In a scathing 12-page exit letter, a top Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) lawyer,\u00a0Fani Dingiswayo, accuses the agency\u2019s former and current leadership of paying lip service to the fight against corruption while in practice sidelining those who have kept the company from imploding.<\/p>\n
Dingiswayo\u2019s letter implored the current board to call to account those who made \u201cdisastrous\u201d and \u201creckless\u201d decisions which contributed to Prasa\u2019s destruction \u2013 among whom he includes the former interim board led by Khanyisile Kweyama, former administrator Bongisizwe Mpondo and Thandeka Mabija, who headed Prasa after Mpondo.<\/p>\n
Prasa\u2019s new CEO \u2013 Act supersedes policy?<\/em><\/p>\n His letter is notable both for its scathing tone and his description of how his warnings related to Prasa\u2019s security contracts and unlawful staff dismissals were repeatedly ignored.<\/p>\n Meanwhile the latest attempt to stabilise Prasa\u2019s leadership problem was almost derailed when it emerged that Prasa\u2019s incoming chief executive, Zolani Matthews, was older than the agency\u2019s official retirement age.<\/p>\n Matthews, whose appointment Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula \u201cunveiled<\/a>\u201d on 27 February with considerable fanfare, turned 64 in January while Prasa\u2019s retirement age is 63. Matthews is Prasa\u2019s first permanent CEO since 2015, a period where the agency has endured 10 CEOs.<\/p>\n In 2018, GroundUp reported<\/a> on the strange circumstances surrounding former acting chief executive Cromet Molepo<\/a>, who, at 62, was promoted against advice and made to retire after just 73 days in the apex role at the rail agency.<\/p>\n But on Monday Mbalula, speaking at a media briefing in Langa, made light of Matthews being at pension age, saying he looked considerably younger. \u201cSo, you are debating his age? It\u2019s fine, even me, he shocked me that he is 64.\u201d<\/p>\n Board director advocate Smanga Sethene went on to explain that Prasa\u2019s recruitment and selection policy does not prescribe an age restriction for any position of employment at the agency nor does the Legal Succession Act, which governs Prasa.<\/p>\n \u201cTermination policy of Prasa relates to persons who are permanently employed at Prasa not persons that are not in the employ of Prasa.\u201d \u201cTermination policy does not supersede the recruitment and selection policy,\u201d said Sethene.<\/p>\n Prasa policy provides for employees to remain in service after attaining the age of 63 on a contract basis, \u201cprovided that the operational needs of the Company require that an employee\u2019s services be retained”. \u2014 Tebogo Tshwane[\/sidebarContentStory]<\/p>\n Lending weight to his allegations, ten Prasa executives have been dismissed since Dingiswayo penned his letter, dated 15 January. Four of the executives responded with urgent labour court challenges which saw their dismissals set aside in two separate judgements.<\/p>\n Ironically, this purge appears has been driven by the very board to whom Dingiswayo appealed.<\/p>\n Dingiswayo, who is now a partner at international law firm Baker Mckenzie<\/a>, was general manager for legal services at Prasa since 2013, resigning not long after the appointment of Mabija as the acting chief executive in October last year.<\/p>\n He was briefly fired himself in May 2015, then hastily reinstated a week later.<\/p>\n Attempts to get comment from Dingiswayo were unsuccessful.<\/p>\n AmaBhungane has seen his exit letter<\/a>, circulated to top officials at Prasa and the board, in which he asserted that \u201ca governance disease that masked itself in the name of corruption busting\u201d is the cause of the sorry state of the rail agency.<\/p>\n An example of so-called \u201ccorruption busting\u201d that had the effect of crippling Prasa is how the interim board and Mpondo handled the termination of irregular security contracts. Four years later, in October 2019 Prasa\u2019s interim board terminated all of its security contracts without a contingency plan, despite Prasa\u2019s history of theft and vandalism on its railway network.<\/p>\n The result: the infrastructure was compromised.