{"id":235804,"date":"2022-08-31T17:06:53","date_gmt":"2022-08-31T15:06:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/ethics-committee-urged-to-act-against-mps-over-prasa-collapse\/"},"modified":"2022-08-31T17:06:53","modified_gmt":"2022-08-31T15:06:53","slug":"ethics-committee-urged-to-act-against-mps-over-prasa-collapse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/ethics-committee-urged-to-act-against-mps-over-prasa-collapse\/","title":{"rendered":"Ethics committee urged to act against MPs over PRASA collapse"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/James%20Stent\/31_august_unitebehind_complaint_2.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt class=\"warn_big\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/ethics-committee-urged-to-act-against-mps-over-prasa-collapse.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Members and supporters of #UniteBehind outside Parliament, where they handed over an official complaint to the Joint Committee on Ethics and Members\u2019 Interests. Photo: James Stent<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Commuter activist group #UniteBehind submitted a formal complaint to Parliament\u2019s Ethics Committee on Wednesday against six MPs.<\/li>\n<li>They say the MPs are responsible for PRASA\u2019s collapse.<\/li>\n<li>They want the committee to suspend or expel the MPs, including transport minister Fikile Mbalula.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Members and supporters of commuter activist group #UniteBehind laid a complaint at Parliament against six MPs, including transport minister Fikile Mbalula, on Wednesday. They say the MPs have led to the collapse of the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA), and must be held to account.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt class=\"leave\" height=\"1\" id=\"gu_counter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/ethics-committee-urged-to-act-against-mps-over-prasa-collapse.gif\" width=\"1\"><\/p>\n<p>#UniteBehind wants the Joint Committee on Ethics and Members\u2019 Interests to summon the six MPs to account for their involvement in PRASA\u2019s \u201cslide into almost total ruin\u201d. They want the committee to take disciplinary action against the MPs, and to suspend or expel them from serving as MPs.<\/p>\n<p>The six MPs are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Mosebenzi Zwane, current chairperson of the Transport Portfolio Committee;<\/li>\n<li>Joe Maswanganyi, former Minister of Transport;<\/li>\n<li>Dikeledi Magazi, former Chairperson of the Transport Portfolio Committee;<\/li>\n<li>Sfiso Buthelezi, former Chairperson of PRASA;<\/li>\n<li>Dipuo Peters, former Minister of Transport; and<\/li>\n<li>Fikile Mbalula, Minister of Transport.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>#UniteBehind says that these MPs have \u201cthrough their acts and omissions \u2026 facilitated and enabled state capture and corruption through a failure of their ethical and legal duties of care\u201d. They say that Sfiso Buthelezi in particular, currently chairperson of the Standing Committee on Appropriations, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymaverick.co.za\/article\/2021-11-10-sfiso-buthelezi-the-mp-who-derailed-prasa\/\">directly benefited<\/a> from corruption at PRASA.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s just not working for us, and we as commuters need to take charge,\u201d said Sheila Arendse, a commuter and supporter of #UniteBehind.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have a committee that\u2019s supposed to hold MPs accountable, but they\u2019re not doing their job. Sometimes they\u2019re doing the opposite \u2013 going out of their way not to hold the MPs accountable. The sad irony is that now we\u2019re having to watch the watchdog body,\u201d said Reverend Alan Storey.<\/p>\n<p>At Parliament, #UniteBehind handed over their formal complaint to Collen Mahlangu, a procedural advisor at the National Assembly, who was to pass it along to the Speaker of the National Assembly, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, and Moji Moshodi and Qhude Nkosi, the co-chairs of the Joint Committee on Ethics and Members\u2019 Interests.<\/p>\n<p>#UniteBehind\u2019s complaint, a 46-page affidavit deposed by Zackie Achmat, refers to President Cyril Ramaphosa\u2019s 24 June letter to the Ethics Committee, which urged it to engage with the recommendations of the State Capture Report (Zondo Report) immediately, and not to wait for the President to issue a plan.<\/p>\n<p>According to Achmat, #UniteBehind\u2019s complaint draws on a mass of evidence of criminality at PRASA that has been perpetrated and enabled by these MPs, including from the Zondo Report, the Public Protector\u2019s reports, investigations by law firm Werksmans and judgments in cases such as Swifambo and Siyangena, as well as #UniteBehind\u2019s own work.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s sad that we\u2019re having to force this body to do its job,\u201d said Zukiswa Vuka, of #UniteBehind. She said that despite the \u201cencouraging\u201d arrests of former Transnet executives Anoj Singh and Brian Molefe, more should be done to get back the money from those responsible for looting state coffers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a painful thing to do, to go to Parliament, and to demand that people who belong to a party that I spent many years in should be arrested, should be charged, and should be expelled from Parliament,\u201d said Achmat.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cParliament cannot dodge its responsibilities,\u201d he said, giving the Ethics Committee 30 days to respond to #UniteBehind.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"article_copyright\">\n<p>\u00a9 2022 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\" rel=\"license\">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.<\/p>\n<p>We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, <b>not tracking<\/b> users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/ethics-committee-urged-to-act-against-mps-over-prasa-collapse.jpg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Members and supporters of #UniteBehind outside Parliament, where they handed over an official complaint to the Joint Committee on Ethics and Members\u2019 Interests. Photo: James Stent Commuter activist group #UniteBehind submitted a formal complaint to Parliament\u2019s Ethics Committee on Wednesday against six MPs. They say the MPs are responsible for PRASA\u2019s collapse. They want the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":235805,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9928],"tags":[28001],"class_list":{"0":"post-235804","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-groundup","8":"tag-groundup","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/ethics-committee-urged-to-act-against-mps-over-prasa-collapse.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}