National Assembly Speaker Dr Frene Ginwala will write to ANC MP Winnie Madikizela-Mandela asking her to attend a sitting of the House so that she can be publicly rebuked for contravening Parliament’s code of conduct.
”I will be writing to her and the ANC requesting her presence,” Ginwala told the Assembly’s programme committee on Thursday. Noting that Madikizela-Mandela’s fraud and theft trial had resumed in Pretoria, Ginwala said she did not know how long it would take.
However, it was necessary to begin the process of enforcing the National Assembly’s sanctions against her, Ginwala said. Madikizela-Mandela, who is rarely in Parliament, would be asked for a date when she would be available.
The National Assembly last year unanimously endorsed a recommendation by Parliament’s joint ethics committee that Madikizela-Mandela be severely reprimanded by Ginwala and that a fine equivalent to 15 days’ salary –about R12 500 — be imposed.
This was after the committee found Madikizela-Mandela guilty of contravening the institution’s code of conduct, in that she failed to disclose donations of R50 000 a month to supplement her monthly income, as well as her financial interests, in the Winnie Mandela Family Museum.
She is the first MP to be found guilty under the code. The code states that members must disclose all gifts, hospitality, sponsorships and benefits valued at more than R350, as well as shares and financial interests in companies and other corporate entities, in a special register of members’ interests which is updated annually.
Madikizela-Mandela has launched a High Court action against Parliament to challenge the ruling, although a date has yet to be set down. In a statement last month in which she announced she wanted to be a human shield in Iraq, Madikizela-Mandela defended her chronic absenteeism saying it was very difficult to ”share the chamber with politicians from the apartheid era who have the blood of black children on their hands”. – Sapa