Dear reader,

It must be raining board positions. At least nine ANC Youth League leaders have been handed cushy posts on the boards of Gauteng’s beleaguered public hospitals — one of them without a matric.

The appointments follow the scandal over ANC-connected individuals being appointed to the boards of sector education & training authorities. Board memberships aren’t a problem if "young lions" are qualified and compete fairly with everyone else — but this is far from what is happening.

The advert for the board nominations stipulates that applicants be professionals with expertise in legal, finance, management, governance, medicine or health-related backgrounds. ActionSA MP Dr Kgosi Letlape, a former president of the South African Medical Association, slammed the appointments as the “perpetuation of corruption and cronyism”. Undeterred, successful applicants have been celebrating on social media. One successful candidate, Ziyanda Ncuru, a Gauteng youth league deputy secretary who is listed as a volunteer at Luthuli House, boasted: “Sana eGoli zi big days, young people zi board members. Zisikelwe iyoung lions.” (Young lions have received their share). More on this in the Sunday Times today. 

Elsewhere, the introduction of a biometric system to eliminate corruption is itself mired in corruption. More than R13m has allegedly been siphoned out of the embattled Construction Education & Training Authority (Ceta) through two contracts meant to provide and administer a biometric system designed to combat fraudulent learner enrolment in training programmes. At least R6m of this was paid by Ceta to joint venture EZG Vest and Coinvest Africa to administer the system — despite a warning by the auditor-general and an internal whistleblower that there were irregularities in the appointment process.

The other R7.1m was paid to Grayson Reed, a company appointed by Ceta in 2018 to provide the system, which included biometric scanners and a portal to keep track of learners' attendance and automatically link it to payment of stipends. Is the system operational or is this money for jam? The answers are in the Sunday Times today. 

Will the government of national unity survive past budget day on Wednesday? The ANC is in a desperate scramble to persuade its biggest partner in the GNU to reverse its decision to reject departmental budgets ahead of the passage of the Appropriation Bill this week.

 The DA has dug in its heels over its resolution to reject departmental budgets for ANC ministers implicated in wrongdoing. The bill allocates funds to various national departments and entities, and includes a schedule made up of departmental votes. According to legal advice received by the chair of the standing committee on appropriations, Mmusi Maimane, a rejection of several departmental budgets could mean the collapse of the budget.

Still on punishing those linked to corruption, why are those in big companies treated differently to our much-maligned politicians? In Business Times, the Black Business Council has condemned the involvement of the McKinsey and Bain consultancies in the work of the B20, the business arm of the G20, saying the taint of state capture corruption hangs over them.

Council CEO Kganki Matabane told Business Times on Friday the involvement of the companies harmed the credibility of the B20: “If the B20 continues to work with McKinsey and Bain in their activities of the G20, we will formally ask the president to reject the report that comes out of their [discussions], because he would be taking in the outcome of activities by corrupt actors.” 

We have this and much more in the Sunday Times.