Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini is again in breach of her oath of office, this time after she frankly admitted to the Sunday Times that she does not believe action should be taken against Deputy Higher Education and Training Minister Mduduzi Manana because there are many more government leaders and officials guilty of more serious crimes than him, the IFP said on Sunday.
“Clearly, Minister Dlamini has forgotten that it is her responsibility as the custodian of government’s gender-based violence programmes to ensure that those programmes are a success by ensuring that perpetrators are identified, apprehended and successfully prosecuted,” IFP MP Liezl van der Merwe and MPL Thembeni KaMadlopha-Mthethwa said on behalf of the IFP Women’s Brigade.
It was now clear that Dlamini’s role as president of the ANC Women’s League, where she was “deployed to defend all sorts of immorality within the ANC”, had rendered her unfit to be social development minister, they said in a statement.
If not, Dlamini would have ensured that those who were known to her and who were guilty of worse crimes against women than Manana, as she claimed in the interview, would have already faced the full might of the law.
“It is again the IFP’s view that leaders of the ANC government continue to expose themselves as individuals that only pay lip-service to fighting violence against women.
“The late Karabo Mokoena and the late Reeva Steenkamp’s funerals were treated as mere public relations opportunities by some, whereas the Manana victim is now meeting the same fate as the late Khwezi did.
"Such deplorable treatment of victims of violence is reprehensible and shameful to say the least, and must be condemned in the strongest possible terms.
“We call on Minister Dlamini to retire and rather become the full-time president of the ANC Women’s League. Failing which, President (Jacob) Zuma should take action against both Minister Dlamini and Deputy Minister Manana if his government is serious about combating the crisis that is violence against women and children in South Africa,” Van der Merwe and KaMadlopha-Mthethwa said.
Manana, 34, allegedly assaulted Mandisa Duma at a Fourways, Johannesburg, nightclub last weekend. He has subsequently issued a public apology but said he had acted following “extreme provocation”.
Manana was granted R5 000 bail in the Randburg Magistrate’s Court on Thursday on two counts of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm. The case was postponed to September 13.