A former Bolt senior manager is scheduled to square off with the e-hailing service at the CCMA after she was fired for gross negligence by failing to attend a meeting in Parliament.
Tusi Fokane, who was Bolt’s manager of public policy: South Africa and is described as the company’s senior lobbyist countrywide, will face her erstwhile employer at the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration.
She was expected to attend a meeting in Parliament in March 2020 shortly before the start of the first Covid-19-enforced national lockdown. In Parliament, the meeting was due to deliberate on the National Land Transport Amendment Bill and the gathering was extremely important to Bolt as it was likely to seriously impact on its business during the then anticipated Covid-19 lockdown.
Instead, Fokane attended the meeting virtually from Johannesburg. According to Bolt, Fokane was afforded adequate time to return to Cape Town to attend the meeting in Parliament in relation to the bill, even though it was at short notice. In addition, she was not instructed by Bolt to attend the meeting, but it appears the company expected her to do so.
However, Fokane insisted that the meeting to deliberate on the bill was not public and Bolt did not intend to make any contributions, and there would have been an opportunity for her to interact with the policy-makers even if she was present.
On day of the meeting, one of her bosses at the time, Dominick Moxon-Tritsch, who was the company’s vice-president for regulation and public policy, sent a message to their internal WhatApp group stating that the meeting on the bill should have been attended by Bolt, and not represented by its consultants.
Her other boss, Kenneth Anye, who was Bolt’s head of public policy: Africa at the time, had earlier instructed her to attend two-day training in Cape Town days before the meeting on the bill was scheduled. Anye then instructed her to return to Johannesburg and she did as told, but on her return she became aware that an important meeting would be held in Parliament.
Bolt insisted that Fokane was afforded adequate time to return to Cape Town to attend the meeting in Parliament on the National Land Transport Amendment Bill.
Later, in March 2020, Moxon-Tritsch instructed Fokane to describe the steps she had taken to ensure that the e-hailing service’s drivers were designated as essential services, to allow them to work, during the Covid-19 lockdown.
Moxon-Tritsch also asked her to set up generally the steps she had taken with Ethicore Consulting and Advisory Services, a company she was entitled to instruct to perform services relating to her area of work on behalf of Bolt. In her response, she did not specify what steps she had taken, and what steps Ethicore had taken, or those taken through written correspondence and telephonically.
Bolt then accused her of misleading the company and Fokane conceded that her e-mail was misleading, but only in one respect ‒ that she mistakenly referred to the Minister of Health when she should have referred to the Department of Health.
She was later issued with a final written warning for failing to attend the meeting Parliament, but it was withdrawn and instead she received a notice to attend a disciplinary hearing, where she would face three charges. Fokane was charged for her failure to attend the meeting in Parliament, and this was formulated as a refusal to obey a lawful instruction to attend the meeting, alternatively gross negligence by failing not attending.
Bolt also accused her of misleading the company or being dishonest, which she accepted but only in one respect as well ‒ taking unauthorised leave, to which she pleaded guilty.
The matter was referred to the CCMA, but earlier this month Labour Court Judge Reynaud Daniels found that the commissioner committed a vast number of fundamental errors.
”The commissioner did not take into consideration that the first charge was drafted in the alternative. This error was so fundamental that it tainted the entire arbitration. The arbitrator does not apply his mind at all to whether the evidence proved gross negligence,” reads the judgment.
Judge Daniels ordered that “the arbitration award under CCMA case reference GAJB10510-20 is reviewed and set aside. The CCMA is directed to enrol the dismissal dispute for arbitration before a commissioner other than the first respondent (commissioner)”.
Fokane’s lawyer Kgwadi Mphepya did not respond to questions from the Sunday Independent.