Right2Know Western Cape salutes Women Whistleblowers…WOMANDLA!!!
For the Women’s Month (August) Right2Know Western Cape is profiling women whistleblowers to celebrate their courage and commitment to transparency. Some of these brave women are also featured in the 2014 R2K Whistleblower Calendar.
Whistleblowing recognises that unlawful and other irregular conduct in organs of state and private bodies is detrimental to good, effective, accountable and transparent governance and can endanger the economic stability of the Republic and has the potential to cause social damage.
This week we are celebrating attorney Kate Painting. Last year Painting revealed that she had resigned from the Arms Commission in March 2013 in the belief that the Commission’s independence was compromised. This followed a similar resignation in January by senior legal figure Mogkale Norman Moabi.
Moabi, who was previously an acting High Court judge and former president of the Law Society Northern Provinces, accused commission chairperson Judge Willie Seriti and other commission officials of following a “second agenda” that was designed to prevent the Commission from fully investigating the matter before it. In August 2013 another senior Commission member, Judge Francis Legodi, also resigned, citing “personal reasons”. These resignations were just a part of the controversy that has dogged the Commission since its inception. Painting’s role at the commission was pivotal as she accompanied Seriti and the commission’s head of legal research, Fanyane Moses Mdumbe, on fact-finding trips to the United Kingdom and Germany in 2012.
President Zuma instigated the Commission in December 2011 to investigate widespread allegations of corruption and impropriety in the R70 billion series of arms deals, which enriched a few major international arms companies, and from which he, along with a range of other political figures, are believed to have benefitted personally. (His announcement preempted a court judgement that would most likely have forced the establishment of such a Commission.)
The controversy surrounding the commission includes its decision not to call certain witnesses, complaints that evidence leaders have not asked tough questions of key witnesses, and that there may be attempts to withhold or cover up certain information that would be vital to ensuring the Commission is a meaningful public process.
Most significant, however, is the concern echoed by both Painting and Moabi that the Commission appears to be following a predetermined political agenda. Both have chosen to make their concerns public after internal processes were exhausted, providing crucial information to guide the public debate of whether or not the Seriti Commission has any hope – or intention – of uncovering the truth about the Arms Deal.
