The Democratic Alliance believes it is the victim of a major dirty tricks campaign and wants to meet Intelligence Minister Lindiwe Sisulu after a series of break-ins and theft of computers with confidential party information.
DA Chief Whip Douglas Gibson told reporters in Cape Town on Wednesday that a computer was stolen from a DA Johannesburg South constituency office on Tuesday night, the seventeenth incident since December last year.
”I don’t know who to suspect. It’s either the state or a political party that is very well organised and has people who it pays to go and do this, or tentacles all over the place.”
Gibson provided reporters with a list which included thefts from Parliament, constituency offices around the country and from MPs vehicles and homes.
Another incident, in May this year, involved the DA’s Western Cape media officer Phillip Grobler, who received an e-mail with all his computer files contained in one message.
”The file was so up to date that the e-mail also included a letter he had typed five minutes previously,” Gibson said.
The e-mail came from the Government Communication and Information Service and no satisfactory explanation has been given.
The incidents had already been discussed with Willie Hofmeyr of the Special Investigations Unit, who had undertaken to raise the matter with National Director of Public Prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka, Gibson said.
He had also written to Sisulu requesting an urgent meeting with her and her director-general Vusi Mavimbela.
National police commissioner Jackie Selebi had been asked on July 19 to authorise an investigation of all the incidents up to that date, Gibson said.
There had since been four more.
Gibson said no progress appeared to have been made by the police.
”When the official opposition in a constitutional democracy is subjected to this kind of assault, then it is the constitutional and democratic order itself which is under attack.
”Given the nature and number of the thefts, the further question arises whether the state, or some state agency, is calculatedly targeting the opposition,” he said.
It was therefore in the public interest that these crimes were solved as quickly as possible.
Gibson said the cases were politically motivated since a political party was being targeted.
”All our computers are being tampered with or are being stolen. There’s sensitive, political information which is on each one of these computers. It might relate to membership lists, canvass records, and certainly relates to finances of the party and all the confidential organisational methods.”
Asked whether the party was being paranoid, Gibson said: ”I don’t think its reasonable to think that we’re paranoid. There are so many incidents …The spread of it is quite astounding.” – Sapa