Dr Allan Boesak has questioned Justice Minister Penuell Maduna’s motives for revealing that he has recommended the convicted cleric not receive a presidential pardon.
”I find that a shocking display of tit-for-tat politics that reflects badly on the dignity of the minister and his department,” he said on Thursday.
The ministry announced in a statement earlier in the day that Maduna opposed a pardon because Boesak had ”failed to acknowledge in his application that he had committed an offence”.
Boesak said he questioned Maduna’s motivation for choosing the media to convey this decision to him ”especially since this act follows directly on my statements of yesterday”.
He was jailed in 2000 for the theft of donor funds from his Foundation for Peace and Justice and served one year of a three-year jail term before being
released on parole.
On Wednesday, he boycotted a function to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the founding of the United Democratic Front, claiming the African National Congress had ”ostracised, ignored and discarded” him since his imprisonment.
He also complained that he sent the application for a presidential pardon more than a year ago, and had not yet even had the courtesy of an acknowledgement.
He said on Thursday that he knew it would be a very difficult decision for President Thabo Mbeki, but that it was a discretionary one, not based simply on legal technicalities.
”I am pleading with the president once again not to pile injustice upon injustice; to take into account the terrible price my family and I have paid over the past ten years; and not to allow technicalities, party politics and hidden agendas to override his sense of justice and his humanity.
”I will thus wait patiently for his decision.”
Mbeki’s spokesperson Bheki Khumalo said the president had not made a decision yet.
”The matter has not yet reached his desk,” Khumalo said.
”He will consider it once it has reached his desk. We hope this will be over the next few days.”
Justice ministry spokesperson Paul Setsetse denied Boesak’s claim he had no acknowledgement of his application, saying the ministry received the application on June 11 last year and acknowledged receipt on July 7.
”It is not true that we did not communicate with him.
”Furthermore, we have been in touch with him on more than three occasions where I personally updated him on the status of his application.” – Sapa