Vusi Mona, the former editor of City Press, should not testify at the Hefer Commission of Inquiry, counsel for the National Director of Public Prosecutions Advocate Marumo Moerane, suggested to judge Joos Hefer on Wednesday morning.
The Hefer commission has been sitting in Bloemfontein for 14 days to determine whether the national director, Bulelani Ngcuka, had been an apartheid era spy.
Mona, and five other black editors, including the editor of the Mail & Guardian, Mondli Makhanya, were invited by Ngcuka to an off-the-record briefing in Sandton earlier this year. The former minister of transport, Mac Maharaj, told the commission last week that he had learnt he had been “criminally defamed” at that meeting, as Ngcuka apparently told the editors that Maharaj’s wife Zarina was about to be arrested on tax evasion charges.
Moerane told Hefer that Mona’s evidence was not relevant to the commission’s terms of reference and that disclosure of what was said at the briefing would be unlawful because it would prejudice the rights of other people who weren’t at the commission.
Moerane said that what was said at the meeting was not supposed to be published and while Mona had not abided by that, the commission should not perpetuate the betrayal of trust.
Evidence leader Kessie Naidu said Moerane’s submission had a “fundamental fallacy” because he wanted Hefer to adopt a piecemeal approach and pre-judge the issue.
Hefer said that Maharaj’s testimony had detailed what he considered to be an abuse of power by Ngcuka, and then he asked the advocates if he could simply disable that part of Maharaj’s evidence by refusing to listen to evidence that supports his testimony.
Hefer also raised the possibility of Mona testifying in camera.
Before proceeding started on Wednesday, Hefer said he had decided not to call deputy-president Jacob Zuma to testify at the commission because his testimony would not add anything to inquiry and fell outside it’s terms of reference.