Convicted fraudster and former Buffalo City Metro mayor Zukisa Faku has resigned from parliament.
ANC chief whip in the National Assembly, Pemmy Majodina, confirmed late on Thursday that Faku had resigned from parliament on Tuesday, after being pressed on her legal status in relation to her 2016 criminal conviction for fraud.
Majodina’s admission that Faku had quit parliament came within minutes of confirmation from the department of correctional services (DCS) that the disgraced politician had been sitting in the National Assembly while serving her house arrest sentence for fraud.
DCS regional spokesperson Nobuntu Gantana said Faku had entered the correctional supervision programme in July last year, effectively hoodwinking her party for an entire year.
“Ms Faku is in Cape Town for four days per week. This means that she reports at the police station in Cape Town then submits records upon her return,” Gantana said.
The events unfolded on Thursday as the Dispatch checked what appeared to be Faku’s casual and unexplained twilight freedom, given that her appeal against her criminal conviction was rejected by the high court in 2017.
The high-flying politician has managed to avoid culpability since 2010 for illegally using her mayoral credit card to purchase a raft of personal items while on an official trip overseas.
After being convicted of fraud and sentenced to three years of house arrest, she was denied leave to appeal, and her petition to the Grahamstown high court was also dismissed.
The high-flying politician has managed to avoid culpability since 2010
Since then, various legal sources said, the case had “gone cold” and Faku seemed to have used the uncertainty about her legal status as a veil to continue operating in the corridors of parliament.
Faku herself stated curtly on Thursday in response to a call to her cellphone that she had no comment to make.
Majodina was adamant that her office was not responsible for Faku’s holding down an MP’s job while serving her sentence for fraud.
“I am not aware; remember I started working here in June and would not know,” Majodina said.
“I am dealing with (Faku) at the current moment in the sixth parliament. All other things that happened then I will not comment on.”
Faku’s position was brought under the spotlight again by a decision by ANC whips in parliament to withdraw her nomination as chair of the portfolio committee on basic education.
Majodina announced that decision last week, citing “objections from various quarters” over her outstanding fraud case.
In her statement last week, Majodina said Faku had been given leave to meet with her legal representatives in the Eastern Cape.
On Thursday, Majodina said Faku had been unable to get an update on her appeal.
But her former East London attorney, Ncumisa Nongogo, told the Dispatch on Thursday that her firm had stopped representing Faku a year ago.
Changfoot van Breda attorney Neil Ristow confirmed that the firm had briefly represented Faku last year but that the firm was “not acting for her. “Our mandate was terminated”.
Faku’s conviction in 2016 prompted firm denunciations from then ANC chief whip Jackson Mthembu who indicated the ruling party would be filling her post shortly after her fraud case was finalised in the East London regional court.
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