Cape Town - Governance concerns and allegations of undue interference by the Board of the State Information Technology Agency (SITA) were raised by the Public Servants Association (PSA) during a briefing to the Portfolio Committee of Communications and Digital Technologies.
PSA manager Joseph Mashigo presented to the Committee on concerns over the “possible destabilisation of SITA and attempts to remove the acting Managing Director”, yesterday.
Mashigo said persistent leadership instability affected the functionality and reputation of SITA and that these challenges were creating an environment in the workplace that was not conducive for the PSA and workers.
SITA provides critical ICT (Information and Communications Technology) services to national and provincial departments.
“When SITA is not performing, it really affects other state entities and government departments where we have seen some of the departments wanting to pull somehow out of SITA because of the failure to render services to them.”
Mashigo said Dr Bongani Mabaso was appointed as the MD in 2023 and during his tenure, faced a number of challenges. These included abusive treatment by the Board, operational interference and fear-mongering. An unbearable work environment resulted in the premature resignation of Mabaso.
The Minister appointed acting MD Simphiwe Dzengwa in February, seeing confidence and client trust restored and an increase in staff morale. However, he raised that there were also attempts to undermine the acting MD.
There were also allegations of trumped up charges against the MD to justify his removal.
Some of the governance concerns related to Board interference included reversal of disciplinary actions against executives and instructions to lift suspensions without consulting the MD.
“We do have serious concerns in terms of governance issues and our concerns really are towards the behaviour of the Board, the current board which itself seems to be divided. But there’s a lot of interference that really is taking place... And the interests seem to be lying more on issues that have to do with projects and tenders,” Mashigo said.
“I understand that what I am stating here are allegations and of course which you know with the intervention and assistance of the Committee, it will assist to really investigate some of these allegations and some of the actions of the board.”
The Committee was also briefed by the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) of all the investigations and current cases within the Portfolio.
SIU Head Advocate Andy Mothibi said the SIU has been mandated to investigate seven matters, some which have been finalised and others ongoing, falling within the Communications and Digital Technologies Portfolio which were proclaimed between 2010 and 2024.
Completed investigations included entities: the SABC; State Information Technology Agency (SITA) ; South African Post Office (SAPO); Department of Communications; Universal Service and Access Agency of South Africa (USAASA) .
In terms of ongoing investigations, these included Telkom Limited; and TNA Media at various state institutions including SABC SOC Ltd, Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd, Petroleum Oil and Gas Corp of SA SOC Ltd, Transnet SOC Ltd and National Department of Human Settlements.