Johannesburg - Transport Deputy Minister Dikeledi Magadzi was put in the spotlight on Monday at the Zondo Commission when she was grilled on why she and other ANC MPs had rejected a motion to investigate state capture allegations.
Magadzi, a former transport portfolio committee chairperson, took the stand before the commission on Monday where she was asked questions on why her committee was reluctant to probe some of the alleged wrongdoing relating to the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa).
Magadzi was forced to admit her committee had failed to follow up on allegations that the Guptas had tried to hijack a R51 billion Prasa locomotive tender, which Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo said was concerning.
DA MP Manny de Freitas in 2016 wrote a request for the establishment of a probe into the matter, but this was ignored by Magadzi’s committee.
Magadzi told the commission that her committee had been busy with several pieces of legislation between 2016 and 2018, which allowed little time for the consideration of the probe into Prasa’s governance affairs, despite Cedric Frolic, Parliament’s House Chairperson: Committees, Oversight and ICT having also written to her committee calling for the probe in 2017.
Justice Zondo said it was concerning that Magadzi and her committee had frustrated calls to investigate allegations of state capture and corruption for years.
“I am concerned that your committee, despite what was known in the public domain in terms of allegations involving the Guptas and despite what De Freitas and Frolic proposed, your committee did not see this issue as requiring their urgent attention. I am very concerned about that,” Justice Zondo said.
Magadzi defended the move by herself and other ANC MPs to shoot down the proposed motion to probe the Guptas and state capture allegations, insisting that this was the party’s position.
“When I am in Parliament I am not as myself. I am representing the ANC and therefore will always and every time make sure that I toe the party line, and that is what I did,” she said.
However, evidence leader advocate Alex Freund took Magadzi up on what the ANC’s given reasons were for rejecting the motion, and she said she did not know.
“When the party says this is the route that we are going to take, you cannot deviate from the route that the party indicated that you must follow,” she said.
Justice Zondo questioned why MPs would be expected to support or reject motions without being given reasons.
Despite the eventual adoption of the terms of reference to probe Prasa’s problems in early 2018, the investigation never took off.
Justice Zondo pushed Magadzi to admit that the committee had failed in its duty by not acting on the allegations despite increasing allegations about the improper influence of the Guptas over the state at the time.
The commission had earlier heard how Prasa’s irregular expenditure had ballooned from R100 million in the 2013/14 financial year to R24.2 billion in 2017/18, without much corrective action.
Political Bureau