Parliament is going to count how often Sport, Arts and Culture Minister Gayton McKenzie and his director-general stayed away from committee meetings.
On Tuesday, the chair of the Portfolio Committee on Sport, Arts and Culture, Joe McGluwa, asked the committee secretary to compile a list of apologies.
It will cover McKenzie, Deputy Minister Peace Mabe and director-general Dr Cynthia Khumalo.
MP Tebogo Letsie asked for the list. He said Khumalo is often missing when the committee deals with difficult issues.
“I think there’s a pattern there that we must look at,” Letsie said.
“Every time we have important meetings with controversial decisions taken from their side, she seems not to be available. It’s either she’s overseas, or she can’t log in, or she fell ill immediately,” said Letsie.
He said there was a meeting about SAFA where she fell ill that morning.
PMG’s record of a June 2025 committee meeting with SAFA shows Khumalo attended that one.
Khumalo was not at Tuesday’s meeting. The committee secretary said she is on international travel from 27 September to 8 October.
McKenzie logged on at the start. He said he had been sick in bed for three days and was waiting for his doctor.
“I’ll be in and out of this meeting but as soon as he leaves I’ll join,” said McKenzie.
He left before MPs could question him on his decision to cancel a merger of arts and heritage entities.
MP Ethel Nkosi said the committee should not have accepted his apology. She also said there was nothing else it could do, because he was ill.
“Most of the questions need him to be on top of the situation, unfortunately he is not here. And coincidentally, even the DG is not here,” Nkosi said.
McGluwa also criticised the ministry for sending apologies at the last minute.
“I see it has now become, Minister, a tendency that two days or a day before the meeting the department and the ministry submit apologies,” he said.
This is not the first time McKenzie’s attendance has been raised.
In June 2025, ANC MP Gaolatlhe Kgabo told the committee: “I think this is the fifth meeting, if not the sixth, where the minister is not attending.”
McKenzie was at a BRICS ministers’ meeting in Brazil at the time.
“I never run away from accountability,” he said then.
In August this year, McKenzie left a committee meeting early, just as MPs began asking about the R31 million spent on the World Cup delegation.
DA MP Potgieter said at the time: “Running from Parliament is unforgivable. He can run, but he cannot hide from this.”
On Tuesday, Kgabo accused him of running away again.
Now the MPs want McKenzie and Khumalo to appear in person at a follow-up meeting.
“The substantive people must come and respond here,” Letsie said.