Jaspreet Kindra KwaZulu-Natal Minister of Transport S’bu Ndebele may be facing criminal charges after he procured faxes and e-mails sent to provincial officials and politicians questioning his role in the taxi industry. Ndebele used the documents to attack the media, including the Mail & Guardian, claiming the news- paper was involved in a political conspiracy to undermine him. His attack on the media came in a speech to the KwaZulu-Natal Legislative Assembly about media inquiries made to him over the past two weeks about allegations that officials in his department had improperly influenced a breakaway from a taxi organisation. KwaZulu-Natal’s taxi conflict, which has claimed scores of lives since 1996, has been raging between two groups the Durban Long Distance Taxi Association (DLDTA) led by Mandla Gcaba and its breakaway faction, the Durban Taxi Owners’ Association whose leader, Thula Sithole, was murdered earlier this year. The DLDTA alleges Ndebele was taking sides with one of the factions. Ndebele chose not to respond to the M&G’s questions, but attacked the paper in the legislature. “Then the Mail & Guardian comes. They file three letters. One is to myself, one is to Thulani Kubekha, another is Barker and somebody Gumbi. It asks three questions. To me, comment on this thing that you are siding with the Sithole faction, with Sithole versus Gcaba,” an unedited transcript of his speech reads. RJ Barker is with the civil engineering firm Bradford Conning, consultants to the Department of Transport. Kubekha is the provincial registrar of taxis.
“Sithole was killed months ago. I must comment on this. Sometimes I am siding with Gcaba, sometimes I am siding with Sithole to a point where I arrived at a position two years ago that openness and accessibility can be a strength, but it can also be a weakness because the very fact that I am standing with this one, even if he is asking about the weather or the time of day, when it is reported it would be said, ‘Hey, the minister supports you on this’. “The second allegation is that I have established and instituted a special investigation unit. S’bu Ndebele, MEC for Transport, has established a special police unit. How do I get into police and how do I get into the judiciary and all this and establish this? It can only be established by those departments, not me. “The third one is that, this is the Mail & Guardian, this paper is a sister paper to a London paper, so it is not a small paper. It says: ‘Just tell us about this story that you were given a sheep.’ “Comment on that. A major issue, an international issue. It is here. I then said no, we are not commenting on this thing, let us just leave it. Let them write there whatever they want to write because you have decided that you are going to be like this then that is it. This is the type of thing we are actually dealing with in this context.” Ndebele accused the M&G of being at the centre of a political conspiracy to discredit him and the African National Congress and cause friction between himself and the provincial deputy chairperson of the party, Zweli Mkhize. He said: “We have got here the Mail & Guardian of 26 April to 3 May. It analyses all the provinces, the ANC provinces or leadership of the ANC in different provinces, and when it comes to KwaZulu-Natal the writer is not quite convinced that we are going to self-destruct each other and therefore it says if we are not energetic enough, particularly myself and colleague minister Mkhize. “It ends with this paragraph that says: ‘There is a strong speculation that a publicity campaign adversely affecting the ministerial portfolios of either transport or health, or both, is likely to hit the media soon’. “This is 26 April. The journalist in question, what she is saying is that, if there is an adverse one you mean there is corruption, there is a scandal and if you are aware of a crime, be it fraud or corruption, and you do not report it, you are actually criminally liable yourself, you are an accomplice.
“Here the journalist says she has got information but will only release it once they see we are not fighting energetically enough towards the conference.
“Awareness imposes responsibility and in this case it is a criminal offence to withhold information of wrongdoing if you are aware there is wrongdoing and you say, ‘No, no, no let me hold it and see. First they must destroy themselves.'”
Ndebele also attacked Sam Sole, the deputy editor of investigative magazine noseWeek, whom he incorrectly refers to as the deputy editor of the Sunday Tribune, accusing him of manipulating the opposition in the legislature. Ndebele produced a fax sent by Sole to the Democratic Alliance’s KwaZulu-Natal leader Roger Burrows at the legislature in Ulundi. He said Sole had “instructed” Burrows to raise questions concerning him. ‘We are very good friends with Mr Burrows. On his own he will not do this. He is being instructed by someone here. He instructs him: ‘Do this, raise this question, raise this question.'” However, Ndebele’s “very good friend” Burrows said this week he did not know how the ANC “purloined” a confidential fax sent to him. He said he was considering laying a charge with the South African Police Service and will raise the matter with KwaZulu-Natal Speaker Bonga Mdletshe. Sole said the confidential exchange of information between journalists and politicians is “commonplace”. “It happens, including in my case, with all parties. And in the current climate within the ANC, where internal debate and dissent is difficult, it can be a vital channel for issues to be raised which otherwise might be buried.
In its reported comments, the ANC betrays a very simplistic view of the media. “The ANC has not pointed to anything unfair or inaccurate in the story itself. The main concern appears to be that it might have helped expose the real tensions within the party over the provincial leadership. That, with respect, is also a matter of public interest,” Sole said. He said he had faxed a story to be published in a local newspaper to Burrows “in a bid to promote a degree of public accountability”. South African Union of Journalists’ secretary general Motsomi Mokhine said the union is meeting to debate whether Sole had violated the union’s code of conduct by allegedly colluding with the DA by sending them questions to be asked in the legislature.