Motshekga and acting DG dodge Parliament as veterans await answers

Opposition MPs refused to accept apologies from Defence and Military Veterans Minister Angie Motshekga and the Department of Military Veterans’ (DMV) acting director-general, Nontobeko Mafu. This after they skipped a parliamentary meeting on Wednesday, 11 November.

The meeting was called to hear how the department is carrying out a High Court order on veterans’ benefits.

Their apologies reached the Portfolio Committee on Defence and Military Veterans only on Tuesday, 10 November a day before the virtual sitting. The secretariat said Motshekga was attending a Cabinet meeting and Mafu was on an official trip outside the country.

DA MP Chris Hattingh questioned the apologies.

“This is a very important meeting. There are serious issues on the table, and thousands of military veterans are looking to the outcome of this committee and the responses from the minister and from the department, which should have been represented here by the acting DG. Now they are absent. I really question this. The acting DG has known about this meeting for a long time. I would like to know what is more important for the acting DG: to go on a foreign visit, or to account to this committee and to the thousands of veterans out there looking to her for responses? The same goes for the minister.

“The acting DG is the accounting officer. There are crucial questions to be put, and those questions can only be answered by the acting DG. To say that the acting DG will respond to our questions within seven days is also fatally flawed, because there is no history of this department complying with a seven-day rule. In fact, our researchers report today that the department did not comply with this committee’s request to report monthly on progress with the implementation of the court order,” said Hattingh.

EFF MP Carl Niehaus called for a letter of outrage. “Even though the acting DG is travelling, this is a virtual meeting, and she could have joined virtually. To have probably the two most important people absent from this meeting, for an update on the DMV’s implementation of the High Court judgment and, more specifically, the implementation and funding of pension benefits, is unacceptable. The point we make is that we should send a strongly worded concern to both of them about their absence and the late tender of their apologies. I propose that we agree that a letter of concern, a letter of outrage actually, be sent to both the minister and the acting director-general of the Department of Military Veterans,” said Niehaus.

DA MP Emma Powell agreed with them and said the minister had to learn that her apologies could be turned down.

“I’d like to suggest that we use this as an opportunity to send a strong message to the honourable minister that her apologies will be considered, and at times rejected, and that she must attend this committee to answer to us in the exercise of our constitutional obligations,” she said.

But ANC MP Tshilidzi Munyai disagreed with them. He said that the apologies must be accepted because the deputy ministers had been delegated by the minister. “I have no objection to the portfolio committee expressing concern about the absence. But in the final analysis, we must make progress and move forward,” he said.

By the time of publication it was not clear whether the letter would be sent.

The Gauteng High Court judgment of 11 May 2026 cited the minister, the acting DG and two DMV chief directors as respondents. It ordered that applications to join the military veterans’ database be finalised within 90 working days.