<\/p>\n In his letter Dingiswayo complained that, though the terminations might have appeared laudable, \u201cthe challenge was that they did so without a care for implications of this decision on the network of Prasa\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cAdvice that sought to show that this decision was calamitous to the interests of Prasa fell onto ears that were committed to their course of action whatever the cost. That was the beginning of the destruction of the network,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n In February 2020 the head of legal and risk Martha Ngoye explained to Parliament\u2019s standing committee on public accounts<\/a> (Scopa) that the legal team had raised concerns with cancelling the security contracts and even proposed an alternative process but were ignored.<\/p>\n Ngoye, widely regarded as a true corruption-buster, was among those executives fired at the end of January and reinstated by the labour court. Despite a scathing ruling Prasa has announced it intends to appeal.<\/p>\n In his letter Dingiswayo described the performance of the interim Kweyama board, which was installed in 2018, as \u201cabysmal\u201d.<\/p>\n But what came next was no better.<\/p>\n He noted that newly appointed Minister of Transport Fikile Mbalula on 9 December 2019 dissolved the interim board and appointed someone that he called an \u201cadministrator\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThose who understand the law and dealing with troubled organisations \u2026 knew that this decision was unlawful and had no prospects of saving Prasa,\u201d Dingiswayo wrote in his exit appraisal.<\/p>\n \u201cPrasa, on the other hand, through the Administrator elected the bizarre approach of deepening the crisis and focusing on providing employment for known associates of the Administrator.\u201d<\/p>\n Prasa\u2019s legal team and others had warned that Mbalula\u2019s actions were unlawful and in August last year the Western Cape high court agreed.<\/p>\n Mpondo departed \u2013 but Dingiswayo was scathing about his legacy. He wrote:<\/p>\n The \u201cpandemic\u201d that is the bad leadership of the Kweyama Board and the Administrator has left PRASA with: When contacted by amaBhungane, Mpondo refused to comment saying \u201cit\u2019s between Fani and Prasa\u201d. Kweyama also did not respond to questions.<\/p>\n What was remarkable about the handling of the security contracts was that Prasa managed to make the same mistake twice.<\/p>\n In February 2020, Mpondo told Scopa that the interim board\u2019s decision to terminate the security contracts at Prasa without a contingency plan was questionable and had \u201cdisastrous consequences\u201d.<\/p>\n But, Dingiswayo wrote, Mpondo went on to take the same decision.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Administrator did exactly what he criticised the Kweyama Board for: terminating the security contracts without a workable contingency plan leading to the wholesale damage to the network and deepening a crisis that was already unaffordable.\u201d<\/p>\n A number of Prasa\u2019s stations and lines were rendered unusable as a result of the theft and vandalism which escalated to unprecedented levels under lockdown when Prasa had little or no security in place.<\/p>\n In addition, Dingiswayo accused Mpondo of a dismal human resources record, including:<\/p>\n \u2043 unlawfully suspending about 20 employees, include me and failing to act on unlawful suspensions of his predecessors; Dingiswayo also blamed Mabija, the acting chief executive who succeeded Mpondo: \u201cAll these things, particularly the Human Capital Management (HCM) gaffes, happened under the watchful eye of [Mabija] in her [then] position as Group Executive: HCM.\u201d<\/p>\nPrasa\u2019s new CEO \u2013 Act supersedes policy?<\/h4>\n
\nFormer public protector Thuli Madonsela had identified a suite of security contracts as problematic in a 2015 report.<\/p>\nBizarre approach<\/h5>\n
\n\u2043 an unprecedented destruction to its network;
\n\u2043 an unprecedented sharp decline in the \u201cyellow\u201d rolling stock;
\n\u2043 an inability to maintain (internally and through outside contractors) its rolling stock and its network because it has no contracts for provision of maintenance, spares and components;
\n\u2043 very little security and very little operations;
\n\u2043 stockpiling brand new trains that it cannot use because it does not have a network to run them on;
\n\u2043 a bus company that is and has been trading recklessly.<\/p>\nMpondo and Mabija<\/h5>\n
\n\u2043 appointing people without a process that was open and transparent, including people with known associations to him;
\n\u2043 dismissing Prasa\u2019s group chief finance officer in a way Prasa was subsequently unable to justify at the CCMA;
\n\u2043 attempting to dismiss Prasa\u2019s group chief procurement officer, but instead clocking up two adverse court orders in one month; and
\n\u2043 undertaking a sham of a retrenchment process against seemingly targeted individuals.<\/p>\n