As an employer or manager, it must be difficult to act against a staff member accused of wrongdoing when you, as a boss, also have a cloud hanging over your head.
Perhaps that explains why President Cyril Ramaphosa has not taken action against his social development minister, Sisisi Tolashe, despite a series of recent controversies surrounding her.
The minister, who also serves in the ANC’s national executive committee in her capacity as president of the party’s Women’s League, would have been invited to last night’s committee meeting in which the president’s fate, following a Constitutional Court ruling that paves the way for his potential impeachment, was discussed.
Yet the minister should have long been hauled over the coals by the same president for a number of serious misdemenours which include the irregular appointment of a director-general in her department for a period much longer than what was approved by the cabinet.
Her other scandals include failure to disclose the donation of two SUV vehicles, which were used by her children, by a Chinese company.
She has claimed that she didn’t declare the cars because the donation was not for her, but for the Women’s League, and yet the league says it has no knowledge of such vehicles.
As if that was not enough, Tolashe is also at the centre of a bizarre appointment, by her department, of a domestic staffer at her private home in KuGompo City against government rules that say that such appointment can only be made at official residences of ministers.
The employee has since produced evidence to the effect that almost half of her salary ends up in the minister’s daughter’s personal bank account.
For any of the above reasons, the president should have at least suspended Tolashe pending investigations.
Instead, he is taking his time, probably considering internal ANC political factors that have nothing to do with his obligation to ensure good governance.
We do not know where Tolashe stands on calls for the president to resign over Phala Phala, however, his delayed action causes serious suspicions that he can’t because he needs the Women’s League onside.
If that is the case, it undermines all that Ramaphosa said he would stand for when he first took office as president.
