CAUGHT RED-HATTED
When the ‘revolution’ gets televised — SARS employee seen at EFF protest after calling in sick fired
The Labour Court has overturned an arbitration ruling that a SARS employee who called in sick to attend the protest should keep his job.
On 7 September 2020, while watching the 19h00 news on television, SARS official Pule Mantsho spotted at an EFF protest at Clicks in Sandton employee, Benneth Mathebula, who had called in sick that very morning.
At the time the Economic Freedom Fighters had targeted 400 branches of the retailer in a countrywide protest over an advert about a hair product.
Read more in Daily Maverick: EFF members ‘attack’ Clicks stores after hair advert causes outrage
About a week later, after he had gathered enough evidence from YouTube and elsewhere, Mantsho, as his supervisor, confronted Mathebula.
“Hi Benneth, it came to my attention when I saw you on the 19:00 news, while I was expecting you to be off due to illness,” Mantsho wrote to the junior investigator, court documents show.
To which Mathebula had responded: “May I ask — how did this come to your attention and by who (complainant) so that we are on the same page”.
Just stretching my legs
Confronted with irrefutable evidence, Mathebula explained “please note that as I notified you that I was not feeling well on 7 September 2020, later on that day I became bit better after taking some medication”.
A friend had checked in on him and finding him feeling chipper asked if he would “like to accompany him to Sandton”.
“I did not see anything wrong with that, actually I thought maybe it is good to go out stretch a bit, as I was not bedridden and I felt probably after that I would be fine. So it is true that you might have seen me, unfortunately, the following day I got worse and I did let you know”.
In the tradition of former president Jacob Zuma’s medical doctors, the doctor Mathebula consulted two days later, on 9 September, diagnosed “nature of illness” as “due to a medical condition”.
On 4 November 2020, Mathebula was served with a disciplinary notice in order to answer allegations of “dishonesty” and “gross dishonesty”. Found guilty, he was dismissed on 24 March 2021.
Mathebula, in turn, referred an “unfair dismissal dispute to the CCMA” where commissioner Faizel Mooi had found that his firing had been “substantively unfair”.
SARS subsequently launched an application in the Labour Court seeking to review the fact that Mooi had ordered SARS to reinstate Mr Mathebula and to pay him for his loss of salary.
If you can clap you can work
On 21 July 2023, the court ruled that the probabilities were overwhelming that Mathebula had not been ill “and in fact, he was malingering in order to avail himself for the protest action”.
“If he was able to clap hands and sing, it must follow that he would have been able to perform his contractual duties,” said Labour court judge Graham Moshaona.
In cases of malingering, he added, it was an employee who alleged illness.
“He who alleges must prove. The fact that he was seen at the protest march is sufficient enough evidence to expose his false impression”.
The arbitration award did not pass constitutional muster and was, said the judge “set aside and replaced with an order that the dismissal of Mr Mathebula was substantively fair”. DM
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A win for SARS and other employers. The CCMA seems to be getting it wrong a lot, favouring dealmaking with serial offender employees rather than letting them face the consequences of deliberate discipline offences.
Excellent decision!
I can’t stop laughing at this utter stupidity and complete disbelief that getting fired for being bust on TV dancing and toy-toying while pretending to be sick. Lessons in accountability were obviously missed in this guy’s entire youth.
CCMA commissioner should also be fired – for being stupid.
Absolutely!
Well done to SARS for pursuing this matter to the Labour Court in order to create a deterrant for other, would-be ‘malingerers’
And this is the level of integrity we as tax payers must tolerate in those tasked with throwing the cheap red tape audits at us month after month . No wonder SARS is such nightmare to deal with when this is what we are up against.
So happy to see SARS take on this dishonest employee and getting rid of him. Now if only the rest of the SA government can do the same. Just read of a guy that stayed home for 2 years and got paid R2 million.
The medical professional who provided the false sick note should also have been reported to the HPCSA !
Totally agree!
Of course yes!
Great decision against the malingerer, and CCMA commissioner should also be fired !
The correspondence was worthy of a comic script with the suggestion that some aerobic protest action might be good for one’s health!
Good one!
Accountability in action. Good news for SARS. Good news for South Africa.
What happened to his EFF buddies? In a way it was because of them that he got fired, no help from them?
A thick as thick thieves!
What you see here is exactly the mentality of both the ANC and the EFF – lie and cheat if it suits you!
The effing idiots will be so confused by this ruling and will, no doubt, have something to say about the system that does not suit their violent, racist, communist play book. So funny to watch them get caught in their own stupidity.