South Africa: President of the Republic of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, has suspended Dipuo Peters. The Deputy Minister of Small Business Development’s suspension came on March 1, 2024.
The suspension came from her negligence in undertaking her duty towards the South Africa owned Transport Agency, PRASA. Peters was tasked to appoint a permanent CEO for Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA). However, she failed to make the appointment due to personal biases.
Because of the Minister of Transport’s Personal biases, the PRASA incurred monetary losses of upto R1,767,000.
Dipuo Peters was Transport Minister from 2013 till 2017. The Minister of Transport believed that PRASA was not ready for a CEO when the organization reached out to her to make the said appointment.
In 2022, Zakie Achmant and Unite Behind, a Non-Profit organisation, complained to the committee on ethics and members. They claimed that due to Ex-Minister’s irrational assumptions and lack of action, PRASA incurred the loss.
Minister Dipuo Peters was also accused of not issuing any payments to PRASA after she used the agency’s buses for Africa National Congress(ANC) events. This resulted in further loss to the company.
She was sanctioned and suspended for one term. Meanwhile high court found that peter was unreasonable, irrational and went against the law. She was charged that she was the code breacher of ethical conduct and disclosure of members interest .
She argued that she did not get any personal or financial benefit out of it. Further she added that except this finding, her track record was clean. However, she was suspended by high court.
She was suspended from every parliament sitting as a minister after the complaint was registered. She is now further suspended till 28 March 2024 without pay.
While people of Republic of South Africa are not sure whether the president and the ruling political party are favouring the minister. Some social media users believe that the actions of the administration are not strict enough.
The people demand stricter actions against Minister Peters as her actions led to significant losses to the NPO.