Cape Town - Accusations and counter-accusations flew across the Provincial Legislature on Thursday as senior members of the ANC and DA accused each other of being involved with gangs.
The DA says it has affidavits from former gangsters that link ANC provincial chairman Marius Fransman and others to organised crime involving murder, drug smuggling and gun running.
The ANC says it has recordings of Community Safety MEC Dan Plato befriending gangsters in an effort to defame ANC ministers.
ANC MPL Max Ozinsky opened the debate on Thursday and led the attack on Plato.
“I am also concerned that the MEC would repeat such lies without attempting to verify whether they are true or not,” he said.
He said when he met Plato last Friday to discuss the allegations against him he was shown an affidavit.
“A self-confessed gangster alleges that Marius Fransman, (SAPS) General Jeremy Vearey and I attended a meeting in April 2009 with him and others, and in this meeting drugs were exchanged for guns,” Ozinsky told the legislature.
Ozinsky said he did not know the gangster and denied being at such a meeting.
“One can only guess as to the reasons why the gangster would want to peddle such lies,” he said.
Ozinsky rejected the allegation as “completely untruthful, libellous and defamatory”.
The ANC has said it will lodge a complaint with the Hawks and the public protector raising its concerns about Plato and claiming to have proof of his involvement with gangsters.
DA MPL Mark Wiley, chairman of the legislature’s committee on community safety, led a counter-attack against Fransman: “Over the last few years various ANC leaders have pledged to make the Western Cape ungovernable. An alleged ANC plot led by a deputy minister in the Zuma cabinet to destabilise the Western Cape through illegal and unconstitutional means was uncovered.
“A startling report compiled of affidavits of gangsters and others, deposed independently to lawyers, implicated Fransman and a host of other high-ranking officials in activities that can only be described as organised crime, involving murder, drug smuggling and gun running, to name a few of the alleged crimes,” said Wiley.
He said Fransman came “out of the blue” with counter-accusations that the DA was “fabricating witnesses, consorting with gangsters, sedition and even treason”.
Wiley said Plato and Premier Helen Zille were in the process of handing over documents about these allegations against Fransman and others to the authorities for investigation.
When the Cape Times asked Zille who these authorities were, she said she would hold a press conference on this “in due course”.
ANC MPL Mcebisi Skwatsha said the DA found itself in a “risky position”.
“On the one hand it discredits the police and undermines the public trust in our men in blue that leads to more cop killings, and on the other it befriends the very criminals killing and attacking our police and people,” he said.
Plato at first left other DA members to field the rebuttal.
After Skwatsha’s remarks that he had met with gangsters he interjected: “Yes, I have done so.”
“Is your party on their payroll?” he asked ANC MPLs.
Cape Times