By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
President Cyril Ramaphosa says lifestyle audits for public servants in government have been compulsory since March 2021, and since March 2023, over 11,000 public servants have gone through the process.
Ramaphosa appeared before Members of the National Assembly to reply to questions during a hybrid plenary sitting held this afternoon.
Responding to a question by Democratic Alliance leader, John Steenhuisen, who had asked whether the lifestyle audits on Members of the Executive have been concluded yet, Ramaphosa said the lifestyle audit process for Members of the Executive is spearheaded by the Office of the Director-General in the Presidency and the Secretary of Cabinet.
“The process was institutionally initiated towards the end of 2022. Earlier this year, I sent letters to the Deputy President, Ministers and Deputy Ministers requesting their written consent to the process to ensure that the information is obtained in a legitimate and legal manner.
“I received the same letter signed by the Director-General and Secretary of Cabinet. The Members of the Executive, including myself, have submitted consent forms for the nationally-driven process of lifestyle audits, “Ramaphosa said.
Ramaphosa noted the implementation of the lifestyle audits has been delayed by the change of the service provider. He said the implementation of the project is anticipated to be concluded by the end of this financial year.
While welcoming the decision of the lifestyle audit, Member of the National Assembly for the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), Mkhuleko Hlengwa, said the issue with the lifestyle audit is with capacity and that it should be run parallel with the 2014 Cabinet decision that all executives in SOEs [State-owned enterprises] and SCM [Supply Chain Management] practitioners must be vetted.
The President acknowledged that the process of vetting is lengthy, with some people leaving the public service without being vetted.
He said different ways of speeding it up are being looked into.
“I am one of those who sees the delays in vetting people being quite detrimental to our public service because we need to know much earlier the standing of those that we employ, whether they are able to execute their task with the integrity that we require of them,” the President said.
The President said that the Minister in the Presidency responsible for State Security Agency, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, is attending to the matter.
The President dispelled the notion that only public servants are being subjected to lifestyle audits, reiterating that Members of Executive are also being subjected to lifestyle audit.
“When we subject them to lifestyle audits, we have to go through a process and they are quite intrusive and get into private details of the members’ lives… We have to implement proper processes so that we arrive at the type of conclusion that we would like to see.”
Zuma’s Prison release
Ramaphosa has defended his decision to grant former president Jacob Zuma a remission of sentence after the Constitutional Court upheld the High Court’s judgment regarding him going back to jail and serving the rest of his sentence.
After the Apex Court ruling, Ramaphosa decided to give Zuma and other prisoners a remission of sentence, which was criticised by some opposition parties last month.
In a question-and-answer session on Tuesday afternoon, Ramaphosa cited the Constitution as the base of his decision.
“The Constitution is very clear in terms of the rules. It sets out processes, such as granting pardons and granting remission. And even in this instance when we granted a remission to 9 000 people who had been sentenced, it was not in contravention of our Constitution. It was very much in line with what our Constitution says,” he said.
This came after Steenhuisen had criticised and accused Ramaphosa of not upholding the rule of the law.
Steenhuisen said, the way to defend the judiciary is to uphold the rule of law and implement the findings of the judiciary. And no one has done more to undermine the rule of law than you and the ANC. In fact, you’ve entrusted yourself to a pretzel to avoid the deeds of the ANC.