AN INQUIRY MANDATED BY THE Constitutional Court into whether Social Development minister Bathabile Dlamini should be held personally liable for legal fees in the grants crisis, turned up at least one unassailable truth: only after reading Noseweek did Dlamini realise that there was a serious problem with her department’s planning programme.
This admission by Dlamini, (who elected to speak in Zulu through a translator) was made to the inquiry panel headed by retired Judge Bernard Ngoepe at the Office of the Chief Justice in Midrand, Johannesburg.
In July 2016 Noseweek forecast that the SA Social Security Agency (SASSA) intended to miss the key 1 April 2017 deadline to migrate grant payments away from Cash Paymaster Services (CPS), a subsidiary of the US-based Net1 Group. The plan at the time was that payments would be moved in-house to the agency.
The CPS contract had already been ruled invalid in a 2014 Constitutional Court judgment, but was due to end only on 31 March 2017. The April 2017 deadline set by the ConCourt was to allow SASSA time to call for new tenders from private contractors or find an alternative solution. The court knew it had to avoid jeopardising the monthly payment of 17 million grants for child support, pensions and disability, totalling R11 billion a month.
Key questions that have persistently stewed in this scandal were:
l Why did the minister, in addition to SASSA’s own planning staff, set up parallel, unregulated so-called workstreams at huge cost – R40m – to handle the migration?
この記事は Noseweek の March 2018 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です ? サインイン
この記事は Noseweek の March 2018 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です? サインイン
Lennie The Liquidator Faces R500,000 Defamation Suit
After losing his cool when his fees were questioned
Panel Beater De Luxe
Danmar Autobody and its erstwhile directors get a serious panel beating in court papers. Corruption and theft are said to have destroyed the firm chaired by Nelson Mandela’s eldest daughter, leaving 200 workers destitute and threatening to kill.
Meet Covid Diarist Ronald Wohlman
Ronald Wohlman – EX SOUTH African copywriter, author, and actor – never dreamt that his lockdown diaries, written on Facebook and followed by people all over the world – would become his “life’s work”.
A Picture Of Peace?
Beware: Appearances can be deceptive
Flogging A (Battery-Driven) Dead Horse
Why plug-in vehicles are not all they’re cracked up to be– and, likely, never will be
Everybody Drinks Corona
I am hesitant to go Into the pub today. Not because it’s illegal, but there is a crème colored 1985 Mercedes 300D parked behind the pine tree. This means the devil is inside; that’s what we call Dr. De Villiers. You don’t know whether you will encounter the good doctor with the charming bedside manner or the violent, bipolar bully. The problem is, most of the time, you can never be sure which it is, so it’s best to always keep a social distance.
Never Take A Hypochondriac To A Pandemic
From Ronald Wohlman’s New York Corona Diary
The money train
Transnet in court battle with liquidators of Gupta-linked audit firm over R57m in ‘corrupt’ payments and invoices
‘He's no pharmaceutical genius, he's a vulture'
Pharma con seeks prison release to ‘help find Covid cure’
Bush school – A memoir
OUR SCHOOL WAS IN THE MIDDLE of the bush, ten miles from the nearest town in the harsh beauty of the Zimbabwean highveld. It started life in World War II as No 26 EFTS Guinea Fowl, a Royal Air Force elementary flying training school and I arrived there in 1954, just seven years after it became an all-white co-ed state boarding school.
