‘Cynical attempt to dodge a bullet’

Absence of Dlamini and Sassa chief executive at meeting angers MPs

WITH a sick, or possibly suspended chief executive, no backup plan and exactly one month in which to finalise the payment of nearly 18 million social grants, SA Social Security Agency (Sassa) presented a shambolic picture to parliament yesterday while Minister Bathabile Dlamini dodged any backlash by simply not attending.

Sassa appeared before parliament’s watchdog committee Scopa to account for more than R1-billion in irregular expenditure and to answer questions on what committee chairman Themba Godi called the elephant in the room – the payment of social grants on April 1.

However, with Dlamini absent and an acting chief executive – Thamo Mzobe – who had been in the position for less than an hour in the hot seat, the committee quickly realised that they would not be getting many answers to their questions.

The committee heard that chief executive Thokozwane Magwaza had taken ill, apparently with hypertension, and would be on sick leave for seven days.

However, MPs were sceptical following reports Magwaza had been suspended, while some questioned whether he was merely trying to avoid taking responsibility for the mess Sassa had found itself in.

Several MPs from across party lines were visibly angered that Dlamini and Magwaza were not present to account, while ANC MP Nyami Booi said of the acting chief executive: “She has no clue what she is doing here.”

Dlamini, meanwhile, said at a conference scheduled in parliament at the same time as the committee was sitting that she had not attended because she felt she needed to account to the social development committee, which she had done last week.

She said at her last appearance before Scopa, the “whole thing became a discussion about grants and I don’t know how we arrived there because what I know is that at Scopa, you discuss the issues of unauthorised expenditure”.

She also said she had not seen a letter suspending the chief executive.

“Maybe some have seen it. I just know that the CEO is on sick leave,” she said.

Dlamini said all other issues around the payment of grants would be answered at a media conference scheduled for today.

The contract for the payment of social grants with Cash Paymaster Services, declared invalid by the Constitutional Court three years ago, was allowed to run to completion to allow the Department of Social Development to create its own inhouse payment system.

With just one month left of the contract, project manager Zodwa Mvulane told the committee that negotiations for a new contract were due to start today.

Sassa initially weighed up six options for the payments, but told the social development committee last month, that the only viable option was approaching the Constitutional Court to extend the invalid contract.

However, Mvulane told Scopa yesterday that while they would be submitting progress reports to the court, they would be negotiating an entirely new contract with CPS. She was forced to admit that until a contract was in place, there was no system for payment of grants on April 1.

Dlamini, however, told the media yesterday that the “government, will through Sassa continue on its constitutional mandate to administer and pay social grants after March 2017”.

Responding to a letter, read out in the committee, in which the national Treasury had stated that it would not allow the extension of the contract because it would appear to defy the judicial system and because the problem seemed to be a “self-created emergency”, Mvulane said that “half of it we can blame on Sassa, the other half we cannot blame it on Sassa”.

Pushed by the DA’s Tim Brauteseth to say what could not be blamed on Sassa, Mvulane said that the process only started quite late, causing several MPs to murmur “you’ve had three years”.

The EFF’s Veronica Mente said the minister needed to account and called the absences of the minister and chief executive “a cynical attempt to dodge the bullet”.