Fired property watchdog chief executive officer Mamodupi Mohlala-Mulaudzi has launched three fresh legal battles to get her cushy job back at the Property Practitioners’ Regulatory Authority (PPRA).
Mohlala-Mulaudzi lost previous court bids for redress last year.
Mohlala-Mulaudzi has filed papers at the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA), the Constitutional Court and Joburg High Court where she wants the matter to be heard by a full bench.
In her firing line are human settlements minister Mmamoloko Kubayi and the PPRA, whom she cited as the first and second defendants respectively.
The PPRA fired Mohlala-Mulaudzi in December after a myriad of misconduct charges levelled against her.
The charges included the alleged irregular appointment of senior managers and the alleged receipt of a kickback from a service provider who developed an App for the property watchdog.
According to the employer, Mohlala-Mulaudzi had also appointed the App developer without following due process and proceeded to pay the company R800K. Later she refused to pay them the balance of R1.2-million, citing that the company had not delivered on its promises.
The PPRA further fingered Mohlala-Mulaudzi for allegedly procuring study guides for estate agents that “were not delivered”, and she also got slapped with a charge of misusing public funds to buy food for 120 PPRA staff for a two-day meeting and “mingling” session with a delegation of three people from Namibia.
Mohlala-Mulaudzi, a former SABC board chairperson, who is no stranger to litigation battles, denies all the charges against her. She vowed to fight to “clear my name” and get her job back.
The first hurdle ahead is a CCMA hearing later this month where she drags the PPRA over “unfair dismissal”. She was shown the door in December last year, two months ahead of her disciplinary hearing that never sat.
“Any summary termination without a disciplinary hearing is both unlawful and illegal…Our laws are clear that for the termination of a contract to happen, there must be procedural and substantive fairness.
“Procedurally, they terminated me without a disciplinary hearing. Substantively, the charges they have brought against me, I say, are not valid charges.”
Mohlala-Mulaudzi said she suspected that her employer was planning to sneak in her abandoned disciplinary hearing when they get to the CCMA to lengthen the process until her contract expires next year.
This will unfold while she awaits a decision on whether she will be granted direct access to the Constitutional Court. She seeks to argue before the highest court that the decision to send her packing was unlawful.
Mohlala-Mulaudzi approached the apex court after the Labour Court in February refused her “urgent” application to have her termination overturned and sent her to the ordinary court.
“Instead of going to the Labour Appeals Court, we [and her legal team] then went straight to the constitutional court because this is affecting my right to economic activity.
“How am I expected to live? What comes with the termination of a contract is a strategy so that you do not have money to pay legal costs.”
On the final battleground, a full-bench high court will hear arguments why she believes it was irregular, unlawful, and illegal for Kubayi to appoint the current PPRA board.
Mohlala-Mulaudzi’s attempts to rush to the Supreme Court of Appeal on this front last year after losing a high court application were referred back.
“I am 100% confident that the full bench will find that this board was irregularly appointed and therefore all the decisions that they have made have to be set aside, including the decision to suspend me, and my problems will be solved.”
She is convinced that she is a victim of blowing the whistle on the controversial PPRA chairperson Steven Ngubeni, whom she blames for her troubles with the regulator.
She said Kubayi ignored Ngubeni’s history of financial misconduct when she appointed him to the job.
She said her trouble started after she lodged complaints to both the Public Protector and Public Service Commission against the appointment of Ngubeni, the controversial ex-National Youth Development Agency and Gauteng Gambling Board boss.
She argued that it was “strange” that a person with such a checkered history as Ngubeni would be employed in a position of responsibility.
“He was appointed in November 2021; in May of that same year, he was suspended from the Gauteng Gambling Board for financial impropriety. The CFO [of the gambling board] even deposed an affidavit where he wrote about Ngubeni’s financial shenanigans.
“I asked how this person got appointed as chairperson. Somewhere, somehow, he found out. Then something very strange happened when I appeared in parliament where he and the minister rebuked me. This after the DA asked, ‘is the chairperson going to be suspended today?’”
She was adamant that Ngubeni suspended her as a fightback strategy because “as soon as the DA asked that question, he sent me a message saying he would want to meet me that afternoon and I knew [I was in trouble]”.
Mohlala-Mulaudzi refused to meet Ngubeni that afternoon, saying she was going to address a racism workshop in the property sector which was also taking place in the Western Cape.
But Ngubeni apparently told her to abandon that mission and summoned her to a restaurant where news of her inevitable suspension was broken to her.
“I am fighting two battles. I want the termination lifted so I can go back as CEO but to insist that the DC hearing must go ahead so I can clear my name,” said Mohlala-Mulaudzi whose war with PPRA has been going on for a year.
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