Stefaans Brmmer
Irish funding agency representative Chris McInerney this week “returned from the dead” to say he stands by allegations of maladministration he made eight years ago against Gauteng Premier Mathole Motshekga.
Motshekga’s past as director of a non- governmental organisation, the National Institute for Public Interest Law and Research (Nipilar), is among matters under investigation by an inquiry appointed by the African National Congress on February 3.
The inquiry was ordered by the ANC’s national executive committee after details of correspondence between the institute and Irish funding agency Trocaire were published, showing European Union funds were cut off over concerns of mismanagement by Motshekga.
Motshekga’s lawyer, Julian Meltz, has questioned the sources of the story – and implied McInerney, Trocaire’s former project officer and author of the incriminating correspondence, was dead.
On Wednesday the Mail & Guardian traced McInerney, now national co-ordinator of an Irish non-governmental organisation. He had no hesitation talking about the funding to Nipilar.
He said his suspicions about the organisation were first raised when he spoke to Nomazizi Ramaphosa, former wife of Cyril Ramaphosa, at a National Union of Mineworkers rally in South Africa in early 1989. A former Nipilar employee, she claimed there were financial irregularities at the organisation.
McInerney said he raised the matter with the United Democratic Front and the National Association of Democratic Lawyers (Nadel), of which Motshekga was vice- president.
He took the unofficial route, as “we were particularly keen not to provide the [apartheid] regime with ammunition to undermine the EU funding programme”.
He argues that explanations of “struggle bookkeeping” – that Nipilar, as an anti- apartheid organisation, had to disguise its accounting to stay one step ahead of authorities – did not hold water.
Trocaire had been “quite sensitive to what [information] could and what could not be requested”, and it demanded no more than basic administrative information.
McInerney said he stood by notes he made in June 1989 of a conversation with Pius Langa, then Nadel president and now deputy president of the Constitutional Court.
The notes read that Langa had no doubt a report, sent to Trocaire by Motshekga in March 1989, was “extremely fraudulent”.
Langa, while not confirming or denying the content of the memo, said last month: “The language attributed to me is not the language I would have used.”
But McInerney said this week he would not have quoted Langa lightly as “it was quite a serious matter”. Sally O’Neill, then deputy director of Trocaire, had participated in the telephone conference with Langa.
Motshekga’s report listed 11 legal aid centres run by Nipilar with Trocaire funds. Langa was quoted as saying two centres in Natal did not exist. McInerney this week said staff members at Nipilar – and not just Ramaphosa – had told him of non- existent centres.
A related issue was what McInerney called “double funding”. He said Trocaire had been under the impression it was the sole funder of Nipilar projects, while financial records later showed USAid was providing overlapping funding.
It appeared that Nipilar’s Tshwane, Mamelodi and Pietersburg offices, funded by Trocaire, were also “totally funded by USAid”.
Said McInerney: “It was bad because if USAid was funding those three, what happened to the funds that Trocaire provided? If there were overruns, we should have been informed.”
McInerney wrote to Nipilar in September 1989, complaining that when he first queried
the “double funding”, Motshekga had told him there were no funders but Trocaire.
USAid raised the same issue in an October 1989 letter to Motshekga, saying it was disturbed that “information known to be both material and inaccurate was knowingly provided to one important donor”.
McInerney said Motshekga admitted the double funding to him in December 1989, but did not believe it was a problem.
McInerney said Coopers & Lybrand audits of Nipilar, held up as proof by Motshekga of his innocence, did not resolve the questions. They would not necessarily have shown double funding, and they would not have shown where funds had been used for purposes other than those agreed – audits were merely about whether books balanced.
Trocaire requested narrative reports because “there were obviously more serious questions behind the audited accounts”. They were not satisfied with the narrative reports.
McInerney said Trocaire had concerns about payments on what appeared to be private expenses, but no personal misappropriation was ever proven, and Trocaire never got the answers it demanded from Nipilar. “There was never enough evidence to say there was money missing here, but there were enough problems for us not to continue funding,” he said.
Motshekga’s representative, Makhosini Nkosi, this week slammed the M&G for not giving him enough time to respond to McInerney’s restatement of the earlier accusations.
He said: “There are documents which have been prepared for the ANC task team by Motshekga’s lawyers which will deal with the concerns of Trocaire. I can’t get hold of those documents at this stage because they are with Motshekga’s lawyer, Julian Meltz, who is in court until this afternoon.
“I can’t respond to your queries until I have spoken to the premier, who is busy with important government matters at this stage.”
He said the M&G’s failure to postpone publication of this story confirmed it “is leading a smear campaign against the premier, and this article is specifically aimed at clouding the opening of the Gauteng legislature by Motshekga”.