Minister Angie Motshekga has described the Department of Military Veterans as a 'wreck' - where politicians protect senior officials from accountability.

Listen to this article 5 min Listen to this article 5 min Defence and Military Veterans Minister Angie Motshekga has described the Department of Military Veterans as a "wrecked ship" as leadership issues, financial troubles and accusations of political interference were revealed in Parliament.

Motshekga and acting Director-General Nontobeko Mafu briefed Parliament's public accounts watchdog, the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa), on Tuesday, 25 February 2025, on audit outcomes and investigations into the department.

"For many years, it has been operating under a very poor structure, an incapacitated department... We have a situation where the entire senior management is absent... Then we have the ... entire staff which sometimes is not fit for purpose," said Motshekga.

Political interference alleged

The committee heard that when it came to implementing consequence management, there was "pushback".

Mafu told the committee: "I think it was 2018 ... the department deliberately formed an internal committee which was going to deal with consequence management in so far as irregular expenditure is concerned. But unfortunately, there was a pushback from officials. There was a pushback to an extent that it was then difficult to implement that consequence management."

Scopa chair Songezo Zibi questioned what exactly had...