'I'm a party president': McKenzie ducks MPs’ questions to attend political meeting - IOL

Minister Gayton McKenzie cut short his appearance before Parliament's sport committee on Friday to attend a political meeting.

He left before MPs began questioning his department on how it had spent public money.

It was the second day in a row that McKenzie had not been there to answer MPs’ questions about his department.

On Thursday, the committee was told McKenzie had skipped the Auditor-General's briefing on his department's audit, which had confirmed fraud involving some of the people it funds, to attend the announcement of the 2027 Cricket World Cup match schedule in Cape Town.

McKenzie, who leads the Patriotic Alliance, sent an apology to Friday's meeting on his department's 2025/26 annual report, saying he would leave after 45 minutes to attend a pre-scheduled political meeting, the committee secretary said.

Committee chair Joe McGluwa, a DA MP, opened the meeting by saying the minister and the head of the department had to be there when matters as serious as fraud were before Parliament.

"The executive authority and the accounting officer must always be present in these very important meetings and they must account to Parliament," McGluwa said.

McKenzie said he took McGluwa's remarks about people choosing political meetings as a jab at him.

"Honourable chair, I'm a president of a party ... you are not," McKenzie said.

"Our presence at events are not the same.

"My apology today is stated explicitly and very clearly that I'm attending a political meeting."

McGluwa called him to order and said the meeting had been on the committee's programme for a month.

"These meetings have been scheduled a month in advance and people cannot arrange something else within the time that is scheduled on such serious financial business," McGluwa said.

"If I wanted to have politicised this, I would have cancelled meetings left, right and centre."

The row followed an earlier clash, when PA MP Marlon Daniels asked to be excused from the meeting and accused the DA and McGluwa of using the committee as an election campaign tool.

McGluwa denied it and invited any member with evidence to write to the Speaker.

McKenzie said director-general Cynthia Khumalo, who was on a study tour on Thursday, had joined Friday's meeting because he would not be there.

"She said 'minister, I heard that you are not going to be there. I think I should be there,'" McKenzie said.

"So she really, really went out of her way."

Deputy minister Peace Mabe sat in for McKenzie after he left.

ANC MP Gaolatlhe Kgabo proposed that the committee write to the speaker and the Presidency about McKenzie's absence from meetings on the department's performance and finances.

"I have concluded myself individually that this is a way of the minister trying to run away from accounting to the portfolio committee, especially on his decisions and actions which, in most cases, have a financial implication on the state," Kgabo said.

"Failure of the minister to come to the meeting basically obstructs our responsibility of playing oversight."

Khumalo and chief financial officer Israel Mokgwamme both joined Friday's meeting from the same official trip, while an acting chief financial officer presented the department's figures.

Khumalo told the committee four department officials were on the study tour, benchmarking alongside about five people from the University of Venda.

Acting director-general Vincent Campbell said he understood that deputy director-general Vusithemba Ndima was among them.

DA MP Leah Potgieter said the department's spending on travel and subsistence had risen by about R25m in a year, from R85m to R110m.

The acting chief financial officer said the increase was due to the number of trips taken during the year, and promised the committee a report.

The annual report showed the department spent 99.6% of its R6.3bn budget in 2025/26 but met only 80% of its targets, down from 93% the year before.

MK Party MP Gift Motaung asked whose job it was to make sure the department met its targets.

"I think the responsibility certainly does not lie with the minister," Campbell said.

"It is the responsibility of the administration to ensure that the targets that they've set in the performance plans are actually achieved."

The department failed to meet its target of building 100 outdoor gyms and children's play parks, completing only 17.

Campbell said there had been money for only 17 gyms, about R20m, and the rest had to wait for National Treasury to approve moving funds in February 2026, a month before the financial year ended.

He said the department's infrastructure unit, which McGluwa said had a budget of R307m, had no chief director because the post-holder had been seconded to other entities and no director had agreed to act in it.

"It's not ideal. I'll be honest," Campbell said.

"It requires a full-time chief director to be there."

The department also missed its target of 10,000 jobs through its creative sector stimulus, reaching 8,772 after some were disqualified over invalid and duplicated documents, including identity documents.

Of 155 cultural and creative industry projects it funded, only 54 were backed by adequate evidence.

ANC MP Matsholo Mmolotsane asked how much the SA Sport Awards at Sun City had cost.

Officials said the event cost R17,355,255, and Mmolotsane asked for a full cost breakdown by next week Friday, including what was paid to celebrities.

Kgabo also asked how much the department had spent on legal fees.

"We have seen an unmentionable appetite of the minister of being a permanent customer of the courts," Kgabo said.

The acting chief financial officer said he did not have the figure and would submit it.

The department's chief audit executive told the committee that internal audit had flagged repeat non-compliance with the law but had not recommended action against anyone.

"We have not recommended any consequence management in respect of those non-compliance issues," the chief audit executive said.

"We would have to look at it going forward."

McGluwa warned that the matter could end up before Parliament's Standing Committee on Public Accounts.

"That's why I asked the DG, how serious does she regard this meeting?"

The department has also still not handed the committee its final report on spending for the 2026 Fifa World Cup trip, with Campbell saying a date would be confirmed by Tuesday.