Communications director-general Lyndall Shope-Mafole believes her appointment as international relations head for the new political party Congress of the People (COPE) should not affect her working relations with the ruling African National Party (ANC).
This week, COPE held its official launch, in Bloemfontein, during which Shope-Mafole was spotlighted as one of the 12 key members of the breakaway faction of the ANC. She was formerly head of the ANC`s political education department and so held a seat on that party` National Executive Committee.
Serving government
"A director-general is a senior public servant and is allowed to belong to any political party. I don`t want to speculate on what our relationship will be, but I have not had any sense of hostility towards me from ANC members," Shope-Mafole says.
She says that her role as a director-general means that she has to serve the government of the day and that even her high-profile role in COPE would not affect that.
"No matter what political party a public servant belongs to, they have to ensure that the best service delivery to the public is achieved," Shope-Mafole says.
Her COPE appointment does not make her one of the top six office bearers in the party that includes Mosiua Lekhota as president, Mbhazima Shilowa as the first deputy president and former IT executive Lynda Odendaal as the second deputy president.
Phillip Dexter, COPE`s communications head, says that it has not been determined yet if Shope-Mafole will be on the party`s list as a Member of Parliament candidate for next year`s general elections.
"Our lists will only be drawn up in the new year," he says.
Although directors-general do not necessarily have to belong to the ruling party, the President makes their appointments. Furthermore, discussion documents currently circulating through the ANC suggest that the ruling party should have more say in the appointment of directors-general as it has in the appointment of the ministers who are, in effect, the political heads of departments.
Commercial issues
Shope-Mafole was literally brought up as an ANC cadre. Both her parents were long-time members and served the party in exile and she was educated and trained as a telecommunications engineer in Cuba.
Kgotso Khumalo, the ANC`s whip on the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Communications, says that the ruling party`s members would not attack Shope-Mafole for joining COPE.
"To do that would imply double standards from our side, however, there are various other issues about the Department of Communications (DOC) that concern us," he says.
The committee has a parliamentary oversight role over the DOC and its portfolio of state-owned enterprises that includes Telkom (in which government owns 39.5%), national signal distributor Sentech, the SA Broadcasting Corporation, The SA Post Office, and the Universal Services and Access Agency of SA.
Khumal says that the ANC committee members have grown concerned about the DOC`s activities in the ICT sector that have blurred the boundaries between the public and the commercial sectors.
He says the DOC has been late in developing and releasing the standards for the Digitial Terrestrial TV (DTTV) migration. The ANC committee is also concerned that the manufacturing plan for the DTTV set-top-boxes favour certain companies only, that the DOC has unduly "meddled" in the process of allowing undersea cables to land and that Telkom`s sale of its 50% Vodacom stake was done with undue haste.
Was warned
Suzanne Vos, communications spokesperson for the Inkhata Freedom Party, however, was not impressed by Khumalo`s comments.
"Suddenly, they (ANC) are amazingly concerned about the DOC`s performance after years and years of being warned about it. Now that their political `deployee` (Shope-Mafole) has joined another party," she says.
Vos says the IFP has always opposed the appointment of senior public servants on the basis of their political pedigree.
"Now she (Shope-Mafole) is in a very unusual situation," Vos says.
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