The ANC Gauteng provincial working committee (PWC) has failed to deliver an amended integrity commission report on the erstwhile health MEC Bandile Masuku.
This has led to a scheduled meeting of the provincial executive committee (PEC) failing to meet yesterday to decide on Masuku’s future as its member.
The meeting was scheduled to discuss an amended provincial integrity commission report, which was scathing on Masuku’s leadership. It found he failed in his oversight role and recommended he resign from both his government position and as a member of the PEC.
Premier David Makhura fired Masuku as health MEC on Friday.
The meeting was critical to Masuku’s future as ANC leader in the province and insiders said they were also going to discuss concerns around Makhura’s decision to fire him before the PEC sat as he was a deployee of the province.
Sowetan has established that the PWC has missed its deadline to deliver the amended report.
“The PWC was not convened because the team is still busy on the improvement of the report,” an insider said.
“We got information late on Friday. The POB [provincial office bearers] will get the report on Monday morning and decide on the other meetings.”
ANC provincial secretary Jacob Khawe confirmed that the PWC failed to meet its deadline. He told Sowetan that they encountered problems accessing certain information.
He said Masuku will know his fate by the end of this week as well as whether the decision by Makhura to fire him gets the PEC’s endorsement or not.
The original report by the provincial integrity commission was said to be riddled with inconsistencies and the PWC was tasked with plugging these gaps and presenting a final report yesterday.
The PEC had resolved that the report was rushed but also wanted to align their decision to that of the Special Investigating Unit (SIU), which found that Masuku had failed to discharge his duties as the political head of the health department in the province in compliance with the Public Finance Management act.
The SIU investigation placed Masuku squarely in the middle of the personal protective equipment (PPE) corruption that rocked the province.
The report is said to have found that Masuku was alerted to the irregularities in the procurement of PPE but did nothing or very little to act on it.
Masuku said he would challenge the SIU report in court.
In his 13-page statement on Friday, Masuku accused the SIU of ignoring crucial affidavits and evidence to reach its conclusion. He also said the SIU had failed to make a connection between evidence before it and the findings it made.
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