Yonela Diko
After Helen Zille published her “Inside Government: The ‘Unholy Triad’ of Gangs, Cops and Elections in the WC” piece on November 23, 2015, where she effectively pleaded on behalf of Paul Scheepers for a return of seized equipment at his office by the Hawks, we asked a question in our response statement, why is Zille “risking everything” for Scheepers?
Zille had gone on to say: “Having taken everything they can from the equipment seized from Scheepers, they will return it to him, and close the case down, in the hope that the allegations against them will also die – or at least avoid their possible verification.”
It is now past March 15, 2016 and the Western Cape High Court has dismissed Scheepers’ application for the State to return items seized from his Southfield business premises on May 2015. This is an indictment on her.
Zille has been so single-minded in her self-indulgent view about a plot that involves various stakeholders, led by the ANC, to reverse her tentative hold on power in the province that she has been willing to go to all lengths and work with any criminal that can give her hope for a different outcome.
It is an outright lie that she did not know that Scheepers was a cop, particularly because in the very same letter she mentions cops who have always indulged her about her being spied on, even when she was still mayor of Cape Town.
Zille has always depended on cops to give her credible information about the work of other cops.
She hired Scheepers for the very reason that he is a cop.
Since Zille was mayor, she has always had one use for hiring spy agents. It is not to debug cellphones to check whether she is the one being spied on, but to be the one doing the spying.
It is Helen Zille who had hired Philip du Toit to spy on former councillor Badih Chaaban at the time Chaaban faced claims of bribery and corruption.
The Democratic Alliance has been operating on a “we did not know” policy for a long time now – a strange phenomenon, given their due diligence when it comes to ANC officials:
l Helen Zille did not know that Scheepers was a police officer.
l They did not know that Scheepers operated Eagle Eye Solution without police permission since 2012.
l They did not know that he had an SAPS Grabber, a powerful surveillance tool used to eavesdrop on cellphone communications.
For a government that claims a certain level of competence, this is beyond incompetence, it’s dangerous.
The truth, however, is that they knew all this information about Scheepers, and they hired him for the very reason.
In the same letter, Zille, fearing her own possible arrest for having hired Scheepers, a man facing over 55 charges in the high court, which involved fraud, perjury and contravening the Electronic Communications Act, puts her own hopes in the courts.
“Let them come and arrest me, she says, I will get bail, appear in court, have a fair trial, and prove (again), that there is a malevolent political agenda behind these charges.”
On the other hand, when the same police had seized material in Scheepers’ offices, including an “SAPS Grabber” which belongs to the state, and by law cannot be possessed by an individual, she does not leave the courts to decide on whether the seizure was legitimate or not, she effectively decides for the courts on behalf of Scheepers that all the material seized by police at Scheepers’ premises must be returned to him at once.
It is here that we asked, why is Zille risking so much for Scheepers, including her premiership?
Well, the courts have decided.
l Diko is ANC Western Cape media liaison