Funerals probe is still at a dead end
● Where else in the world does the state spend R76m of taxpayer money on three funerals?
And when it is time to account, those responsible cite their rights and due process.
It all went down this week at a meeting between parliament’s public finance watchdog (Scopa) and the department of public works.
MPs were being updated on the disciplinary process recommended against government officials implicated in inflating prices for the 2018 funerals of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Zola Skweyiya and Billy Modise.
One official implicated in a forensic report by PwC, public works director-general Sam Vukela, attended the virtual meeting. MPs were not impressed by his presence in a meeting discussing a matter in which he is implicated.
Vukela pleaded ignorance, claiming he was not aware of being implicated in the alleged financial irregularities. This was the reason he gave when the matter was first discussed with MPs in March.
Vukela told MPs this week he had still not seen the forensic report that he had commissioned in late 2018, and which MPs heard implicated him in wrongdoing.
He told MPs that his minister, Patricia de Lille, had been working with his subordinates on the matter, and that he had been excluded from the discussions.
Vukela said that at the meeting he heard for the first time that the matter had gone as far as President Cyril Ramaphosa’s office.
Vukela raised concern about processess followed by his own department in handling the report and said he reserved his legal rights in this regard.
Almost two hours of the three-hour meeting were spent discussing technicalities around the report rather than its content.
In the end it was agreed that the meeting could not proceed until Vukela had read the “incriminating” report.
For a while, the fundamental issue of the R76m spent on three funerals seemed forgotten.
As MPs appeared at times to be in danger of being sucked into a cold war between De Lille and Vukela, Scopa chair Mkhuleko Hlengwa reminded his colleagues that an internal investigation had found that a payment of R35.7m had been made with regard to Madikizela-Mandela’s funeral while only R4.7m was contractually compliant.
Similarly, it had found that in respect of Skweyiya’s funeral, R28.9m was spent but contractually compliant items that were invoiced amounted to only R4.3m.
With respect to Modise’s funeral, R11.4m was spent but only R3.1m was contractually compliant.
Vukela had approved 85% of the invoices that were paid in connection with the three funerals, according to the department of public works.
The fundamental issues to be addressed might have to wait for another day.