Election fever grips the House as Home Affairs back-pedals on Fireblade terminal saga

Source: Daily Maverick, 20/02/2019

Home Affairs acting Director-General Thulani Mavuso on Tuesday
outlined a series of high-level meetings since officials, and the
then Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba, last briefed MPs in late
2018. Gigaba’s departure â€` the longstanding former director-
general Mkuseli Apleni departed in July 2018 after nine years at
the helm â€` appeared to have opened the door to a fresh approach.
These most recent meetings, on 29 November 2018, 12 December 2018
and 7 February 2019 confirmed what the courts had upheld, and what
billionaire businessman Nicky Oppenheimer had told MPs in late
October 2018: that alongside approvals from 27 government entities
from the lease with Denel through to those with Airports Company
of South Africa (ACSA) and port of entry co-ordinating committee
and others, there was also approval for immigration services to be
included at the Fireblade terminal.
The bottom line at Tuesday’s parliamentary Home Affairs committee
meeting? The 10-year lease Fireblade Aviation signed with Denel to
sublease the terminal space at OR Tambo International Airport was
in order. And there was really no role for Home Affairs, except to
comply with the court order to provide immigration services at the
private terminal, which was similar to VIP terminals. Or put
differently: The whole matter fell under the Department of
Transport and ACSA, which by law operates airports and leases
licences and space, not Home Affairs.
The Home Affairs acting DG’s account was confirmed by Oppenheimer:
“We at Fireblade very much look forward to the discussions with
the Department of Transport and ACSA to settle the matter,” he
said. The Transport Department representative said the acting DG’s
account was “nothing but the honest truth”.
Crucial to note is that those meetings started some two weeks
after Gigaba’s resignation in mid-November 2018 in the wake of a
leaked solo sex video. The Constitutional Court had dismissed
appeal attempts as having “no prospects of success” after at least
three courts since 2017 ruled Gigaba had “deliberately told
untruths” over his claimed non-approval of Home Affairs
immigration services for the Fireblade Aviation private terminal
and the Public Protector had recommended that President Cyril
Ramaphosa take action against the minister for lying in court in
the Fireblade matter.
It is a sign of how governance and policy are frequently
interwoven with politicking. Gigaba was widely regarded as part of
the radical economic transformation, anti-white monopoly capital
grouping supportive of former president Jacob Zuma in the run-up
to the ANC 2017 Nasrec conference.
The issue around Home Affairs and Fireblade Aviation was one of
those proxy battles: An airport terminal cannot operate without
immigration services; absence of Home Affairs services would
effectively shut the terminal down.
Some of that interconnectedness of policy, politicking and
governance also emerged at the late October 2018 Home Affairs
meeting when Black First Land First disrupted the meeting,
shouting “Shut down Fireblade” and waving fists at Oppenheimer.
Fellow Fireblade Aviation director Manne Dipico told MPs the
ministerial change of mind over the approval happened when there
was a change at Denel in late 2015, after which “all of a sudden
the minister calls us” with objections. Said Dipico: “The people
from Denel stood back. They were no longer energised.”
On Tuesday, Home Affairs Minister Siyabonga Cwele put up a good
spin. The push was now on to improve the regulatory framework,
with a key question being if ACSA could extend its licensing to
third parties.
And it was not above him to put in a plug for the proposed border
management authority as a national security solution, even if the
founding law is still caught up in the National Council of
Provinces. The proposed authority has been sharply criticised as
draconian and the result of repositioning Home Affairs from the
governance to the security cluster.
MPs were concerned about security, but also at the level at which
meetings are being held to clear up the issue about which
government department provides what service at which international
airport in what manner.
While Fireblade Aviation pays Home Affairs R117,000 a month for
immigration services, that’s not the arrangement at Lanseria,
where these services are issued as part of a packaged agreement
signed with Public Works, from whom the land is leased.
Gigaba’s argument to MPs in his last appearance in early November
2018 was that Lanseria and the Kruger International Airport were
public airports. That may well be the case, although Lanseria is
privately held, according to a brief history lesson by its CEO
Rampa Rammopo, after being founded in 1974 by the Krugersdorp and
Roodepoort municipalities, privatised in the dying years of
apartheid and more recently acquired by a BEE consortium including
a 37.5% stake held by the Public Investment Corporation (PIC), the
asset manager of R1.2-trillion of predominantly government
workers’ pensions and social savings.
In the end, Parliament’s Home Affairs committee called on Cwele to
speed up finalising the regulatory framework to deal with private
terminals and matters of national security.
And while there would be bigger questions about the quality of
departments, the quality of oversight and the cross-section of
policy, law and implementation, it was with this appeal that the
Home Affairs committee wrapped up this part of its workload. The
pressure is on. Whatever is not finished by the time Parliament
rises before the 2019 elections will lapse and fall away. And
having a pile of outstanding matters would not look good in the
legacy reports each committee, and Parliament, is compiling as a
type of hand-over to the incoming parliamentarians after the 2019
poll.
Some committees have an easier time. Parliament’s Finance and
Appropriations committees were on Tuesday briefed on matters
Budget by the Parliamentary Budget Office. And that pretty much
was it. As the Standing Committee on Appropriations chairperson
Yvonne Phosa said:
“It’ll be for the sixth Parliament (after elections) to deal with
the Budget.”
The Justice committee is pushing against time, and a lapse in
finalising the draft report before Tuesday’s meeting means the
matter of whether Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane is unfit for
office and should be removed, as the DA has asked almost since
September 2017, is back on the agenda for the final week of
February 2019.
For the Communications committee, the pressure is also on the fill
not only four vacancies on the board of the Media Development and
Diversity Agency (MDDA), but also the eight vacancies on the board
of the SABC, which is inquorate and has been effectively
dysfunctional since December 2018.
Amid the time crunch at Parliament, there are the regular items
that fill a high-pressure calendar as elections loom, and loom
large.
At Tuesday’s opening of the National House of Traditional Leaders,
Ramaphosa promised government’s “broad support” for redistributed
land to fall under the custodianship of traditional councils.
That’s exactly what traditional leaders want as on the whole they
deeply dislike alternative structures such as community property
associations â€` these are regarded as alternative rural power
bases.
As the National Assembly passed the Carbon Tax Bill â€` it also
adopted the Traditional Leadership and Governance Framework
Amendment Bill, two years after it landed in the national
legislatures â€` it was amid plenty of calls to vote ANC, or EFF, or
DA.
And the discussion on “transforming the economy to serve the
people”, proposed by ANC MP David Mahlobo, the former state
security minister, turned into a predictable slanging match on
well-trodden party-political lines.
The ANC outlined its contribution to South Africa’s democracy and
bettering the lives of people; the DA touted its record in the
Western Cape and various metros as “slashing red tape” to create
jobs and improve lives; and the EFF promoted its way of doing
things on jobs and land.
“ANC baleka (runs away),” was how Cope MP Willie Madisha ended his
contribution.
But elections are easy. As the Home Affairs plunge into turbulence
over the Fireblade Aviation private terminal showed, policy
formulation and adherence, implementation and governance can flail
amid political noise and factional politicking. For the new
Parliament, it’s something to pay attention to