC investigation’s findings, the report is likely to be controversial. The truth behind what led to Garane’s death will have to be messily pieced together from the accounts of multiple witnesses, many of whom seem to have deeply contradictory ideas about who he was and why he did what he did. What is apparent, however, is that Garane chose to end his life in an extremely public way, one that he knew would shine an unflattering, bright light on parliament.

Let us hope, for the sake of Lennox Garane’s family, that this light does get shone; that at the end of this investigation process, their father and husband’s death is given what he clearly craved: meaning.