NPA yet to decide on SACP 'donation'

The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) is yet to make a final decision on how to proceed with a claim that a R500 000 donation given to South African Communist Party (SACP) general secretary Blade Nzimande had gone missing.

Meanwhile, police said on Friday they had been told there would be no prosecution.

Following a report in the Times on the missing donation, Gauteng police spokesperson Superintendent Eugene Opperman said: “They [the NPA] decided not to prosecute.”

This was after consulting police Commissioner Norman Taioe, who had been handling the matter, Opperman said.

But Tlali Tlali, spokesperson for the NPA, said on Friday: “The head of the special commercial-crimes unit, advocate Chris Jordaan, has not received a communiqué from the responsible officers that carries a recommendation. He has yet to take a final decision.”

This is expected to happen next week.

Tlali said it was NPA policy only to comment on final decisions, and not recommendations.

Last year businessman Charles Modise asked police to find out what had happened to R500 000 he had donated to the SACP, via Nzimande.

Nzimande denied receiving the money, in plastic bags, from former SACP central executive committee member Willie Madisha, who was also president of alliance partner the Congress of South African Trade Unions at the time.

But Madisha refuted this at a later press conference, saying he did give Nzimande the money.

An internal investigation at the SACP cleared Nzimande and Madisha was removed from office in the SACP.

Madisha was also removed as president of Cosatu, as well as from his post in the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union, citing the “donation” claim as well as him not vocalising the union body’s line of support for African National Congress president Jacob Zuma.

However, Modise is reported to have said that fired SACP treasurer Phillip Dexter and Madisha put him up to it to discredit Nzimande.

The Times reported that both Madisha and Dexter denied this.—Sapa