Three suspended top officials are the first casualties in a clean-up by Home Affairs Director General Mavuso Msimang.
In a ”broad swoop to turn things around”, the deputy director general of civic services, Joel Chavalala, and the chief financial officer, Pat Nkambule, were ordered last week to ”make way for the investigation to take its course”. The head of procurement, Magda Shemmans, was suspended on Tuesday.
The charges are still being formulated and are expected to be laid within the next 10 days. Chavalala, who previously acted as director general, is being investigated for unauthorised travel. He allegedly submitted fraudulent subsistence claims.
Allegations that he accepted bribes for granting foreign nationals refugee status and furnishing them with identity documents were levelled against him two years ago, but these are not part of the current investigation.
Nkambule is being investigated for financial misconduct and the bad audits the department has received. He has been at the helm of finances. The Auditor General has given the department qualified audits for a number of years.
In the last annual report, the Auditor General complained there was not sufficient supporting documentation to substantiate certain expenditures. He noted the high vacancy rate in the finance unit of home affairs ”due to funding constraints and the suspension of staff for suspected fraud”.
Sandy Kalyan, former Democratic Alliance spokesperson on home affairs and member of the parliamentary portfolio committee, said Nkambule’s poor financial management has been a source of tension between the department and the committee.
”Under his stewardship much of the mismanagement of finances took place, there is no proper accounting system in place. He couldn’t even do monthly reconciliation that shows what money came in through home affairs offices all over the country,” Kalyan said.
When the portfolio committee visited Nkambule’s offices on an oversight visit, the chief financial officer could not produce a computer programme that he used to manage the finances. When asked to show his filing system, he produced a box with files, said Kalyan. ”In the last financial year he could not account for where the monies were.”
She said Nkambule was allowed to carry on with his job, despite the qualified audits and complaints by the committee, because he was close to the previous director general, Jeff Maqetuka, who left the department earlier this year.
Another source in the department, who does not want to be named, said Nkambule did not ”follow due process, did not keep proper records and could not account for everything they were supposed to do. Previously there was too much discretion allowed due to the policy gaps and officials could make up their own minds about how to do things.”
Shemmans is being investigated in relation to irregularities in the procurement process.
The clean-up programme, started by Msimang when he took over in June, is to root out corrupt officials and make home affairs a credible institution. The swoop will be ”from the top all the way down” and will put corruption and impropriety under the microscope.
The succession of senior people at the helm had created an environment of instability and fostered corruption and mismanagement in the department, the source said.
There are 11 senior people in the department who are not capable of occupying the positions to which they were appointed. Kalyan said that when she confronted Minister of Home Affairs Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula with this information the minister claimed her hands were tied by the strict labour laws in South Africa.
An intervention task team, consisting of international experts, was brought into the department to ”re-engineer the business so that it can work more efficiently”, a senior official said.
However, the clean-up programme is seen by some as targeting individuals who have to take the blame while others are left untouched.
Department officials were told to keep quiet about the suspensions. ”The rumour is there has been tokenism. Here and there people are being pulled out to show that we are serious about this department,” said a source sympathetic to the suspended officials.
”The department as a whole should be looked at, not the harsh treatment of persons. No one is saying anything about this because just now you might get suspended as well.”
There is unhappiness about the treatment of the suspended officials while the deputy minister, Malusi Gigaba, remains in his position after he was found to have spent departmental funds on flowers for his wife.
Mapisa-Nqakula is due to appear before the portfolio committee soon to explain the suspensions, as well as Gigaba’s actions, said Hlomane Chauke, chairperson of the committee.