Committee at ethic end of the wedge

● A decision by parliament’s ethics committee to “clear” disgraced health minister Zweli Mkhize — a move greeted with outrage — proves yet again how unfit for duty our parliamentarians are.

If ever there was an example to illustrate chief justice Raymond Zondo’s contention that politics and politicians are at the centre of state capture, this would be it.

The case was open and shut: Mkhize gets appointed health minister and approves a contract to Digital Vibes, the company of a close political aide, which soon balloons to R150m, which is siphoned from his department during a pandemic. Some of the money is traced to members of Mkhize’s family and some to people linked to his previous internal party leadership campaign.

A fellow MP refers this to the ethics committee, arguing that Mkhize violated the Code of Ethical Conduct and Disclosure of Members Interests of Parliament when he failed to place the interests of the public above his own.

The code, said DA MP Siviwe Gwarube, requires that members be honest, truthful, have integrity, and not use their influence as public representatives to improperly benefit themselves or their immediate family. Members may not lobby for any remuneration, reward or benefit for themselves or their immediate family in return for a decision.

Gwarube said the gratification received by Mkhize’s son Dedani, which included cash and a car, and the R6,000 paid by Digital Vibes towards the upkeep of Mkhize’s Johannesburg home, were enough to prove that the minister hadn’t met the standards of the code.

Mkhize voluntarily stepped down when the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) submitted its damning report to President Cyril Ramaphosa, one of the findings of which was that Mkhize and his son should be criminally investigated.

But this week, 10 months after the initial complaint, the committee found that Mkhize was not in breach of the code.

Their reasons? That Dedani was not a dependant of his, and that — though Digital Vibes indeed paid for renovations to Mkhize’s property — it was not Mkhize himself but an employee who liaised with the service provider that the company paid directly.

Only in a world of smoke and mirrors, and upcoming party leadership conferences, could the “work” conducted by the committee have led to Mkhize’s clearing.

The committee’s letter to Mkhize, promptly shared with the media by his people, leaves one astounded as to how each charge could end with: “In this regard, the Committee has concluded that Hon Dr Z Mkhize did not breach the code.”

The preceding paragraphs indicate that the committee gave matters no more than a fleeting glance.

In the first instance, the committee quickly determined that Mkhize’s adult son was not a dependant. No further consideration was given to how Dedani found himself in a position to benefit from Digital Vibes nor why the company went to the lengths alluded to in the SIU report to allegedly launder money given to Dedani by an associate of his father who landed a lucrative contract, allegedly irregularly, with the department that his father led. On the second charge, the committee simply looked at who conducted the transactions, and seemingly never bothered to concern itself with where the money went. That job, ethics committee cochair Bekizwe Nkosi said on television this week, is for law enforcement and the National Prosecuting Authority.

Had they gone there, the MPs would have realised that the money, some R6,000, was for the minister’s direct benefit as it went to the upkeep of an asset of his.

The parliamentarians did not seem to concern themselves with Mkhize’s conduct in the appointment of Digital Vibes and allegations of placing pressure on key senior civil servants.

Seemingly the MPs on the committee needed to see actual cash sticking out of the pockets of Mkhize’s stylish safari suits to conclude something was amiss.

We will never know the deliberations of the committee; they are treated as top secret and cannot be shared even by opposition party members.

Ironically, less than 24 hours after the committee’s decision, the Special Tribunal gave the SIU permission to go after several companies, linked to Mkhize, that received money from Digital Vibes. They include a company belonging to his wife, Dr May Mkhize, which allegedly received money to repay a R1.8m loan from another of her companies, as well as cash to businesses owned by Dedani’s wife.

But to equate months of forensic accounting and investigation by the SIU to the casual perusal of a few documents by the committee is to lend credibility to a process that has none.

It has been interesting to note that in the aftermath of the outrage and Special Tribunal developments, Nkosi, who said the committee needed to stick to the letter of the code, now feels the code needs to be amended to speak to the times we’re living in.

Perhaps the drafters of the code never envisaged that MPs would one day argue that they were within their rights to have nondependent family members benefit from their areas of political oversight. Especially since these definitions are more relaxed than the conflict-of-interest requirements of civil servants whom these same politicians oversee.

It seems Zondo is onto something when he speaks despairingly of the calibre of our politicians.