The suspension of Metrorail CEO Honey Mateya and two senior executives last week has capped a simmering feud between Mateya and trade unions at the parastatal.
Mateya and two of his senior executives, Sifiso Lukhele and Mark Gantein-Bein, were suspended by Transnet CEO Maria Ramos pending an investigation into the circumstances that led to a Labour Court determination that Metrorail must pay its employees about R20-million in overtime.
The three were the first Transnet officials to be suspended by Ramos, who took over the Transnet post from Mafika Mkwanazi in January.
Transport unions were quick to applaud Ramos’s decision to suspend Mateya and his colleagues this week, saying this would send a strong message to other managers who head Transnet divisions. The unions also berated Mateya, accusing him of arrogance.
New documents show that the transport unions’ displeasure with Mateya — eventually shared by Transnet — followed serious allegations that were levelled against Mateya, who was appointed CEO in April 2000.
In May last year, disgruntled Metrorail staff circulated a document alleging Mateya had not performed satisfactorily in his job. He was accused of failing to manage the parastatal properly, resulting in poor financial performance. The 26-page document, titled Dossier on the Activities of the Chief Executive Officer Mr Honey Mateya, was sent to former Transnet boss Mkwanazi.
It is not clear how Mkwanazi dealt with the matter. A Metrorail official, who did not want to be named, this week said Mkwanazi appointed a company called KKR Consulting to probe the matter, but the outcome of the probe is also not clear.
The dispute between Metrorail and labour union United Transport and Allied Trade Union began in September 2002 when the union demanded that its members be paid for overtime and Sunday shifts, as stipulated in the Basic Conditions of Employment Act.
The union won an arbitration award, but Metrorail appealed against the decision and took the matter to the Labour Court. The protracted court battle ended earlier this month when the court ruled in the union’s favour, ordering Metrorail to pay employees what they were owed, backdated to October 2002.
In a statement this week, Transnet spokesperson Tami Didiza said Mateya and the other executives were suspended to allow internal investi-gations into the pay dispute to proceed smoothly. Mateya this week refused to comment on the circumstances surrounding his suspension. He also refused to discuss the contents of the anonymous document.
The document, which claims to represent the view of the majority of employees of Metrorail, alleges that Mateya “allowed everything to be done in his power to destroy everything that was positive about Metrorail”. Under Mateya’s reign, the document claims, Metrorail’s “financial performance has gone from bad to worse”.
“An objective and independent analysis of the financials of the 2001 and 2002 financial years will show the real rate of regression in Metrorail’s financial affairs,” the document read.
Business Day this week reported that last year the parastatal posted a net profit of R68,4-million, against a budgeted R107,8-million. The net profit achieved was also 57,3% lower than the R160-million achieved for 2002.
At the operating level, Metrorail is also struggling. Train accidents are on the increase. Metrorail trans- ports more than two-million commuters daily in South Africa’s major metropolitan areas of the Witwatersrand, Pretoria, Cape Town, Durban, Port Elizabeth and East London.
Mateya said recently that Metrorail needed about R65-billion over a 30-year period to overhaul the commuter rail system. But the document claims Mateya does not have the vision and will to tackle the parastatal’s problems and challenges. He has failed to provide strategic guidance to staff, the document claims. The dossier also highlights an alleged breakdown in relationships between Mateya and at least one of his key managers.
Internal Metrorail correspondence shows one instance in which Mateya clashed with his executive manager, who has since resigned. In a letter to Mkwanazi, the executive, identified only as N Seema, accused Mateya of abuse of power. She alleged that Mateya had launched “an unprovoked and totally unsubstantiated attack” on her integrity and dignity. Mateya accused Seema of spreading rumors that they had had an affair. Seema laid a formal complaint against Mateya with Mkwanazi.
In his response, Mkwanazi said: “Although the events and allegations may have occurred during working hours … it remains my view that this is a personal dispute between [Mateya] and yourself [Seema].”