The Democratic Alliance (DA) has asked the chairman of the Transport Portfolio Committee to call on transport minister Jeff Radebe to release a report from the auditor-general on the electronic National Traffic Information System (eNatis), as promised.
The demand comes a week after Radebe was called before the committee to answer to the chaos that surrounded eNatis.
At the meeting, Radebe and his director-general, Mpumi Mpofu, said the transport department had only received the report on 22 May and had not had the chance to study it in detail. An appropriate response would follow in due course, he said.
However, the DA's spokesman on transport, Stuart Farrow, is calling on committee chairman Jeremy Cronin to ask the department to release the report as a "matter of urgency".
"Last Wednesday, minister Radebe confirmed to me when he appeared before the portfolio committee that he will release the report once he has studied the content thereof. He has had a week to do so and, therefore, has a duty to make the content of the report public so that South Africans may receive some explanation for the chaos which eNatis has caused," explains Farrow.
At a media briefing this morning, Cabinet spokesman Themba Maseko said Radebe had not attended yesterday's Cabinet meeting and so had not briefed Cabinet on the latest updates concerning the eNatis system. However, Cabinet was keeping a close eye on the eNatis situation, he said.
In response to questions from the media, Maskeo said talk of levying a surcharge on vehicle owners to help pay for the continuing improvements of the eNatis system, rather than invoke penalty clauses on the supplier contract, was a detail the Department of Transport had to work out.
Gagging media
Meanwhile, the department has brought an urgent interdict against Afrikaans newspaper Beeld, believed to have at least part of the AG's report. Beeld was the first to disclose information on the AG report, which, in December, had warned the eNatis implementation had an 80% chance of failure.
Last week, the newspaper revealed the same AG report had highlighted the three transport department officials in charge of the eNatis implementation - Werner Koekemoer, Wendy Watson and Jerry Mokokoena - did not have the competence or qualifications to do so. While Watson and Mokokoena have left the department since the release of the report, Beeld said Koekemoer had been promoted to director.
On Tuesday, the department applied to the Pretoria High Court for the interdict to prevent the publication of an article, which Beeld says brings the security of the eNatis system into question. The article was also based on the AG's report.
The South African National Editors' Forum (Sanef) has spoken out on the injunction, saying it believes the department is acting unconstitutionally. "Sanef supports Beeld in its defence of its position and its efforts to bring the information - clearly embarrassing to the department - to the attention of the public," it says.
However, the department says the urgent interdict is not an attempt to gag the media, but rather to "seek adherence to legislative requirements on how audit findings are dealt with before the final report is tabled in Parliament".
Farrow disputes this argument: "This conduct flies in the face of the principles of transparency and accountability, and undermines the AG's constitutional requirement to report on and audit state departments, which thereby strengthen constitutional democracy."
The case is expected to be heard in the Pretoria High Court today.
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