On Wednesday, Democratic Alliance spokesperson on communications, Marian Shinn submitted an affidavit to the police asking that they investigate and possibly open a criminal charge against Pule, her boyfriend who is also head of Khemano Events, Phosane Mngqibisa, suspended SABC chief financial officer Gugu Duda and group chief executive officer of the SABC, Lulama Makhobo.
Shinn approached the Cape Town police citing Section 34 (1) of the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act, which stipulates that “any person who holds a position of authority and who knows or ought reasonably to have known or suspected that any other person has committed an offence has a duty to report it”.
“We believe there’s circumstantial evidence of corrupt activities within the department with appointments made and we believe this warrants further investigation by the police who have more powers of subpoena and investigation than we do,” said Shinn.
“If they find anything, they can then lay the charges,” she added.
The DA’s claims are mainly based on article by the Sunday Times newspaper, which claimed that Mngqibisa had “engineered getting friends and relatives on the boards of the Post Office, Sentech, Usaasa and the SABC with the full knowledge of Pule”.
'Something wrong'
The paper also reported that Mngqibisa had also “engineered” the appointments of “close relative” Makhobo to the post of SABC chief executive and Duda as chief financial officer at the corporation.
Shinn said while the article was the main source, there were five independent sources that contributed to it including a law firm that has already submitted a document for a court case. “There is a fair amount of good substantial evidence there,” she said.
She said beyond newspaper articles, some of Dina’s decisions and practices over the years were further evidence that something was wrong in the department.
Dina rejected the allegations raised in the Sunday Times article and accused the newspaper of breaching the press code by running what is clearly a politically motivated smear campaign against the minister. She threatened to approach the press ombud for recourse.
Pule is under investigation by the public protector and last month, Parliament appointed a nine-member multiparty panel to hold a hearing on Pule’s role in the ICT Indaba that her department hosted in June last year, from which a reported R26-million of sponsors’ money had disappeared.