Keep South Africa Beautiful closed its files this week after its funds dried up, writes Wonder Hlongwa
South Africa’s biggest waste management and environmental awareness organisation has closed shop because of corruption, mismanagement and lack of funds and direction.
The closure of Keep South Africa Beautiful comes at a time when government departments are struggling to cope with litter and waste management problems. A number of small, community- based organisations are running anti- litter campaigns, but there is a desperate need for a broad-based, educative organisation like Keep South Africa Beautiful.
An evaluation report commissioned by Vincent Mogane, the organisation’s general manager, states: “There are many questions that need to be answered in the area of past financial accountability and transparency. It appears that unwritten `gentlemen’s agreements’ covered many strategic organisational decisions (major funding decisions and some staff contracts).” The report was drawn up by Chris Mullins, a development consultant.
Keep South Africa Beautiful was started by the Packaging Industry of South Africa in the early 1970s. In the past it was accused of being a front for the packaging industry and of doing its “dirty work”.
It enjoyed a close relationship with past governments. “Throughout the 1980s it was perceived as a white pro- Nationalist organisation with close personal relationships with the apartheid government ministers,” reads the report.
It says the financial competency of the organisation’s past and present board of trustees must be questioned and severely criticised for its lack of basic financial planning.
Raymond Byrne, former CEO, this week described those accusations as nonsense. He challenged Keep South Africa Beautiful to go to the police and lay charges of mismanagement and corruption, and claimed that despite being the former CEO he had not been shown the evaluation report in which he is implicated.
Alleged financial irregularities covered in the report include:
l An additional full month’s salary was paid to the ex-CEO after he left in November last year, and thereafter he was paid as a consultant at an estimated R185 000 a year.
l The board’s chair was paid R24 000 for three months for acting as CEO and general manager.
l Despite the fact some of the organisation’s projects closed in February this year, staff members were still paid their full salaries.
The report adds that there were no regular quarterly income and expenditure reports made to heads of department.
“Why were the heads of department allegedly instructed specifically not to discuss detailed matters of finance?” it asks. “Why was actual budget and expenditure information allegedly kept so secret?”
Byrne says he will ask the Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, Pallo Jordan, to appoint a commission of inquiry to investigate the closure of Keep South Africa Beautiful.
“When I took over as CEO in 1992 this organisation had R700 000, and when I left last year it had R13-million,” he says.
It appears the organisation misrepresented itself to the Department of Public Works before it was given R10-million for the Clean and Green project, a waste management and environmental awareness campaign launched in early 1996.
The department assigned Keep South Africa Beautiful to implement the campaign – which included community capacity-building, training, empowerment and job creation – on the understanding that it was a national organisation with well- established community structures.
“Keep South Africa Beautiful told the department we had access to 22 communities – this was not true,” says an employee of the organisation. “In 10 days we had to rush to find community structures, and some staff didn’t even know what they [community structures] were.”
Why didn’t the public works department conduct its own investigations into Keep South Africa Beautiful’s credentials? The director of community-based public works funding in the department, Gaby Gumbi, says they relied on the organisation’s integrity.
“Keep South Africa Beautiful is a very old organisation with a track record in waste management and environmental awareness campaigns,” she says.
Owen Bruins, representative of the Packaging Industry of South Africa, says it is regrettable Keep South Africa Beautiful has closed. But he adds the closure cannot be blamed on the packaging industry.
The evaluation report recommended investigations be commissioned into the organisation’s expenditure over the past three years – including the fraudulent signing of a contract, and an office burglary in which staff members were suspected to have been involved. These investigations were carried out, but the results have not been made public.
ENDS