Cosatu’s public sector health union, Nehawu, is putting intense pressure on the ANC and President Jacob Zuma to axe the director general in the department of international relations and cooperation, Ayanda Ntsaluba.
Ntsaluba’s contract expires at the end of next month.
The Mail & Guardian understands that the international relations minister, Maite Nkoane-Mashabane, wants Ntsaluba to stay. However, some of her ANC colleagues oppose this, seeing him as being too close to leaders of the Congress of the People.
ANC spokesperson Brian Sokutu would not comment, saying that “matters pertaining to contracts of civil servants are dealt with by ministers and the president”.
Since last week hundreds of Nehawu members in the department have staged lunch-hour pickets to protest against what they described as Ntsaluba’s “tyrannical and oppressive” management style. Among other things, the union accused him of failing to deal with alleged mismanagement, tender irregularities and nepotism in the department.
Nehawu also claims to have information that Ntsaluba’s wife, Lulama Gwagwa, has an interest in an IT company, Cisco Systems, which has a contract with the department for telephone installation.
It questioned Ntsaluba’s decision to approve a multimillion-rand contract for Dimension Data, whose chief executive is former communications director general Andile Ngcaba.
Ngcaba was a partner of Cope’s policy head, Smuts Ngonyama, in the Elephant Consortium, which controversially acquired a R9-billion stake in Telkom. “Luthuli House … will not and cannot be fooled [about] where Dr Ntsaluba’s political trajectory points to and how harmful it could be to the new administration,” said Nehawu in a statement addressed to Zuma, Nkoane-Mashabane and ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe.
The union also criticised Ntsaluba’s role in the appointment of four ambassadors — Baso Sangqu (United States), Thembi Majola (France), Gert Grobler (Japan) and Zodwa Lallie (Ghana) — late last year, despite an ANC instruction to government departments not to reassign senior civil servants before the elections.
The M&G understands that Grobler, Lallie and Majola have been recalled.
Ntsaluba’s spokesperson, Nomfanelo Kota, said Nehawu’s allegations were untested but that the department has instituted an internal process to look at them. “Nehawu has not provided concrete evidence, but we are open to discussion with them.”
Regarding allegations about the appointment of ambassadors, Kota said it was the prerogative of the minister in consulation with the president.
Meanwhile, Pam Yako, the water affairs director general, was suspended this week by Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs Buyelwa Sonjica, pending an investigation into alleged financial irregularities and mismanagement.
Sonjica said she has given Yako “special leave to allow for an unfettered process of investigation”. No charges had been levelled against her and, pending the outcome of the investigation, “the director general remains innocent”, she said.
Sources in the department told the M&G the sudden suspension had come as a shock, though some indicated that there was unhappiness about Yako’s management style and especially her handling of finances. One source said it was easy to abuse her “lack of financial savvy to get things approved”.
Another source said “the minister had to take action or risk being embarrassed” when the department’s finances were scrutinised by Parliament and the auditor general later this year.
Yako began as deputy director general of biodiversity in the former department of environmental affairs and tourism before being appointed chief operating officer in water affairs and then, in 2004, the department’s director general. She never got along with the minister, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, and her contract was not renewed when it expired last year.
Insiders say Van Schalkwyk was particularly unhappy about her handling of the Marine Living Resources Fund, which finances anti-poaching and other coastal patrols and which ran dry three years ago.
Yako was hauled over the coals by Parliament’s public accounts committee over the fund. Yako did not respond to the M&G’s> request for comment.
Adriaan Basson reports that Vusi Pikoli, the axed national director of public prosecutions, launched an urgent court application on Thursday morning to stop President Jacob Zuma from appointing his successor before the case challenging his dismissal is heard. The presidency informed Pikoli’s lawyer this week that Zuma’s appointment of a new prosecutions boss is imminent. Pikoli was suspended by former president Thabo Mbeki in September 2007.