Mampeule slips into top Post Office meeting
December 3, 2006
By Wiseman Khuzwayo
Johannesburg - Suspended Post Office chief executive Khutso Mampeule's attendance at the SA Post Office board meeting on Thursday highlights the differences between the board members. Three board members resigned last week, following Mampeule's suspension.
In a letter from his lawyers to the Post Office board chairman, Phuti Tsukudu, Mampeule notified her of his intention to attend.
Communications minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri announced last week that she had appointed an auditing firm to do an investigation of the Post Office.
A jovial Mampeule came out of the board meeting at the Sandton Sun Intercontinental in Johannesburg, cracking jokes with Liz Thebe, the Post Office group executive for human relations.
Sources said Mampeule had arrived unannounced and had disrupted the meeting by complaining that he had received his papers late. He then allegedly forced the meeting to discuss the Post Office's articles of association and the Companies Act. As a result, the meeting ran out of time to discuss what was on its agenda.
Mampeule told Business Report: "I can't comment on the proceedings of the board. They are confidential."
Twiggs Xiphu, a spokesperson for the Post Office, said: "Mampeule remains a board member while on suspension. Therefore it is not surprising that he attended the meeting."
If the comments by Thebe outside the meeting overheard by Business Report are anything to go by, morale at the Post Office is at its lowest.
"People want to feel as if it's a free-for-all. I tell them I am working hard so that when the chief executive comes back it will not be as if he had been away. They ask me: 'Is he coming back?' I tell them he is," Thebe said.
Thebe had been asked to make a presentation to the meeting but it was cancelled due to a late start.
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