M&G's investigate journalist Paulie Van Wyk looks into how the plot against Gordhan has backfired and Thuli Madonsela's state capture report.
A group of Catholic priests one day discussed the seemingly endless allegations of state capture. So they decided to ask the public protector to do something about it. The fallout since has been cataclysmic for the priests, none so much as what happened next in the proverbial monastery.
Members of the Dominican Order of Southern Africa were faced with threatening phone calls, in-fighting and threats of divisions exposed when two of its members wrote to the public protector’s office, requesting the office to investigate the Gupta family and their possible meddling in state affairs.
Sikhosiphi Mgoza, former friar-general of the body of Catholic priests, says the submission was made without the permission of the order’s governing council and could therefore not be made — as it was —under the name of the order.
“On matters of public importance, no individual member of the order can speak on behalf of the order. And the order never approved the submission.”
The Dominican Order of Southern Africa is a body of Catholic priests from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Zambia.
The submission was made to the public protector’s office in the form of a press statement on March 17 by Brian Mhlanga and the order’s vicar-general, Stanislaus Muyebe.
Muyebe, head of the order, said the submission was made “to speak out on behalf of the poorest of the poor in South Africa”. Mgoza, however, maintained that the order’s council should have been consulted before the submission was made.
Still, the order’s leader insists: “Our system works by representation, trust and consultation, not by absolute consensus of all the brothers all the time” and that, as the head of the order, he was allowed to represent the order in the public sphere at his own discretion.
According to Mgoza, however, at a meeting of the order’s senior council members, held in Springs, Gauteng, on March 29 this year, it was decided that “press statements should only be issued if there is consensus among brothers about a particular issue”.
But Muyebe says that after the submission was made to the public protector’s office, certain members of the order received harassing phone calls threatening to air the order’s “dirty laundry”.
During the meeting — at which the political allegiance of the members and the “difficulty of engaging with the state in the post-apartheid context”, were discussed — Muyebe’s “discretion and prudence to allow for statements to be made in the name of the order” was confirmed.
Despite the tensions in the order since the submission, Muyebe holds firmly that no permanent rift has been caused in the order because of it.
“One of the biggest challenges facing our country is corruption. If the Church keeps quiet and does not challenge allegations of corruption, it is betraying its mission to the poorest of the poor in our country.”
Carl Collison is the Other Foundation‘s Rainbow Fellow at the Mail & Guardian
