MOSS CHIKANE, national co-ordinator of the former National Co-ordinating Committee for the Return of Exiles (NCCR), comes in for severe criticism in the report on NCCR activities.
A former United Democratic Front activist and Delmas treason trialist, Chikane decided unilaterally, while a NCCR regional liaison officer, to take managerial and financial decisions without any consultation, the report says.
When Chikane became national co-ordinator, he began “defying or obstructing” authority and the work of the Rev Wolfgang Lauer, a consultant to the NCCR, the report says. Lauer tendered his resignation more than once because he felt Chikane was not providing him with the means of authority, control and trust to carry out his functions effectively.
The report adds that Lauer had scant regard for Chikane’s ability as an administrator — and he was suspicious of Chikane’s requests for petrol expenses for his private car, after the NCCR had provided him with an official vehicle.
The Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference’s Brother Jude Pieterse testified before the commission of inquiry that the appointment of Chikane was the “wrong decision” and was “asking too much of him”. Two executive committee members, Sheena Duncan and Ntjantja Ned, said dealing with Chikane was “very, very distressful and stressful”.
Bonga Majola, the Pan Africanist Congress representative on the NCCR’s executive and a member of its finance committee who was accused by Chikane of perpetrating or preventing the discovery of financial falsifications, told the commission he believed Chikane had “his own vested interests to protect” in the investigations. The commission in turn found Majola himself to have been “evasive and obstructive” in answering questions about his role in fraudulent activities.
The commission said Chikane continued to subscribe to the notion prevalent in the anti-apartheid era, deeming it unnecessary to account fully to funders about how their money was spent.
A bitter controversy dogged the NCCR in its closing months over a project costing R500 000, initiated and nurtured by Chikane. This “seed money” was to be used to purchase clothing from an approved manufacturer, for sale at cost or less to returnees, so that they could sell the clothing to generate income for themselves and their families.
Comments the report: “The problem was that the project was conceived without sufficient planning, born in internal controversy and executed in a way which led to the loss of virtually all the money invested in it…”
The Border and Transkei regions of the NCCR, to which the clothing was consigned, were “insufficiently prepared to receive the consignments, and there was no infrastructure to distribute or sell it”.
In an attempt to assist Chikane, the co-ordinator of the Border region transferred R10 000 of his region’s money to head office. “This transfer was unauthorised, spurious and improper,” says the report.
“While Chikane’s inept planning and execution of the clothing project, and his defiance of lines of authority in pursuing it, are clearly deserving of censure, in our view the responsibility for the farce it became must, in this as in other areas, rest ultimately with the executive structure under whose stewardship it occurred.”