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As at 31 May 2021, 124 senior officials of the State Security Agency (SSA) did not make financial disclosures for the 2020/21 financial year. It also emerged that senior officials of the SSA have not made financial disclosures for the past 7 years .i.e. since the 2014/15 financial year up until the 2020/21 financial year.

These revelations were made in a report of the Public Service Commission (PSC) tabled in Parliament last week, in respect of its activities and the performance of its functions, including any finding it may have made and advice or directions it may have provided.

Regulation 18 of the Public Service Regulations of 2016, requires all (not some) senior officials within the public service, namely Senior Management Service members (SMS members), to disclose particulars or details of their financial interests on an annual basis. 

The DA has consistently maintained that the Regulations are intended to apply to all public servants (not some) and Regulation 18 is no exception.

The DA has also maintained that senior officials within the SSA should not be exempt from making financial disclosures as such disclosures are purely personal in their nature and have absolutely no bearing on the functioning and workings of the SSA.

The financial disclosures that senior officials, within the public service, are required to make on an annual basis, pertain to amongst other things, disclosures on ownership of immoveable property; disclosures on ownership of motor vehicles; and disclosures on directorships in companies and other corporate entities governed by law. As such, these disclosures cannot, in any way or manner, compromise the work done by the SSA let alone the security of the country for the simple reason that have no bearing on or relationship with the work of senior officials within the SSA. 

The DA, has today, submitted a number of Parliamentary written questions to the Minister in the Presidency, Hon M Gugubele, in an attempt to establish the rationale behind this continued non-compliance by senior officials of the SSA with Regulation 18 of the Regulations. 

The DA has also taken the added liberty of writing to the Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Public Service and Administration and expressed our concerns, in this regard, and further requested that the Committee summon the Minister in the Presidency and the Acting Director General of the SSA, Mr G Msimang, to appear before the Committee and explain this baseless flouting and disregard of the Regulations by senior officials of the SSA. 

The DA strongly rejects the notion or argument that financial disclosures by senior officials of the SSA will, in one way or another, compromise the security of our country and calls on the Minister in the Presidency to prevent a further 7 years of senior officials of the SSA evading transparency under the guise of “national security”.

Issued by DA Shadow Deputy Minister of Public Service and Administration, Dr Mimmy Gondwe MP