Dlamini advisers in Sassa deal ‘coup’
• Hand-picked team benefits from crisis • State lawyers sidelined for minister’s consultant
Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini and a few hand-picked advisers have emerged as the clique that constructed the illegal new contract with Cash Paymaster Services (CPS), excluding officials of the department and the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) from the process.
Their exposure helps shed light on the bizarre goings on in the department and the agency that culminated in the directorgeneral Zane Dangor resigning and two Sassa CEOs taking ill. It also appears to suggest that the delay in solving the crisis in grant distribution was engineered by a group of consultants acting at Dlamini’s behest.
It is said the advisers were appointed irregularly after first serving on an advisory panel to the minister in 2013. They advised on the establishment of the work streams and were later appointed to head these.
There were three work streams: “information and business management”; “banking services and project management, legislative and policy requirements management”; and “benefits and local economic development”.
The work streams existed in parallel with the functions of the department and the agency and appear to have usurped their roles and responsibilities. While the Treasury was supposed to sign off on the arrangement, there is no evidence that it did.
Departmental and agency employees are distraught and irate at the hijacking of critical areas of their work, according to three highly placed sources. Sassa allegedly did not follow the correct procedure in deviating from normal procedures to appoint them. According to regulations, a deviation should occur only in certain circumstances: an emergency, a sole or single service provider or exceptional cases when it is “impractical or impossible” to conduct a proper tender process. The Treasury has to approve such deviations.
Last week, officials from Sassa and the department started negotiations for a new contract with CPS. Sassa workstream leaders were part of the new negotiations.
The sources said these work-stream leaders were being paid millions of rand.
Those heading the work streams included attorney Tim Sukazi, representing Sassa and the department in the Constitutional Court case, Patrick Monyeki, former home affairs chief director of IT, and Tankiso Parkies. All were members of Dlamini’s advisory committee.
Sukazi told Business Day he was appointed to lead Sassa’s transition programme: legal and legislative framework work
stream in July 2016. The work streams had been proposed by the ministerial advisory committee. The committee’s job was to advise the minister on the future payment system for social grants and the best option to use.
Sukazi said he did not believe there was a conflict of interest in his being on the ministerial advisory committee and being appointed to the work stream. There would only have been a conflict if the advisory committee was still active, he said. He said the work stream was appointed 18 months after the advisory committee was dissolved. Sukazi said the appointment of the work streams was made by invoking deviation provisions provided for in the PFMA. He referred questions on the process to Sassa.
The Department of Social Development and Sassa terminated the use of the state attorney in its Constitutional Court case at the last minute, with Sukazi’s law firm taking over. Sukazi wrote to the court on March 6, informing it that he had been installed as the attorney of record since March 3.
Asked about the process, Sassa spokesman Kgomoco Diseko said he would not comment as the matter of the work streams was being dealt with at the Constitutional Court.
Department spokeswoman Lumka Oliphant said the matter would be dealt with in court, and that answers would be “clarified” when Sassa and the department went to court.
The Treasury did not respond to questions. Parkies and Monyeki had not responded to questions that were e-mailed to them last week.
Dlamini and Sassa filed heads of argument with the Constitutional Court on Monday in the Black Sash’s urgent application. It was unclear late last night whether Sassa and the minister had responded to questions posed by the court last week. It had until 4pm on Monday to do so. Some of the information required was provided in Monday’s heads of arguments in the Black Sash matter, but Sassa seemingly ignored some of the detailed questions posed to it by the highest court.
In the heads of argument in the Black Sash application, Dlamini and Sassa said that a ministerial task team appointed last week had directed that current negotiations with CPS be terminated and fresh ones started anew only after the Treasury gave written approval for a deviation from the requirement that Sassa had to invite competitive bids.