/ 5 March 1999

Maduna to pay for unfair dismissal

Mungo Soggot

A labour relations arbitrator has ordered Minister of Minerals and Energy Penuell Maduna to pay his former special advisor R170 000 in compensation for his unfair dismissal.

Maduna axed his advisor, Thulani Gcabashe, without a hearing last March in the midst of the scandal surrounding the appointment of Liberian Emanuel Shaw II as a highly paid advisor to the state oil company, the Central Energy Fund (CEF).

Gcabashe was dismissed after questioning the minister’s handling of the Shaw matter – in particular, Maduna’s decision to reject a commission of inquiry chaired by one of his top civil servants into Shaw’s appointment. The inquiry recommended that Shaw, and the man who gave him the job, former CEF chair Don Mkhwanazi, be sacked.

Maduna’s three official reasons for explaining what he termed the “breakdown of trust” in his relationship with Gcabashe did not include the Shaw saga. The matter nevertheless featured in the arbitration hearing.

Gill Loveday, a senior commissioner with the Commission for Conciliation Mediation and Arbitration, said in her judgment that Gcabashe “could only speculate” on whether the catalyst for the collapse of his relationship with Maduna had been his criticism of the minister for rejecting his own commission of inquiry.

Loveday probed all Maduna’s official reasons for his decision, but either rejected them because of a lack of clarity – Maduna himself did not attend the arbitration proceedings – or because Gcabashe offered plausible explanations.

“I am satisfied that on the balance of probabilities the ministry has failed to demonstrate that the applicant [Gcabashe] breached the rules of the workplace or if he did breach such rules, that dismissal was an appropriate sanction.”

“I find that the ministry’s dismissal of the applicant [Gcabashe] was both procedurally and substantively unfair,” she concluded her judgment, which ordered a compensation award of R170 720.

The Office for Serious Economic Offences is probing the appointment of Shaw’s company, International Advisory Services, and recently interviewed CEF directors.