Rehana Rossouw
PROFESSOR Kader Asmal, chair of Parliament’s Ethics Committee, this week challenged Western Cape Premier Hernus Kriel to reveal full details of his estate disclosed in his divorce action.
Asmal said Kriel had established ”crude new norms” by referring to President Nelson Mandela’s personal wealth. Therefore, Kriel’s role in private and public life should now be subjected to the closest scrutiny.
Kriel was divorced in December 1993 in a court action brought by his wife Juliette Kriel on the grounds that they had not been living together as man and wife since November 1992, and that they had divergent interests and irreconcilable outlooks on life.
The former minister of law and order’s occupation is listed as ”state official” in an appendix attached to the divorce order and his income is not divulged.
He did, however, agree to establish a trust fund for his son Cornelius with an investment of R100 000 and to pay R600 a month for his support until he left his mother’s home. Kriel also agreed to settle a sum of R20 000 on his wife, provide her with a car and pay her R3 000 a month until her death or until she remarried.
Kriel’s spokesman Frikkie Odendaal said he had no comment on his divorce action, and the premier had not apologised to Mandela.
Asmal said Kriel ”should immediately withdraw and apologise to President Mandela for the disgraceful personal attack launched on him”.
At the NP’s election launch, Kriel referred to ANC MP Tony Yengeni’s recent remarks that whites enjoyed their position in society because they stole from blacks, and said such allegations came from a party with a leader who amassed R40-million, according to his ex- wife.
He questioned how Mandela, only a few years after being released from prison, could pay amounts like R400 000 for houses and cars for his children.
Mandela said he was ”profoundly disturbed” by Kriel’s comments. ”Hernus Kriel elected to target me personally, on a matter which is private, the subject of untested speculation, and injudiciously reported in the media,” he said in a statement.
ANC Western Cape leader Reverend Chris Nissen said his party knew on the eve of the April 1994 elections that Kriel had recently been divorced, but had not ”been even remotely interested” in using the details of the court action to try and win votes.
”We believe in fighting elections on the basis of what we can deliver to the public. We did not sink down to Kriel’s level in 1994 and we have no intention of doing so now,” said Nissen.
”We condemn the fact that Kriel would stoop so low to use untested newspaper reports to score political points. It shows just how desperate the National Party is as the elections draw closer, they have got nothing to show the electorate but dirty tricks.”
Nissen called on Kriel to apologise to Mandela for his ”undignified” behaviour which had exposed the NP’s lack of political morality to the voters of the Western Cape.