FRIDAY, 11.30AM:
FORMER anti-apartheid activist Dean Snyders, who was arrested last week on charges of dealing in uncut diamonds with a value of R1,8-million, has accused his former friend, Northern Cape Premier Manne Dipico, of framing him in a sting operation as a result of a power struggle between senior African National Congress officials in the province.
In a sworn affidavit submitted to his lawyers, Snyders alleges a complicated sting operation was set up by police, who rented a house opposite his and offered to sell him uncut diamonds. He claims a police officer in the Kimberley organised crime unit admitted to him last weekend that a diamond, which went missing during the “transaction”, had been stolen from him by police to be used to smear him.
Although Snyders would not give further detail on why he believes Dipico is behind his arrest, Mail & Guardian sources say the two friends had a fall-out when Snyders was openly accused of funding a campaign for Dipico’s rival, parliamentary labour committee chair Godfrey Oliphant, to oust Dipico as premier in provincial party elections in September.
Dipco and his provincial Director-General Martin van Zyl allegedly further retaliated against Snyders by issuing a provincial directive advising all government departments not to use Snyders’s travel agency Smart Travel.
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