DA appeals non-response on Nkandla

PRESIDENT Jacob Zuma's home in Nkandla Picture: DOCTOR NGCOBO

PRESIDENT Jacob Zuma's home in Nkandla Picture: DOCTOR NGCOBO

Published Jun 23, 2013

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Johannesburg - The DA has appealed to the public works department about its non-response to an application for access to the Nkandla report under the Promotion of Access to Information Act.

The appeal was made after the department failed to table the report in Parliament, the Democratic Alliance said in a statement on Sunday .

“This appeal is supported by the recent revelation that the report, now classified as 'top secret', is being kept secret in terms of the Minimum Information Security Standards (MISS),” said DA parliamentary leader Lindiwe Mazibuko.

“This is a Cabinet policy and has no basis in law,” she said.

Mazibuko said she had yet to receive a response to her initial application, made on January 29, following Public Works Minister Thulas Nxesi's announcement on the findings of the report.

Mazibuko said she withheld appealing the initial non-response out of good faith, believing the report would be tabled in Parliament and made public.

“It is now clear, given these recent revelations, that the minister has never had any intention of making this report public.

“The fact that Minister of State Security Siyabonga Cwele has intervened, or has been requested to intervene, by labelling the report as 'top secret' points to the deliberate attempts to bury this report and prevent its findings from being known,” she said.

In January, Nxesi announced that the government had spent R206

million on security upgrades and consultants at President Jacob Zuma's private home in Nkandla, KwaZulu-Natal.

On Friday, it was reported that Nxesi told Parliament this week that Cwele had classified the report, which was drawn up by a presidential task team, in terms of the MISS.

This meant that not even Auditor General Terence Nombembe or Public Protector Thuli Madonsela would be able to see the report.

In a letter to National Assembly Speaker Max Sisulu, dated June 19, Nxesi reportedly said he would submit the Nkandla report - on Cwele's behalf - to joint standing committee on intelligence chairman Cecil Burgess.

Nxesi said Cwele had been unable to provide the Nombembe and Madonsela with copies of the report “owing to its classification as top secret”, but was “attending to the challenge that it presented”.

After getting legal opinion, Sisulu said he would allow the Nkandla report to be considered behind closed doors by only the intelligence committee. - Sapa

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