House chairperson of committees, Cedric Frolick, wrote to the chairpersons of the home affairs, mineral resources, public enterprises and transport portfolio committees on Thursday, advising them to immediately engage with the respective ministers.

It was important to get down to the bottom of the allegations within the parameters of the Assembly Rules, Parliament spokesperson Molotho Mothapo said on Monday.

"In the light of the recent accusations of state capture linked to alleged emails involving a number of ministers, parliamentary committees have been directed to urgently probe the allegations and report back to the National Assembly," Mothapo said.

The ministers are Professor Hlengiwe Mkhize, Mosebenzi Zwane, Lynne Browne and Joe Maswanganyi respectively.

The Home Affairs and Transport ministries, however, received new ministers in President Jacob Zuma's Cabinet reshuffle in March. The former ministers of those two portfolios were new finance minister Malusi Gigaba and Dipuo Peters, who resigned from Parliament in April.

"While no specific deadline has been set for the submission of the outcome of these investigations, the committees have been urged to begin with the work and report their recommendations to the House urgently," Mothapo continued.

It was Parliament's responsibility to shoulder the constitutional duty of ensuring that matters of major public interest are dealt with as expected by the people, he added.

The move comes on the back of the Democratic Alliance's application for Parliament to establish an ad hoc committee of inquiry into state capture.

DA chief whip John Steenhuisen told News24 on Monday that the move was a cynical attempt to bypass the call for an ad hoc committee.

He said a "bombshell" has landed on the ANC's desk in the form of the emails, and they should be dealing with it through a multi-party process that can make definitive findings.

He also felt the move was in bad faith, as the issue of the ad hoc committee is still due to be brought up at Wednesday's Chief Whips Forum meeting.

They would raise the point at the meeting on Wednesday, he said.

News24