Higher education minister Buti Manamela said no minutes were kept of the meeting he held with selected National Student Financial Aid Scheme board members three weeks before he fired them.
Manamela was replying to a written parliamentary question from EFF MP Sihle Lonzi, who asked why he had met only some board members on a matter the full board was meant to decide.
That meeting led to accusations that Manamela was interfering politically, three weeks before he dissolved the NSFAS board and placed the scheme under administration on May 4.
“Yes. On April 13, I participated in an urgent informal engagement with members of the Board of the National Student Financial Aid Scheme,” Manamela said.
He said the meeting had been convened through his office after board members raised concerns about governance and procedural issues in the process of appointing a chief executive.
“It was not a formal or statutory meeting of the board, nor was it convened to transact board business or take any decision falling within the collective authority of the board,” he said.
“No board decision was taken during the engagement.”
Manamela confirmed one board member had not been present.
“There was no deliberate intention to exclude that member or any other member of the board,” he said.
He said the meeting fell within his executive oversight responsibility for NSFAS.
The responsibility for appointing the chief executive had remained with the board throughout, he said.
On the central allegation, that he told the board to pause the appointment, Manamela was unequivocal.
“No. I did not instruct the board or any of its members to delay, suspend, abandon or refrain from proceeding with the appointment of the chief executive,” he said.
He said he advised that the concerns raised about the recruitment process be properly considered and resolved before the board finalised the appointment.
“This did not constitute an instruction to halt the process indefinitely,” he said.
Manamela said a formal written direction requiring the board to conclude the appointment by May 31 had remained in force and was never withdrawn, varied or suspended.
He also denied holding political consultations about who should get the job.
“I did not undertake political consultations for the purpose of selecting, endorsing or determining who should be appoiappointed chief executive of NSFAS,” he said.
Any wider consultations had been about governance, keeping NSFAS stable and the public interest, not about which candidate should get the job, he said.
“No political party structure or external political forum was asked to select, approve or endorse a candidate,” he said.
Asked what records existed of the meeting, Manamela said none had been kept.
“As the engagement was an informal briefing and not a statutory meeting of the NSFAS Board, no formal minutes of the engagement were prepared,” he said.
Emails and other paperwork about setting up the meeting, and later correspondence between the ministry and the board, might exist and form part of the official record, he said.
The reply followed a stormy appearance before Parliament’s higher education committee in May, where former board members told MPs they had been called to an informal meeting without minutes, and that their cellphones were confiscated on arrival.
Manamela told the committee he had not instructed anyone, and apologised for the error that saw one member left off the invitation.
The board went on to name NSFAS chief financial officer and acting chief executive Waseem Carrim as its choice for the permanent post, days before Manamela dissolved it and appointed Hlengani Mathebula as administrator.
Members of the dissolved board have taken the decision on review.
