The Constitutional Court has savaged the Minister responsible for the South African Social Security Agency welfare grants, Bathabile Dlamini, for failing to exercise her constitutional duties in ensuring that the Department of Social Development has a secure payment distribution platform for the 17 million South Africans depended on support from the State.
The disaster has been gathering steam since the Constitutional Court ordered in 2014 that the contract with private service provider CPS, was illegal. The Minister was aware that there was no contract in place to pay social welfare grants to the most vulnerable South Africans from 1 April 2017, but according to the court she actually did nothing about it and also lied to the court.
Things came to a head when the Court demanded answers from the Minister and the Department. Minister Dlamini displayed breathtaking arrogance during the entire saga in the knowledge that her political master, President Jacob Zuma, is fully behind her.
On Friday the Court ruled that Dlamini, as the Minister responsible, must bear ultimate responsibility and “the Minister alone”, to paraphrase the court judgment. It further took the unusual step to order that Dlamini to file reasons she should not be held personally liable for the costs incurred in this matter before 30 March 2017. Her answer to this? ……”I am not going to feel small….”
It is almost unbelievable that the Minister and her party, the ANC, have become so arrogant and heartless in the exercise of power and their constitutional duties. Essentially the Department has outsourced its constitutional duty to a private company that does show any sign of transformation in the composition of its senior management, the Con Court observed.
The question remains why Dlamini, who has been found guilty in the Travelgate fraud scandal some years ago, feels comfortable to insist on only working with CPS – an example of a “white monopoly capital” company, if ever there was one.
It is clear that the judiciary is exercising its constitutional mandate and judges view themselves as servants of the constitution and the South African citizens, but it is the Executive and Legislative branches of government that has the primary duty in these matters to govern, and whose members have all taken the oath of upholding the constitution, that will have to seriously hold its members to account if the South African democracy is going to provide social justice for all its citizens.
Lord Acton’s famous dictum is (unfortunately) proven to also be applicable in this matter:“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
