Pretoria – Nkele Molapo, a DA member of the Gauteng legislature who was expelled from the party after opening a sexual harassment case against its interim provincial leader Solly Msimanga, said on Monday that she was legally contesting her expulsion.
“After studying the DA’s irrational ruling and obtaining legal opinion on the same, I have decided to file for a review in the court of law, so as to have my case heard by an unbiased, fair and just body,” Molapo said in a statement.
“After subjecting myself to all internal processes, approaching the court of law naturally becomes the next step.”
She said the DA’s internal disciplinary hearing panels were made up of politicians themselves and “therefore a notion that these processes are firewalled against politics is a lie”.
“Not only is the chairperson of the Federal Legal Commission (FLC) a member of the DA in Tshwane, but the chairperson of the panel that heard my appeal is married to a member of the DA in the same region. Both are au fait with the politics in the region,” Molapo added.
The DA said earlier this month it had terminated Molapo’s membership following a three-year internal wrangle over claims that she leaked confidential information in 2017 to Julius Malema, leader of the EFF, via a screenshot.
Molapo said the investigation which led to her expulsion was biased, with a predetermined outcome.
She cited an investigation report leaked by DA Gauteng chairperson Mike Moriarty in which the investigating officer conceded that “proving the nexus between the screenshot and Ms Molapo's device will be difficult and might require some fancy footwork”.
“How the FLC and subsequently FedEx (DA federal executive) supported such a flawed report recommending that I be charged, even after Mr Julius Malema said on record that he didn’t get the screenshot from me remains a mystery. The court must summon Mr Malema so that he can divulge where he got the screenshot,” Molapo said.
She said it was not true that Msimanga had initiated charges against her in the screenshot case, asserting that the DA was bringing the former mayor of the Tshwane municipality into the matter in order to cast aspersions on her sexual assault charges against him.
“To say that I’m disappointed in how the DA handled both the screenshot and sexual harassment cases would be an understatement (and) it is for precisely that reason that I have now left both in the hands of neutral, unbiased bodies. The sexual assault case is with the SAPS and the screenshot case is before the courts,” Molapo said.
The DA has said the timing of Molapo reporting the alleged sexual harassment, which Msimanga denies, was questionable, and that furthermore she was undergoing a “serious disciplinary hearing” for leaking DA political strategy in Tshwane.
African News Agency (ANA)