Bhisho pleased SIU to probe Mandela funeral funds saga
THE Bhisho portfolio committee on the office of the premier has lauded a proclamation signed by President Cyril Ramaphosa that gives the Special Investigative Unit (SIU) the green light to investigate the Nelson Mandela funeral funds saga as an important development that will eventually allow the matter to be laid to rest.
Committee chair Sicelo Gqobana said they believed that public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane had not adequately covered the involvement of Nelson Mandela Bay Metro and O R Tambo Municipality in the scandal.
Gqobana said the committee was confident that those involved would be criminally charged and would pay back public money that was not due to them.
According to Gqobana, Ramaphosa was setting a good example, as his signing of the proclamation was one of the remedial actions recommended in Mkhwebane’s report.
“We are quite happy that the president set a good example in implementing the remedial actions of the public protector, and we are hoping everyone shall follow suit and do as the remedial actions instruct them to do,” said Gqobana.
“In our interaction with the premier as a committee, we got the impression that there are areas that were not investigated but received allocations. Therefore all outstanding matters that, in the view of both the public protector and the government, were not investigated, will now have the opportunity, through the SIU, to be investigated.
“This is a good development because everybody, regardless of who those people are, have been given a second chance to go and testify before the SIU about their knowledge about the distribution of this money and who was handling it so that those individuals can explain how the money was utilised and provide documents that are evidence of that.”
Gqobana said the committee had learnt in its previous briefings that there were unaccounted-for funds in Nelson Mandela Bay and O R Tambo in particular. The committee was confident the SIU would unearth the truth.
Said Gqobana: “Unlike the other state organs that have been captured who are sitting on many explosive files and reports, the SIU up to now as far as our interaction and experience with it [is concerned], has not been captured.
“We are confident that there will be progress, be it in the form of those implicated paying back the money or in the form of people handing themselves over to the police to be criminally charged.”
He said the committee would also continue with its work and would be summoning premier Phumulo Masualle to account on the matter to enable the committee to formulate a report to be presented in the house.
In the committee’s last meeting discussing the saga exactly a month ago, provincial government director-general Marion Mbina-Mthembu submitted a letter informing the committee that the office of the premier had taken Mkhwebane’s report on review as they did not agree with some of its findings and remedial actions.
Mbina-Mthembu, who was named in Mkhwebane’s report on the Nelson Mandela funeral funds scandal, in the letter denied she was to blame for the diversion and misappropriation of R300-million meant for social infrastructure in 2013.
Mkhwebane’s report fingered Mbina-Mthembu – then provincial treasury head – of having misdirected the provincial government into channelling about R300-million of taxpayers’ money meant for social infrastructure towards the E C Development Corporation (ECDC), where it was then used for Mandela’s funeral costs. —