Bongani Bongo made a virtual appearance in the Cape Town high court on Friday in connection with the corruption charges against him - but the parliamentary ethics committee says it cannot hold such hearings.
Bongo, who is chair of the home affairs portfolio committee, is among a dozen MPs who are due to appear before the ethics committee.
But the two co-chairs of the committee, ANC members Moji Moshodi and Bekizwe Nkosi, have ruled out virtual hearings because they say confidentiality cannot be guaranteed.
The Sunday Times has learnt that their joint committee on ethics and members' interests has met just once since President Cyril Ramaphosa declared a state of national disaster in March, a meeting that was held earlier this month merely to extend the deadline by which MPs could submit declarations of interests.
Parliamentary committees that deal with far more sensitive matters, such as defence, have continued to run their affairs via digital platforms during the lockdown - as has Ramaphosa's cabinet.
DA leader John Steenhuisen has slammed the ethics committee for refusing to do its work virtually, saying there was nothing sensitive about the matters before it because they were already in the public domain.
In fact, he said, the lockdown offers the ethics committee an opportunity to clear its case backlog.
Steenhuisen accused ANC MPs on the ethics committee of deliberately stifling its operations "because if it works, there will be consequences for people, as we saw with Dina Pule and Yolanda Botha from back when the committee worked".
Pule, a former minister of communications, and Botha, who has since died, were reprimanded in 2013 and 2011 respectively for failing to disclose their interests to parliament.
"If you can conduct a trial or a labour matter before a court via Zoom, and if judges are handing out judgments with far-reaching implications, why can't this committee do its work virtually?" he asked.
ANC chief whip Pemmy Majodina declined to comment.
Bongo - who was arrested by the Hawks last month in connection with suspected corruption in Mpumalanga - is due to go before the ethics committee after allegedly offering a bribe to former parliamentary legal adviser Ntuthuzelo Vanara in 2017.
Vanara has said Bongo was trying to sabotage a parliamentary inquiry he was leading into state capture at Eskom.
Bongo is also facing criminal charges arising from the alleged bribe, and is due to appear in the high court next year.
If you can conduct atrial or a labour matter before a court via Zoom, and if judges are handing out judgments with far-reaching implications, why can’t this committee do its work virtually?
— John Steenhuisen
Moshodi and Nkosi said in a written response to questions that their committee had to treat the cases before it with "sensitivity".
"By the nature of the content of complaints before the joint committee, ranging from financial matters to allegations of physical abuse, it would be wholeheartedly illogical … not to treat these matters with the sensitivity and confidentiality [they] deserve," said the co-chairs.
There are 12 complaints before the committee, five dating from the previous parliament.
"What must be appreciated is the fact that the work of the joint committee takes into account principles of natural justice, which requires various and many lengthy procedures as set out in the code to be followed," the co-chairs said.
"This results in some complaints taking a long time and being tabled in the joint committee multiple times. Some complaints require less time to attend to, while other complaints are more complex," they said.
Moshodi and Nkosi said they had struggled to plan meetings of the ethics committee due to scheduling clashes with other oversight committees.
The committee is made up of 23 MPs who take decisions by majority vote.
The Sunday Times has seen correspondence indicating that since lockdown rules were eased to level 1, attempts to hold meetings of the committee have failed due to lack of a quorum.
On two occasions, meetings had to be rescheduled due to parliament's full schedule.
Subcommittees were constituted in March to consider and finalise two hearings that were carried over from the previous parliament, but the hard lockdown was imposed almost immediately afterwards, which meant the subcommittee hearings had to stop, the co-chairs said.
Cedric Frolick, the National Assembly house chair to whom other committee chairs report, said the ethics committee was not accountable either to him or to speaker Thandi Modise.
"The ethics is one committee that doesn't ask for permission from the house chairperson or the speaker to meet.
"They determine their own agenda, when they sit, so they don't ask any permission from us," he said.
"In the previous parliament, there were instances where complaints were laid against the speaker, the deputy speaker and so on, so they thought if they must ask for permission from the very same people the complaints are laid against, then it creates a problem," said Frolick.
He suggested that what was happening now with the ethics committee was an unintended consequence of making the body independent.
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