ANC MP and party youth league president Collen Malatji is one of several ANC MPs who have been found guilty of violating the Ethics Code. File Picture: Timothy Bernard / Independent Newspapers
Several senior African National Congress (ANC) members in Parliament, including Mandla Mandela, Collen Malatji and Sisisi Tolashe have been found guilty by the Ethics Committee of failing to declare their financial interests.
Malatji is the president of the ANC Youth League, but is also an ANC MP. Tolashe is Deputy Minister in the Presidency, but also serves as ANC Women’s League president.
Deputy Minister of Water and Sanitation, Judith Tshabalala also failed to declare her financial interests and fell foul of the Ethics Committee.
Chairperson of the joint standing committee on intelligence, Jerome Maake was also found guilty of violating the ethics code by not disclosing his financial interests.
Maake is currently chairing the ad hoc committee on the General Intelligence Laws Amendment Bill, known as the Spy Bill.
The rules of Parliament require its members to disclose their financial interests every year.
But Mandela, Malatji, Tolashe, Maake and other ANC MPs failed to meet the deadline and declare their financial interests to the acting Registrar.
The Ethics Committee has recommended that the House must fine the members 20 days of their salary and reprimand them.
On Tolashe, the committee said she failed to submit her declaration to the acting Registrar as required.
“The Acting Registrar of Members’ Interests addressed a letter to the member dated October 2, 2023 informing the member of the alleged breach of the Code. The member was invited to provide the committee with the reason for the non-submission by the member,” read the report of the ethics committee.
“The member provided a response on October 4, 2023. The member apologised for not submitting her disclosure by the due date. The member indicates that she could not attend to the disclosure due to a family responsibility matter that needed her attention in East London. That she could not access the system because load shedding was a problem,” stated the report.
Tolashe had indicated she had a family bereavement and could not submit the declaration on time.
The report added that she was found guilty of violating the Code of Ethics and the reasons she provided were not sufficient.
The committee also found it was not the first time that Tolashe had breached the code. She was found guilty of the same offence in 2019.
On Malatji, he also failed to meet the deadline and submit his financial interests.
The acting Registrar wrote to him about this and Malatji said he had an emergency and could not submit his declaration on time.
“The member indicated that he failed to submit his disclosure by the due date because of a family emergency. The member did not give any details of the family emergency or when it occurred,” said the report.
Malatji was found guilty of violating the ethics code, and was asked to make representations on mitigation of sentence, but he did not.
On Mandela, the committee found that he also breached the Code of Ethics.
But Mandela said it was the first time in 14 years as an MP that he had missed the deadline to submit his declaration.
He said he could not submit on time due to “personal reasons”.
But the committee dismissed his explanation.
“The committee did not accept the member’s explanation that he failed to provide a disclosure because of personal reasons. The committee noted that the time period of a month is enough time to allow the member to disclose,” said the report.
Maake was also docked his salary for 20 days after the Ethics Committee found he violated the code last year when he did not submit his declaration of interests to the acting Registrar as required.
Maake indicated to the committee that he could not submit on time because he was involved in a car accident and his laptop was in Tzaneen, Limpopo.
The committee said members have a month to table their declarations and do not have to wait until the last minute.
Maake said it was the first in 19 years he did not submit his declaration of interests by deadline.
But the committee did not accept his reasons for the late submission and found him guilty.
siyabonga.mkhwanazi@inl.co.za
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