6 days ago
PRASA's Crisis of Accountability: Why the Boardroom Must Be Investigated and Raided
Law enforcement agencies — particularly the Hawks — have launched search and seizure operations against PRASA executives and administrative staff. Laptops are confiscated. Documents are removed. Offices are raided. However, board members remain untouched, says the writer.
Image: Jacques Naude/Independent Newspapers
By any standard of governance — legal, constitutional, or ethical — the failures plaguing the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA) can be traced directly to its board.
What is less ordinary, and far more disturbing, is the way accountability has been applied so selectively.
Time and again, executives and senior officials are suspended, investigated, or dismissed, often amid significant public attention. Yet board members — the very individuals tasked with oversight — remain untouched.
That pattern is not only unfair, it is deeply damaging to the principles of the rule of law, institutional integrity, and public trust.
PRASA, like all state-owned entities, has a functioning board that carries legal and fiduciary responsibilities. The tenders that are awarded, the procurement decisions that are made, and the operational directions taken are all the product of board-sanctioned processes.
Executives do not act in a vacuum. They work within governance frameworks that require decisions to be reviewed, approved, and frequently initiated by the board.
This raises a critical question. If some of the executives who have faced disciplinary action or criminal investigation were simply implementing board-approved decisions, then what role did the board play in those decisions?
And more importantly, why has there been so little accountability at that level? The standard narrative — that executive management failed while the board remained passive or uninformed — begins to fall apart under scrutiny. It is not a theoretical concern.
In terms of the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA), PRASA's board is not an advisory body. It is the accounting authority. That status carries with it binding legal obligations. Section 51 of the PFMA makes this crystal clear.
Accounting authorities must ensure effective, efficient, and transparent systems of financial and risk management. They must prevent irregular, fruitless, and wasteful expenditure. The Companies Act reinforces this by imposing fiduciary duties on directors to act in good faith and the best interests of the company, or in the case of PRASA, in the public interest.
Take the Afro 4000 procurement scandal. The board approved it. Technical warnings were reportedly raised about the specifications of the locomotives. The trains were incompatible with South Africa's rail infrastructure — too tall for existing tunnels and bridges. Yet the deal, worth R2.65 billion, went ahead.
That decision was not made in isolation by a single executive. It would have passed through multiple governance layers and ultimately received board approval. That failure is emblematic of a deeper problem — one of institutional decay, negligence, and possibly complicity.
During the 2018 and 2019 financial years, PRASA's board reportedly held meetings for a full year without keeping formal minutes.
The chairperson at the time is said to have received over R1.2 million in remuneration for those undocumented meetings.
The failure to record official board decisions is more than a lapse in procedure. It is a fundamental breach of governance practice. It suggests an environment where oversight was neither practised nor valued.
And yet, when a scandal erupts, it is executives who are dismissed or paraded before the public. Their reputations are often destroyed long before any formal finding is made. Meanwhile, board members continue to serve or exit quietly, with little to no scrutiny of their role in the dysfunction.
This imbalance begs the question: Is the lack of board accountability a matter of political convenience? Board appointments in state-owned entities are often political. Holding executives accountable may temporarily satisfy public outrage.
But investigating a board risks exposing the very political networks that put them there in the first place. That makes such action far less likely. Which brings us to a recent and increasingly bizarre pattern.
Law enforcement agencies — particularly the Hawks — have launched search and seizure operations against PRASA executives and administrative staff. Laptops are confiscated. Documents are removed. Offices are raided.
But in all of this, not once has a current or former board member been subjected to similar treatment. Not one home has been searched. Not one board office has been entered. Not one director has faced the same intensity of scrutiny.
That is not just strange. It is alarming. If wrongdoing occurred at the level of governance — and there is mounting evidence that it did — then failure to investigate the board undermines the entire justice process.
The law does not distinguish between an executive who signs off on a questionable contract and a board member who authorises or enables it. In public entities, the board is the final line of defence. If mismanagement or corruption took place with board approval, or worse, with its silent consent, then it is not less serious — it is more so.
The Zondo Commission taught the nation a vital lesson. State capture did not begin at the operational level. It began in the boardroom. It began with individuals who had oversight powers and either abused them or looked away. PRASA cannot afford to repeat this history.
It would be naïve to believe that collapses of governance on this scale happened without the knowledge or involvement of the board. The idea that executives alone engineered PRASA's failures while the board watched passively stretches the limits of both logic and law. If justice is to be done — and be seen to be done — then the boardroom must be subjected to the same investigative scrutiny as the executive corridor.
