By Carien Du Plessis
The ANC has admitted to spying on high-level meetings of the DA.
ANC treasurer-general Mathews Phosa told the Cape Argus on Tuesday that the party had "moles" in the DA who fed the ANC information about the party's election campaign strategies, but he denied that phones had been tapped, as this "would be illegal".
He alleged that the DA also spied on the ruling party, by taking ANC members to lunch to get information from them. The DA has shrugged off the allegations.
Phosa said the ANC had learnt that the DA's campaign strategies were aimed at creating negative publicity about ANC leaders and their personal lives, rather than policy issues.
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"We monitor them very closely all the time; there is no policy coming out of it," he said.
Phosa referred specifically to an open letter from DA leader Helen Zille to ANC president Jacob Zuma last week, asking him to step down as the ruling party's presidential candidate because of the corruption charges he is facing.
"We have got members of the DA who talk to us, let me tell you. That is part of how we know (what is going on in the DA) - and (we also have) other ways," he said.
"Let me tell you, the DA will be shocked if we say we have information on all your members and this is what they are doing," he said.
Phosa said one of the items that had been picked up by the ANC's spies was that DA parliamentary leader Sandra Botha was leaving her position for an ambassadorial position in Prague because she was unhappy with the DA's "negative electioneering".
He said Botha was in favour of a less confrontational approach to the ANC, like that of the Freedom Front Plus.
But Botha said on Monday night that the ANC's intelligence was "very dumb", because "this is the last thing on earth that I would have said".
She said she was leaving because she thought it would be a good opportunity and a nice change from her farm in Viljoenskroon in the Free State.
On Tuesday DA chief executive Ryan Coetzee laughed off Phosa's claims, calling them "nonsense". He said the ANC had nothing to gain from spying on the DA.
"This is what happens if you grow up in the world of the ANC's conspiracy theories and you are accused of treason by your own president," he said, referring to Phosa's being falsely implicated in a plot to assassinate Thabo Mbeki.
The DA did not have the knowhow to spy on the ANC.
Zille's comments about Zuma were justified, because Zuma had more than 700 corruption charges to answer to, and yet wanted to be president, Coetzee said.
- This article was originally published on page 5 of Cape Argus on February 24, 2009
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