If Parliament were a church, Reverend Kenneth Meshoe, the leader of the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP), might need time in the confessional.
As the Christian Church has a Bible, so Parliament has a code of conduct, in terms of which MPs are required to declare their business interests every year. Meshoe didn’t do so and admitted as much this week.
The ACDP has in the past been very critical about MPs who fail to declare their interests. In May last year the party raised concerns about Parliament’s ”far too lenient” sentence against Minister of Defence Mosiuoa Lekota for not fully disclosing his business interests.
The party said: ”We would like to see stricter sanctions by the ethics committee for MPs who fail to fully declare their business interests. We recommend a fine of up to three months’ salary to serve as a severe penalty for those who do not take this law seriously.”
Now Meshoe joins the list of MPs the Mail & Guardian found did not declare their interests, though the reverend says his mission was charity not business.
Meshoe, who founded the ACDP in 1993, established Simane Transport in January 2002. He told the M&G this week that he invested R25 000 in Simane in 2002. The money, he said, was used to buy a second-hand truck.
Meshoe holds 50% of the company and the rest is held by Sipho Makome, Meshoe’s former driver and church mate at Hope of Glory Tabernacle. Meshoe’s congregants say he was helping Makome, described as a ”poor man”.
Hope of Glory was founded by Meshoe in 1988 and has a following of about 4 000 people.
Asked why he failed to declare his directorship and shareholding in Simane, Meshoe said: ”I thought the company is dead. We bought a truck which was useless. It broke down several times and was eventually sold.
”The company only exists on paper. It is not operational,” he said.
Makome said his company is now planning to buy a bus. Meshoe confirmed this, but said that the issue of buying a bus was raised by Makome two weeks ago.
”Makome said to me that he wanted to buy a bus. I said to him that he can go ahead,” he said, adding that the plan to acquire a bus should not be seen to imply the company is operational. ”Maybe in the future we may revive it,” he said.
Meshoe also complained about ”the lack of clarity around the Register of Members’ Interests”. He said after the M&G exposed some MPs for failing to declare their interests, his party’s caucus in Parliament asked the Registrar of Member’s Interest, Fazila Mahomed, to brief them about the requirements of the code.
This, Meshoe said, shows that his party ”wants to do things in the right way”.
Meshoe said his understanding all along was that MPs should declare a company that provides income to the MP. He said the issue represents a ”grey area” in the MPs’ ethics code.
On Thursday afternoon the M&G was inundated with calls from people sympathetic to Meshoe. One of them, one Nomasonto, threatened to mobilise the ”masses” to bring down the M&G. She said she would also ensure that this journalist’s career is ended.
Meshoe himself made spirited last-ditch efforts to convince the M&G that he had done nothing wrong.
He referred the M&G to a Gauteng advocate whom he claimed had assured him that he had done nothing wrong. But when the advocate was approached for comment, he denied having done so, saying simply he had a private discussion with Meshoe, which was not for public consumption.