{"id":250585,"date":"2023-02-20T19:53:32","date_gmt":"2023-02-20T17:53:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/prasas-board-continues-its-legal-campaign-against-whistleblower\/"},"modified":"2023-02-20T19:53:32","modified_gmt":"2023-02-20T17:53:32","slug":"prasa-board-strikes-back-against-whistleblower","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/prasa-board-strikes-back-against-whistleblower\/","title":{"rendered":"PRASA board strikes back against whistleblower"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/Ihsaan%20Haffejee\/babita_ih_1.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/prasa-board-strikes-back-against-whistleblower.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Martha Ngoye, PRASA whistleblower, is in a protracted legal battle with the PRASA board, which has repeatedly lost cases against her in court. Archive photo: Ihsaan Haffejee<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>PRASA\u2019s board has approached the Labour Court to review an arbitration award that was not in its favour.<\/li>\n<li>PRASA chair Leonard Ramatlakane says that the arbitrator \u201creached a decision that another decision maker could not have reasonably reached.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Whistleblower Martha Ngoye, who is opposing PRASA\u2019s review application, will approach the court to certify the arbitration award, and may seek to hold PRASA\u2019s board in contempt of court.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The legal battle continues between the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA) and PRASA\u2019s suspended head of legal, Martha Ngoye, a whistleblower and corruption-buster.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt class=\"leave\" height=\"1\" id=\"gu_counter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/prasa-board-strikes-back-against-whistleblower.gif\" width=\"1\"><\/p>\n<p>PRASA\u2019s chairperson Leonard Ramatlakane approached the Johannesburg Labour Court on 9 February to take an arbitration award that made findings in Ngoye\u2019s favour on review, and to stay the award.<\/p>\n<p>On 1 February, we <a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/corruption-buster-found-not-guilty-of-all-charges-levelled-at-her-by-prasa\/\">reported<\/a> that the arbitration, presided over by advocate Imthiaz Sirkhot, found Ngoye not guilty of a number of charges of misconduct levelled against her by PRASA.<\/p>\n<p>In reply, on 16 February Ngoye filed a notice to oppose PRASA\u2019s applications, and has asked the court to certify the arbitration award and find PRASA in contempt of court.<\/p>\n<p>Ngoye has also asked De Swardt Myambo Hlahla Attorneys, which filed the applications for PRASA, to satisfy the Labour Court that they are permitted to act on the rail agency\u2019s behalf as the firm does not appear to be on PRASA\u2019s list of legal providers.<\/p>\n<p>Ngoye also argues that PRASA\u2019s board is, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/is-prasas-board-unlawful\/\">again<\/a>, not quorate (properly constituted) and cannot take decisions on the company\u2019s behalf.<\/p>\n<p>Since Leonard Ramatlakane took over as chairperson of PRASA in October 2020, he has been doggedly attempting to sack, suspend and sue Ngoye, and PRASA has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/three-more-prasa-executives-reinstated-labour-court\/\">repeatedly<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/prasa-loses-application-leave-appeal-reinstating-executives\/\">lost<\/a> in court. The arbitration had been agreed to by both PRASA and Ngoye as a means to resolve the three-year impasse, and to clarify accusations of misconduct against Ngoye that PRASA was using to motivate her suspension. With the decision of the arbitrator, Ngoye expected to be allowed to return to work.<\/p>\n<p>As head of legal at PRASA, Ngoye led the charge against companies that took advantage of former PRASA CEO Lucky Montana\u2019s venal leadership. Among her <a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/a-victory-for-prasas-corruption-busters\/\">victories<\/a> include the overturning of the Siyangena security contracts, the Swifambo \u201ctall-trains\u201d deal, and payments made to Makensa Mabunda\u2019s Siyaya companies. Her actions have likely saved the public <a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/executive-who-saved-prasa-billions-has-been-fired\/\">billions of rands<\/a>. While suspended by Ramatlakane, Ngoye testified about state capture at PRASA during Montana\u2019s time in charge.<\/p>\n<p>In a 10 February letter to Ngoye, De Swardt Myambo Hlahla Attorneys write: \u201cAfter having studied the award and having obtained legal advice, our client has decided to have the award reviewed and set aside \u2026 Our client maintains a reasonable apprehension that your client was involved in acts of misconduct and that the Arbitrator reached a decision that a reasonable decision maker would not have reached.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Leonard Ramatlake\u2019s affidavit for PRASA seeks a review of every major finding in the arbitrator\u2019s award. He argues that Sirkhot \u201cfailed to properly identify the dispute \u2026 did not deal with the substantive issues of the dispute and \u2026 reached a decision that another decision maker could not have reasonably reached.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUpon the conclusion of our [PRASA internal] investigation, we established that [Ngoye] was part of the previous [Montana] administration and played a pivotal role in among other things the awarding of contracts during her tenure in the previous administration,\u201d writes Ramatlakane in his affidavit. \u201c[Ngoye] was therefore charged accordingly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The PRASA investigation that led to the charges has not been released publicly, or in any of PRASA\u2019s legal actions against Ngoye, despite requests for its release.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe evidence demonstrates that [Ngoye] failed to execute her responsibilities in a diligent and honest manner,\u201d writes Ramatlakane.<\/p>\n<p>In response, on 16 February, Ngoye\u2019s lawyers, Haffegee Roskam and Savage, wrote to PRASA\u2019s lawyers to inform them that they would oppose PRASA\u2019s action and seek to have Sirkhot\u2019s arbitration award certified: \u201cOnce the arbitration award is certified, our client will proceed to enforce the award through contempt proceedings against the members of the PRASA Board in the Labour Court and shall seek a personal, and punitive, costs order.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The letter also claims that Ngoye\u2019s suspension is unlawful, and that should it persist, the matter will go to the CCMA as an \u201cunfair labour practice dispute\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"article_copyright\">\n<p>\u00a9 2023 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\/2023\/02\/prasa-board-strikes-back-against-whistleblower.jpg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Martha Ngoye, PRASA whistleblower, is in a protracted legal battle with the PRASA board, which has repeatedly lost cases against her in court. Archive photo: Ihsaan Haffejee PRASA\u2019s board has approached the Labour Court to review an arbitration award that was not in its favour. PRASA chair Leonard Ramatlakane says that the arbitrator \u201creached a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":250586,"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":[9928,3247],"tags":[28001],"class_list":{"0":"post-250585","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-groundup","8":"category-news","9":"tag-groundup","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/prasa-board-strikes-back-against-whistleblower.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250585","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=250585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250585\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}