Sisulu rejects summons to appear before portfolio committee

Tourism Minister Lindiwe Sisulu on Wednesday said she would challenge a decision by the portfolio committee on tourism to serve her with a summons to attend a meeting this week, and has taken legal advice.

“In response to the portfolio committee’s decision to invoke a legal route, Minister Sisulu has taken legal advice and is challenging the committee’s decision to issue summons and the subsequent processes relating thereto,” read a statement issued by her spokesman Steve Motale.

Parliamentary sources said the minister had missed four crucial meetings of the committee since early September.

These included a briefing on her department’s annual report on October 11, and a briefing on the merger of Brand South Africa and South African Tourism. The other meetings concerned reports of South African Tourism.

It is understood that the committee first invited her to appear voluntarily this week, before resorting to summonsing her after not receiving a positive response.

Sisulu said she would not be commenting on the issue beyond confirming the summons and that she was consulting her lawyers, because this step had rendered it “subjudicare” [sic].

Sisulu is actively campaigning against President Cyril Ramaphosa’s bid to be re-elected at the ANC’s elective conference in December. 

She was involved in a public spat with the president in January after he rebuked her for a widely published article in which she claimed African judges lacked agency and betrayed their own because they had internalised colonialism.