Gayton McKenzie, the minister of sport, arts and culture in the Government of National Unity (GNU) and leader of the Patriotic Alliance (PA), is known for big opinions, big talk and big promises.
Immediately after being appointed as a minister, McKenzie made one of his boldest pledges yet: he would donate his full ministerial salary to a foundation he would establish in the name of the missing Western Cape schoolgirl Joshlin Smith.
McKenzie is not the first politician to publicly pledge their salaries, or at least a portion of it, to a charity.
In 1995, Nelson Mandela announced that he would donate a third of his presidential salary to the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund. In 2018, Cyril Ramaphosa followed suit, pledging half of his presidential salary to a children's fund managed by the Nelson Mandela Foundation.
Shortly after being appointed, McKenzie told journalists: “One hundred percent of my salary I’m giving to the Joshlin Smith Foundation for Missing Children for the duration of my stay in Parliament.” “One hundred percent of my salary. Not 80% or 50%.”
Yet, almost simultaneously, McKenzie began making other promises about where his salary would go.
Daily Maverick looked into the matter.
McKenzie’s history of big promises
This is not the first time McKenzie has promised to donate his salary to good causes, explaining that he is independently wealthy enough from investments to do so.
When he became mayor of the Central Karoo district municipality in April 2022, McKenzie made headlines with the same pledge regarding his mayoral salary. “I will donate 100% of my salary,” he tweeted at the time.
Did that happen?
The South African Communist Party (SACP) reported McKenzie to the Public Protector less than six months later for a raft of allegations, including the claim that he had misled the public about donating his salary to charity.
“We therefore wish to submit that the mayorship of Mr Gayton McKenzie has been based on lies, cheating, abuse of power and maladministration,” the SACP alleged.
In response, McKenzie tweeted a table on August 31 2022 which he claimed showed the donations he had made to charity from his salary, ranging from a netball club sponsorship to a donation to the “first person to be in the top 30 of Miss SA from Central Karoo”, to travel costs for local teachers to attend a union conference.
McKenzie did not provide any further evidence, such as bank statements, that these payments had been made.
Beaufort West community activist and outspoken McKenzie critic Brian Jooste last week confirmed that at least some of his claimed donations seemed legitimate, particularly those for netball and soccer sponsorships.
However, Jooste expressed doubts about other McKenzie claims. McKenzie also claimed that he would sell the mayoral car and use the proceeds to buy an ambulance. “There are no ambulances,” said Jooste.
“This guy is very contradictory. We don’t know what to believe.”
Other claims inflated
Bolstering the idea that McKenzie’s public statements should sometimes be taken with a pinch of salt is the evidence that he inflated claims made about his time as Central Karoo mayor.
In May 2023, Daily Maverick’s Suné Payne visited the Central Karoo municipality to fact-check McKenzie’s claims about service delivery under his mayoral tenure.
One of his claims was, “Under my leadership, five of [six public] pools [in the Beaufort West area] are working.”
When Daily Maverick visited later that month, just one pool was operational — and dirty.
McKenzie also claimed that before his ascent to the mayoralty, “people [in Beaufort West] used the veld [to go to the toilet] and today they are using flushing toilets”.
This was also inaccurate. Beaufort West did not have a problem with bucket toilets before McKenzie’s arrival — except for some Transnet-owned properties in Leeu-Gamka and Nelspoort. McKenzie’s administration provided flushing toilets to around 20 households.
Where is the Joshlin Smith Foundation?
McKenzie made headlines once again on 8 July when he promised his full ministerial salary to an NGO he said he would establish called the Joshlin Smith Foundation.
He told News24 that he had asked an accounting firm to register this entity.
McKenzie said: “The process is well under way and shall be finalised soon. I was deeply affected by the Joshlin Smith case and many other cases of missing children. It is truly heart-wrenching… The foundation will not be run by the Patriotic Alliance. It will be independently managed and registered as a Section 18 non-profit organisation.”
Yet confusingly, on the very same day, McKenzie promised his first ministerial salary to an art gallery in Kagiso, after visiting the gallery and being moved by its financial plight.
“I have instructed lawyers to pay over my first salary to this gallery,” said McKenzie.
Another month, another McKenzie promise: in early August, McKenzie said he was donating his second salary to a motorsport event.
In a video posted to Facebook by the National Motorsport Mzansi account, McKenzie was shown saying: “To show you how serious I am, to show you this is not just a politician speaking, the prize here today: I got my second salary today. They paid me R100,000. And within five minutes, I’m going to donate that R100,000 as prize money for the organisers who arranged this event today. My whole salary will be paid in.”
What’s the story, honourable minister?
Daily Maverick searched the Department of Social Development’s database of registered South African NPOs and could find no trace of any foundation in Joshlin Smith’s name.
Company records similarly produced no trace of the promised foundation.
Daily Maverick approached PA spokesperson Steve Motale for clarification and received no response.
A second attempt to clarify the issue was made by contacting another PA official, who will remain nameless, who requested that we “kindly appreciate that our national spokesperson, Mr Motale, is attending to more important matters than yours”.
A third attempt via McKenzie’s ministerial spokesperson, Cassiday Rangata-Jacobs, finally bore fruit.
Rangata-Jacobs told Daily Maverick the matter was “not complicated”, stating: “The minister has undertaken to give his salary to charity and that is what he has been doing.
“As you have correctly determined, the Joshlin Smith Foundation is still being established. His salary will be deposited there once everything is in place. In the meantime, his salary is being spent on various good causes, including those you have already identified.”
When Daily Maverick asked Rangata-Jacobs if it were possible to receive any documentary evidence of McKenzie’s donations to charity, however, we were ghosted.
The final answer may surprise you…
In the apparent absence of any appetite from McKenzie’s team to put this matter to bed for good by providing receipts, we decided to head for the source(s): namely, the entities to which McKenzie claimed to have donated money since becoming a minister.
The art project which had so touched McKenzie is the Backyard Art Gallery in Kagiso. We were unable to reach anyone there by phone, so Daily Maverick visited in person.
There, we spoke to artist and gallery owner Kgosi Khumalo, who established the gallery in a property bequeathed to him by his parents and described its financial upkeep as a “struggle”.
Khumalo said it was the second art gallery ever established in a South African township.
He confirmed that McKenzie had contributed R40,000 to the gallery “to buy materials, to get artworks framed”.
Khumalo said McKenzie contributed a further R10,000 to at least one Kagiso artist.
“We appreciated the 40K because it is taking us somewhere,” he said.
Having confirmed that McKenzie did indeed donate at least some of his first month’s salary to the cause he claimed, we turned to the second.
Ismail Peck, the CEO of World of Motorsport ZA, had only glowing words for the new sports minister.
“On the day when Gayton came there, he said he was going to give R100,000 of his salary to the cause of the day. Within 30 minutes after the announcement, they asked for bank details. They transferred the money over to the organisers, there was prize money given out to the winners, 10% of the money went to charity, there was very little left and whatever was left was used for the facility where we ran the [event],” said Peck.
“We are so happy that he’s proving to everyone that he’s doing what he says he’s doing. A lot of people doubt it and I am absolutely chuffed for motorsport that he’s doing what he’s doing.
“Never ever in this land has there ever been something like that done — we are always just trying to raise funds and we are always jumping around trying to get sponsors and stuff, and that was absolutely awesome from him.”
In summary, Mzansi: Gayton McKenzie has not yet registered his promised charity for missing children, but he does seem to be following through on his pledges to donate at least portions of his salary to deserving causes. Good GNUs indeed. DM