By OBAKENG MAJE
20 February 2025- The North West Provincial Legislature’s Portfolio Committee on Economic Development, Conservation and Tourism said it has resolved to take legal action against the Chairperson of the North West Parks and Tourism Board, advocate Matshidiso Mogale together with other Board Members, who include Barney Lobelo, Sharon Sepeng, Tonto Nkadimeng, Mothusi Raphadu and Dr Goitseone Pholo, for failure to appear before the committee for the second time to account on the delayed payment of salaries and status quo of the entity.
The committee said the Board previously failed to appear and account in a meeting convened on the 4 February 2025. According to the Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee, Mpho Khunou, they are concerned about how the acting Chief Executive Officers (CEOs), are appointed and dismissed in a short period of time without following proper procedures.
“There have been six acting CEOs in the last six months as witnessed with Jeff Mabunda, who acted from 1 October to 31 December 2024. Charlene Jacobs from 3-24 January 2025, Dr Goitseone Pholo for less than a month, then we heard that on the 18 February 2025, Jonathan Denga was appointed to act as well.
“According to the available records, the entity does not have funds to pay salaries for February and March 2025. We urge the department to come up with plans to ensure that the salaries are paid on time until the end of the financial year,” he said.
Khunou further said it was worrying that the Board members failed to appear twice to account on the operations of the dysfunctional entity, which has been facing numerous cash flow challenges to pay salaries including for its subsidiaries, creditors and debtors respectively.
He added that Board members have failed on their legal duties to account on the operations and to ensure that there are proper governance systems and sound cash flow through revenue collection.
“The failure to appear before the committee shows that they are undermining the work of the legislature to hold the entity accountable as there are many challenges facing this entity.
“The committee will ensure that the two employees, Mabunda and Jacobs, who presented reports on the state of the operations at the entity and have since returned to their substantive positions, will be protected from victimisation,” said Khunou.
He said the committee was also concerned that a member of the board, Pholo was appointed as acting CEO after the resignation of Jacobs as this meant that she was now a player and referee at the same time. Khunou said they will need a full comprehensive report on the activities of the board, which they also feel was not appointed legally.
“They were expected to bring their expertise through different sub-committees such as governance, risk, finance and related matters to ensure implementation of the core mandate of the entity, but we have not seen any improvement only that the entity is bankrupt as presented by the two former CEOs.
“The committee will propose a full legislature enquiry into the operations of the entity and its subsidiaries. We’re seriously worried as our parks have not been functional enough to generate their own income due to the instability of the entity’s management and are in total disarray and not ready to be one of the chosen G20 platforms,” he said.
The Deputy Chairperson of the board, Prof Vuyo Peach together with another Board member, Kgosi Lencoe who attended the meeting, admitted that proper processes of recruitment of board members were not followed when they were appointed as they said they were just invited to be on the board through emails and phone calls.
Two former Acting CEOs of the entity Mabunda and Jacobs, who were invited by the committee to account on their tenures as acting CEOs, they made a presentation informing the committee that the entity’s annual budget allocation was R221 million divided into four tranches of R55 million per quarter in 2023/24 financial year from department, and was expected to generate additional R97 Million through own revenue collection.
Mabunda said: “Our cash flow challenges started when we only generated about 40% of revenue and had a shortfall of 60 percent.
“We then requested advance payments of R27.3 million in May 2024 from the second quarter’s tranche from the department to meet financial obligations.”
He said the trend continued in the following quarters, but they had a concrete plan to generate enough income through the concessions in the nature and game reserves.
The Guardian 