/ 18 November 2011

Ethics bend under pressure

Ethics Bend Under Pressure

Parliament’s ethics committee deserves praise for slapping the maximum penalty on senior ANC MP Yolanda Botha for non-disclosure of her interests, but the last-minute politicking, led by ANC chief whip Mathole Motshekga, to whittle down the committee’s further recommendations leaves a sour taste in the mouth.

The penalty — a reprimand and a fine of 30 days’ salary — is not commensurate with the millions of rands-worth of benefits that flowed to Botha and her relatives, which is why we had hoped that the committee would be allowed to take the matter further.

The committee’s hard-hitting report found that Botha and Trifecta accrued benefit “from an improper or generally corrupt relationship” and noted that Botha “lied under oath, submitted false and misleading evidence and showed no sign of remorse”.

The M&G takes a look at the biggest fish fried for corruption in 2011 — and what’s happened to them since.

The evidence against Botha was so overwhelming that the committee endorsed a series of further recommendations, including that Botha be reported to the police, the South African Revenue Service and the Public Service Commission for further investigation.

It should be noted that the full spectrum of party MPs serving on the committee had been unanimous about the further steps to be taken against Botha.

It was a rare and unprecedented show of strength in unity and gave us hope that a committee that had allowed MPs implicated in the Travelgate saga to wriggle off the hook had finally shown its willingness to act boldly against misconduct.

But following Motshekga’s intervention, consensus dissolved and a divided committee adopted the maximum penalty without the further recommendations.

Botha still faces the shame of a public reprimand and will no doubt have to downgrade the goodies she’d planned to put in her Christmas shopping basket next month. We can take some comfort from this.

Sadly, our faith in the committee’s effectiveness remains hedged by the evidence that it remains subject to external management by the ruling party.

When Parliament convenes again in February we call on the committee to rebuild the consensus it enjoyed this year and to chart a bold course for parliamentary reform by adopting a revised code of conduct for MPs and laying the groundwork for harsher penalties to keep our public representatives on the straight and narrow.

Read the first half of the editorial “The Mac behind the big cheese