CR must get rid of Brown
PUBLIC protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane may just have handed President Cyril Ramaphosa a smoking gun to finally get rid of Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown.
In a damning report, Mkhwebane found that Brown – who is a known supporter of former president Jacob Zuma and a Gupta stooge – had misled parliament by maintaining that the Gupta-linked company, Trillian, had not been granted Eskom contracts. This is despite the dodgy company doing business with Eskom through its controversial relationship with international consultancy giant McKinsey, that has already apologised for the “embarrassment”.
While the equally under-fire Mkhwebane did not prescribe the kind of action that the president should take, she did direct that action against Brown should be taken within the next 14 days.
As expected, Brown shifted the blame. She accused the power utility management of feeding her with wrong information. Even if that were the case, it still does not absolve her from misleading the National Assembly. That she did not interrogate the information given to her and presented it as gospel, is further proof that she is not fit for such a crucial ministerial position.
With Ramaphosa expected to reshuffle his cabinet soon, he is left with no choice but to bring down the axe on Brown and other Gupta-tainted ministers. Ramaphosa has already indicated that he plans to reduce the number of government departments. When he does reconfigure his cabinet, the likes of Brown – who has indirectly contributed to the siphoning of billions of rands of public funds by the Guptas – have to go. Getting the right people into the right positions will be key for Ramaphosa if he is to achieve the lofty goals he set for himself – chief among them being the creation of jobs and getting the economy growing at a desirable rate.
The president told South Africans during his maiden State of the Nation address last week that he was serious about fighting corruption and vowed that there will be consequences for officials who broke the law or flouted rules. Cleaning stateowned enterprises and turning them around is government’s top priority and as such, those who have allowed and participated in the plunder of state resources, should not be rewarded with ministerial positions. Rather they should be shown the door. Ramaphosa’s administration cannot continue doing what the Zuma’s government did – continuously bail out struggling SOEs with billions of rands without any consequences for the executives or boards who contributed to their mismanagement. When Ramaphosa is done with Brown, then he must clean up all the other SOEs, including Denel and Transnet.
Now is the time for Ramaphosa to walk-the-talk.