Motsoaledi vows to clean up home affairs
City Press – 31 January 2022
The minister said he and Makhode were keeping a close eye on all cases of alleged fraud, corruption and maladministration.
A full-scale operation targeting senior officials suspected of corruption and gross negligence costing taxpayers millions of rands is under way at the home affairs department.
This was confirmed to City Press by Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi in an interview following the recent suspension of three senior officials accused of failing to execute court orders, resulting in three warrants of arrest being issued to Motsoaledi and his director-general, Livhuwani Makhode.
“A cleaning up operation in the department has started; this is not the end.” Motsoaledi said:
We need to clean up the department, where negligence and corruption are in every corner.
The minister said he and Makhode were keeping a close eye on all cases of alleged fraud, corruption and maladministration, with the sole intention of making sure that consequence management was imposed on those officials found guilty of wrongdoing, following disciplinary hearings.
“The message that must get out is that I, as the minister, together with my director-general, am serious about consequence management. There will be consequence management for every action by a public servant, especially those in home affairs.
“I am putting my foot down on this. If anything wrong happens in home affairs because of a public servant, there will be consequences,” said Motsoaledi.
On December 21, Makhode issued suspension letters to deputy director-general of human resources Nkidi Mohoboko, labour relations director Ditsoanelo Mosikili and Sello Malaka, the department’s chief director of employee services.
The three are accused of gross negligence that cost home affairs R11 million in payouts to junior employees who were supposed to be fired from the department.
Insiders who are at close proximity to investigations into the senior officials told City Press that the millions of rands that the department purportedly unduly paid to junior employees – who were facing dismissal – were just the tip of the iceberg.
One insider painted a bleak and worrying picture of the implications of the gross negligence by the suspended senior officials, saying the reputational risk was immense.
The information emerging, said the insider, “shows that government officials have been systematically breaking down the department’s systems”.
“What is most concerning is that, where things were supposed to be fixed in order to keep the department from further operational deterioration, people simply didn’t act.
The insider said:
We may very well find that what happened was in fact deliberate.
Another department insider with intimate knowledge of the forensic investigation was more direct about what investigations were unearthing regarding Malaka’s modus operandi.
“The chief director is accused of throwing away cases. He is the one who must set up and hand over charges. He prepares the director-general and makes sure everyone concerned, as it relates to a case at hand, is on the same page, especially when dealing with such cases where actual taxpayer money was handed over unduly, without any good reason,” said the insider.
Disciplinary charges are being formulated and will be handed to the three senior officials over the next few weeks.
The investigation of gross negligence, which covers labour relations and governance-related matters, was triggered when three warrants of arrest for Motsoaledi and Makhode were issued for their failure to execute court orders.
“People take us to court and say the department is not implementing [court orders] ... So, for myself and the director-general, in this particular case, the warrant came out three times,” said Motsoaledi.
It has since emerged that the minister and his director-general did not know about the court orders, as the information was never filtered through to them for action from the department officials who are currently on suspension.
“The main thing is that they are charged with gross negligence. The department is losing money because they ignored obvious court orders. The department has lost R11 million and, on top of that, warrants of arrest have been issued against me as the minister and the director-general for being in contempt of court over these cases.
“The warrant is for our arrest because we are the leaders of the department. But can you now imagine an official not doing their job and you getting a warrant of arrest without knowing?
“This happened without myself and the director-general knowing that we were in contempt of court. We were not aware that there was an official here who was sitting and defying a court order by not carrying it out,” Motsoaledi explained.
“For these warrants against the minister and the director-general, someone is going to have to account.”
High-profile suspensions are likely to become a disturbingly common feature in the department over the coming months and years if Motsoaledi and Makhode’s determination to flush out the wanton criminality and gross misconduct by senior officials is anything to go by.
City Press was told that, apart from the recent suspensions, the heat is being turned up on pending disciplinary cases against senior immigration officials believed to have facilitated the illegal issuing of permanent residency permits to fugitive priest Shepherd Bushiri and his family.
The officials, who are believed to have been instrumental in ensuring that Bushiri and his wife unduly received their permits, are facing serious disciplinary charges after home affairs internal investigations revealed a sophisticated network that allegedly went as far as manipulating and altering information contained in immigration application forms.
“These fraudulent documents are so prevalent, where people [such as] the Bushiris of this world don’t do it alone, they do it with home affairs officials.
“The cleaning up of home affairs has started. If it means suspending and arresting the whole department, so be it. A stern Motsoaledi:
I am not going to concentrate on the small fish, I am going for the big fish in the department.
“Someone apparently once said: ‘If this minister wants to get rid of corruption at home affairs, he will have to get rid of two-thirds of the staff.’
“If that’s what it takes to clean the department, so be it!
“So, if we have to get rid of two-thirds of the department’s officials to clean it up from what it is, then so be it. And that process has started.”