Johannesburg - Police will investigate Communications Minister Dina Pule and three others, including businessman Phosane Mngqibisa, for alleged corruption, following a DA request last month.
Siya Qoza, spokesman for the Department of Communications, said on Monday that Pule would “co-operate fully with competent institutions in all investigations”.
He added that Pule had not been distracted from her departmental work, despite now being the subject of three different investigations.
On April 10, DA MP Marian Shinn submitted an affidavit at Cape Town Central police station, asking for an investigation of Pule and three others for alleged corruption in appointments made at the Department of Communications and its entities.
In addition to Pule, Shinn also asked the police, at the time, to investigate SABC chief financial officer Gugu Duda, businessman Phosane Mngqibisa and SABC group chief executive Lulama Mokhobo.
Pule is currently under investigation by Parliament's oversight committee on ethics and Public Protector Thuli Madonsela.
Both investigations deal with alleged irregularities when her department hosted the 2012 ICT Indaba in Cape Town.
But Shinn’s affidavit requested a broader investigation.
She asked police to investigate whether Pule’s associate, businessman Mngqibisa, influenced appointments made in the Department of Communication or any of its various entities.
As Mngqibisa is not a public representative, Shinn has asked the police to investigate, as “he can’t be held to account by the government”.
The allegations stem from a Sunday Times article that alleged Mngqibisa helped appoint people to key government positions through his relationship with Pule.
Shortly after the DA submitted the affidavit with the police, the ANC spokesman Cobus Grobler said Shinn was “doing a fishing trawl and hoping to catch a whale”.
“It’s mostly a DA thing to lay charges against other politicians,” added Grobler.
He did acknowledge, however, that the ANC had “on occasion” laid charges against the DA.
Both political parties have, in fact, laid charges against each other for a variety of reasons in the past three years.
ANC vs Helen Zille
On November 21, 2012, Western Cape ANC provincial secretary Songezo Mjongile, along with provincial legislature chief whip Pierre Uys and Boland party chairman Pat Marran, lodged a complaint of incitement against DA leader Helen Zille at Cape Town Central police station.
The ANC said comments Zille had made, including Twitter posts, during violent protest in Western Cape’s agricultural sector had fanned and fuelled flames. The party said some of Zille’s comments could incite farmers to retaliate against workers.
DA vs Tony Yengeni
In November 2010, DA MP Tim Harris laid charges at Cape Town Central police station against Tony Yengeni on four counts of breaching the companies act. Harris said the act stated that anyone convicted of fraud or corruption would be disqualified from being a director of a company. Yengeni was jailed for fraud in 2004.
In response to Harris’s charge, Yengeni resigned from six directorships. In late 2011, Yengeni was convicted on four counts of breaching the companies act, and paid a fine.
DA vs Bheki Cele
IN August 2011, DA federal chairman Wilmot James and justice spokeswoman Debbie Schaffer laid criminal charges at Claremont police station against then national police commissioner Bheki Cele, as well as Gwen Mahlangu-Nkabinde, Roux Shabangu and Siviwe Dongwana. The four had been implicated in a public protector report into leases for new police headquarters. The case is still being probed. This delay pointed to a “lack of credibility in the justice system”, Schaffer said yesterday.
ANC vs DA municipality
The SpeciaL Investigating Unit is currently investigating alleged corruption in the DA-governed Swellendam Municipality. This comes after ANC member of the provincial legislature Lynne Brown wrote a letter to President Jacob Zuma, asking him to launch a probe into the matter. “Generally, the Special Investigating Unit investigates state departments. It’s on that basis that I wrote to President Jacob Zuma,” Brown said on Monday. The investigation was launched on February 14 last year.
The Star