AFRIKA MSIMANG | Public sector must stop treating suspension as a paid sabbatical

Eleven years ago, I stepped in as acting chair of a department of arts & culture institution caught in a “sunset clause” transition. The arrangement had an unspoken purpose: to protect entrenched power while masquerading as stability.

In that climate, oversight was treated as an inconvenience and questions as a nuisance. Yet the agency’s audits came back clean, year after year. Unbroken streaks of clean audits rarely signal flawless governance. More often, they mean someone has perfected the art of curating what auditors see — or that the audit firm is willing to look the other way.

The façade cracked over a single sentence in a board document that arrived the morning of a critical meeting. When I asked the chief financial officer to contextualise a transaction, it revealed not a technical gap, but a breakdown in internal controls. I had gently asked her to walk us through the figures; instead, she burst into tears.

What followed was not a technical clarification but an admission of orchestrated accounting. Her explanation laid bare a stark contradiction: immaculate paperwork masking deeply irregular transactions. This was no mere oversight. It was a structural design flaw.

Pursuing accountability in such an environment is profoundly isolating. As I pressed for transparency, I was consistently outvoted by fellow directors. Resistance in governance rarely looks like outright defiance; it wears the mask of procedure.

Corruption does not discriminate by race, gender or background. It exploits access. Its true victims are the public purse and the institutional trust we are sworn to protect.

Colleagues began framing rigorous oversight as “politicised”, implying that enforcing fiduciary duties meant targeting a particular demographic. I rejected that premise outright. Corruption does not discriminate by race, gender or background. It exploits access. Its true victims are the public purse and the institutional trust we are sworn to protect.

When we finally confronted the audit firm about their role, they admitted they had “assisted with the process”. I asked the obvious question: “Does that mean you were both player and referee?” Silence was their only answer.

With the responsible minister delaying approval for a forensic investigation, I took the matter to the chair of the parliamentary portfolio committee. I posed a simple question: why does our system make it harder to investigate wrongdoing than to commit it?

Delay is never neutral. Every postponed decision, every additional referral, every call for “further consultation” buys time to tidy up records, pressure witnesses and normalise the abnormal. Due process is non-negotiable. But weaponising procedure to evade consequences is not caution. It is complicity.

The investigation was eventually approved. Within three days, the board placed the CEO and his executive team on precautionary suspension. By the next morning, the media backlash began. I was branded heavy-handed and diminished as merely “the wife of the chief of the South African Air Force”, as if my fiduciary role were somehow derivative of my husband’s position.

Meanwhile, the suspended CEO was portrayed as a respected professional, unfairly targeted without “proof”. I refused to engage in public sparring. A precautionary suspension is not a verdict; it is a standard governance measure designed to protect the integrity of an investigation.

Three weeks later, the forensic report landed. The findings were unambiguous: funds had been diverted, procurement rules bypassed and internal controls deliberately switched off. A disciplinary hearing followed swiftly. The CEO was found guilty of gross misconduct and breach of fiduciary duty.

He indicated his intention to appeal. At that point, we made our position clear: the forensic report was a public document under the Promotion of Access to Information Act. Volksblad, which had publicly defended him, was fully entitled to request it. He had until midday to either tender his resignation or proceed with his appeal while the report was released to the media in the ordinary course of transparency. He chose to resign.

The entire disciplinary process took nine weeks. Four of those were paused solely because the suspended executive was on medical leave. That timeline is not extraordinary. It is simply what happens when leadership refuses to blink. The public sector must stop treating precautionary suspension as a paid sabbatical. Labelling consequence management a “lengthy process” is often just a polite euphemism for institutional sloppiness.

You can uncover serious financial misconduct in weeks if you deploy the right resources under clear terms. You can take protective action in days when the risk is evident. You can conclude disciplinary proceedings in nine weeks, even with statutory pauses.

Good governance does not hide behind procedure. It uses procedure to deliver results. Corruption survives when leaders wait, when ambiguity is tolerated, when maladministration is excused in the name of process.

In our beloved Mzansi, addressing historical exclusion cannot mean lowering the standards of fiduciary duty. Transformation without accountability is not progress — it is the replication of apartheid-era governance failures.

• Msimang is a public administration & corporate governance specialist