Oversight is still broken, even under the GNU

The publication this week of candidates to fill vacancies on the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) board — the first new blood for the board under the government of national unity — should have brought hope of a renewal for the scandal-riddled organisation.

But there are already questions about the process due to the way parliament’s portfolio committee on women, youth & people with disabilities handled the controversy around one of the candidates, ANC Youth League treasurer-general Melusi “Zwelo” Masilela.

The controversy stems from Masilela’s disastrous public interview on February 26 when, among other things, he struggled to explain how he was appointed as a senior researcher for the Mbombela municipality in 2016 despite not having a tertiary qualification at the time.

During the interview EFF MP Sihle Lonzi said the CV allegedly supplied by Masilela showed that he had obtained a diploma from the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) in 2011, when in fact he received it only 10 years later, in 2021.

Masilela said it was a typographical error and it should have read 2021. The EFF then indicated it would open a criminal case and lodge a complaint with the public protector.

At another point in his interview, Masilela said the post he had applied for at the municipality was that of personal assistant (PA)but the municipality had made him a senior researcher instead. He omitted to say that he had in fact worked as a PA between 2014 and 2016.

This becomes important because weeks after the interview, documents purporting to be from the Mbombela municipality emerged. They included Masilela’s appointment letters and a CV he submitted for a previous posting as a PA at the same municipality and seem to suggest he submitted a fake certificate for a BTech from TUT. The institution said this week it never offered this qualification.

Masilela disputes the veracity of the leaked CV, saying he had never submitted one that claimed he had a BTech. But he could not produce his own copy of the “real” CV, saying it was too long ago that he had submitted it.

Lonzi, who initially brought up the issue while grilling Masilela when he appeared before the portfolio committee, says he did not ask about his pre-2016 employment history because the CV Masilela submitted had not mentioned the 2014 appointment as a PA.

This, Lonzi surmises, could be because he used a fake qualification to get that job.

Masilela and the youth league maintain the attack on his integrity is being driven by the EFF for political reasons, and the ANC has agreed to his request that the party’s integrity committee should conduct an investigation — which Masilela apparently believes will clear him.

The response is an evasion and smells like an attempt to protect a senior ANC politician in the municipality

Mbombela municipality, which is in a position to easily clarify the matter, refuses to do so. Spokesperson Joseph Ngala, bizarrely, said the municipality could not respond to media inquiries because the matter was “sub judice”, because it is receiving attention from the police and the public protector.

But the response is an evasion and smells like an attempt to protect a senior ANC politician in the municipality. Investigations into the CV are nowhere near coming to court, so the sub judice rules hardly apply.

Masilela is a powerful figure both in the ANC Youth League and his home province of Mpumalanga. He has close ties with ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula, the party’s head of organising Mduduzi Manana and the chair of the National Council of Provinces, Refilwe Mtsweni-Tsipane, who is also a former premier of Mpumalanga.

Masilela has himself been tipped as a possible premier of Mpumalanga, with many suggesting he will run for the position of provincial chair when the party holds its provincial conference.

But the portfolio committee itself is also stonewalling, refusing to say if the CV that Masilela shared with it mentioned his 2014 appointment as a PA, or reflected his second posting as senior researcher in 2016.

Committee chair Liezl van der Merwe of the IFP says these details are protected by rules governing the privacy of personal information. This is despite the fact that the CVs of candidates were published for public comment between December 6 and January 15, with the full consent of their owners.

It remains worrisome that the committee now refuses to confirm whether Masilela’s CV listed his 2014 employment — especially in light of the possibility that omission of this job might indicate dishonesty.

In the end, Masilela’s name was not among the final nine that will be sent to President Cyril Ramaphosa for possible appointment. But he did survive the winnowing process to feature among the 20 candidates shortlisted in the previous selection round. Another 1,401 young South Africans did not make the cut for that round — did Masilela wrongfully prevent one of them from getting through?

The saga displays a lack of transparency that should not be allowed in parliament, which directly serves the interests of South Africans through its oversight role.

Critically, the committee is not at this point even considering an investigation to clarify whether an applicant intentionally censored his CV to conceal earlier malfeasance.

Curiously, the version of the CV Masilela supplied to the Sunday Times, which he claims is the one he sent to the committee, does not contain the 2011 “typo” that he was quizzed about in his public interview.

This is not an ordinary citizen but a senior ANC politician, and essentially a colleague of the MPs who presided over the process.

The committee’s handling of the matter also sinks any hopes that it would set a new course under a chair chosen from a minority party.

The makeup of the NYDA board is crucial, because this is the team who will drive and guide policy and projects related to the government’s youth agenda.

So it’s business as usual — public institutions continue to misinterpret and abuse laws, in this case the laws about personal information, to evade transparency and, one suspects, shield the powerful.

The end result is that the trust deficit between the state and its citizens widens.