The Democratic Alliance (DA) has accused Minister in the Presidency Essop Pahad of not giving ”an honest answer” to a parliamentary question.
The question was whether the Presidency had commissioned a R1-million corporate sponsorship for author Ronald Suresh Roberts to write a book about President Thabo Mbeki. In a written reply, in November 2004, Pahad said it had not.
On Wednesday, the DA’s Gareth Morgan said documents lodged with the Cape High Court, as part of Roberts’s recent defamation case against Johncom Media, confirmed the Presidency had in fact commissioned such a sponsorship for Roberts to write a book about Mbeki.
”The minister in the Presidency appears not to have provided an honest answer to a parliamentary question. He seems to have misled Parliament and to have deliberately omitted information and details contrary to the answer he provided,” Morgan said in a statement.
It is not the government’s business to document the president’s personal history or to facilitate sponsorships in this regard.
”The documents lodged include a series of e-mails exchanged between Absa [who sponsored the book], Mr Roberts and the Presidency, and also contain the actual contract between Mr Roberts, Absa and the Presidency.
”Importantly, the contract was signed on January 13 2003, long before the DA’s question to the minister and his response.”
Morgan said the DA was in possession of all the documents, and from them it was quite clear the Presidency — and Pahad in particular — was intricately involved in facilitating, constructing and finalising the entire deal.
”As a consequence, I will be writing to the Speaker of Parliament, Baleka Mbete, to raise this matter with her and to ask what action she will be taking against the Minister in the Presidency.
”I will also be submitting a follow-up question to the minister in the Presidency, asking why he did not answer the DA’s original question accurately,” he said.
On October 3 2004, the Sunday Times published a profile of Roberts, by Chris Barron. Roberts then sued the paper for defamation, but a High Court judge early in January ruled that any damage to his reputation was self-inflicted. – Sapa