Cape Town - Lawmakers hauled private company G4S over the coals for attempting to hand-pick appearance dates for a grilling by the justice and correctional services portfolio committee over the company’s alleged complicity in convicted rapist and murderer Thabo Bester’s prison break.
The committee yesterday discussed Bester’s escape from Mangaung Correctional Centre, a maximum security prison in Bloemfontein that is co-managed by the government and the British head-quartered multinational private security company. Online publication GroundUp exposed Bester’s prison escape.
G4S official Cobus Groenewald submitted a letter on Monday, ahead of yesterday morning’s briefing, according to committee chairperson and ANC MP Gratitude Magwanishe.
Groenewald’s letter said the company would welcome the opportunity to appear before the portfolio committee “under parliamentary privilege”.
Parliamentary privilege is known to include freedom of speech and the protection from civil action for those who speak or appear before committees.
Groenewald wrote to MPs that the company was bound by statutory confidentiality obligations.
“To enable G4S to fully and properly engage with the portfolio committee, it would need to be afforded the same protections which ordinarily would apply for those attending parliamentary committees,” the letter read, citing section 16 of the Powers, Privileges and Immunities of Parliament and Provincial Legislature Act.
Groenewald invoked section 14 of the same act to call on the portfolio committee to request that the committee summon him and company officials Joseph Monyate and Gert Beyleveld to appear before the committee after the Easter weekend.
MPs across the political divide took turns to slam the requests.
DA MP Glynnis Breytenbach said: “I find it difficult to contain my outrage at the set of circumstances – for a start, that this kind of thing can happen and that a year later there seems to be little or no progress in sorting it out. That aside, I’m absolutely outraged that G4S can send us a letter.”
She accused G4S of “thumbing their nose” at a parliamentary committee which has oversight over it.
Magwanishe said the company would appear before the committee on a date to be determined with the Assembly Speaker and not the date sought by G4S.