Stephan Hofstatter
3 October 2008
Johannesburg — THE Transvaal Agricultural Union (TAU) has called on President Kgalema Motlanthe to sack Agriculture and Land Affairs Minister Lulu Xingwana following this week's revelations of a breakdown of governance at the Land Bank .
"TAU is concerned that the minister is so involved with her political aspirations that she is not taking the necessary precautions to protect food security," the president of the farmers' union, Ben Marais, said on Wednesday .
"The present time offers President Motlanthe the chance to indicate he is serious about clean administration and national affairs. In that light Minister Xingwana should be recalled," he said.
The Land Bank's annual report tabled in Parliament this week provided a devastating account of how poor lending practices, wasteful expenditure and fraud had resulted in losses and defection of farmers to commercial banks with loans worth more than R1bn.
It was the first public acknowledgement of the extent and seriousness of the governance lapses under Xingwana that culminated in the bank being transferred to Finance Minister Trevor Manuel.
The bank received a qualified audit for a string of irregularities, including placing a moratorium on collection of loans made to emerging farmers, failing to ensure business interests of executives were properly declared, and a breakdown of internal controls making it impossible to obtain sufficient audit evidence for transactions running into hundreds of millions of rands.
On her instructions, the bank also spent R7,8m on a forensic audit that was never acted on.
Marais also wanted Xingwana to accept political responsibility for a qualified audit the department reportedly received for insufficient audit evidence for grant payments of R455m and a discrepancy of R824m between amounts disclosed in its financials and its land acquisition register.
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