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Parliament's secretive and uncooperative response to the KPMG forensic report illustrates a chronic lack of willingness to carry through on its own commitments to resolve ongoing abuses of power by its top officials. Up until now, very little proper action has been taken by Parliament to deal with exceptionally serious matters arising from a report that was finalised more than three months ago. Instead, Parliament has gone about is business in an uncooperative, secretive and wholly irresponsible manner, leaving most of those officials singled out by the report largely in the clear.

As a consequence of this, the DA, having now seen a copy of the report, will embark on a course of action to see to it that the report's findings are actually acted upon, and that the report is officially made public.

In the mean time, the DA has released a document outlining the key findings of the KPMG report [a copy of this document is included below]. In the absence of a publically available copy of the KPMG report, it is essential that the public and media is aware of the key findings of this report. In the document we also address the key matters identified by the report that presently remain unresolved.

In addition, having now gained access to the report, it is clear that four matters warrant particularly urgent attention.

First, it is of serious concern that sections of the report offer no conclusions, apparently as a consequence of the failure of Parliamentary officials to cooperate with investigators. This illustrates that Parliament has deep systemic issues to resolve with respect to its tolerance of efforts to improve accountability and transparency.

Second, the KPMG report was meant to be presented before the Parliamentary Oversight Authority (POA) as the basis of disciplinary action against suspended Secretary to Parliament, Zingile Dingani. However, the contents of the report suggest that Mr. Dingani's culpability may be relatively limited. This raises serious questions about whether there has been a concerted effort to remove Mr. Dingani, ostensibly a Thabo Mbeki ally, from his post on political grounds.

Third, the contents of this report were finalised in March this year, and allegations have been circulating for almost year, yet no proper disciplinary action appears to have been taken against suspended secretary of the National Council of Provinces, Lulama Matyolo-Dube. Her behaviour, documented by the KPMG report and summarised in the document below, is deeply problematic, and points to an ongoing culture of ‘jobs for pals' within Parliament.

Fourth, the secretive nature of this report is absolutely unacceptable, and it is particularly extraordinary that members of the POA are still being denied official access to the report. The DA has repeatedly called for the contents of this report to be made available to the committee. Parliament simply cannot continue to conduct its affairs in such secrecy, and this whole matter leaves the impression that there has been a clandestine attempt to purge Parliament of its Mbeki-aligned officials, even while sparing disciplinary hearings against those guilty of manifestly serious abuses of public office.