The ruling party is prepared to use the police, the National Prosecuting Authority and the Public Protector to silence dissent in the media and the opposition, Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille said on Saturday.
”Those who expose executive wrongdoing themselves become the subject of investigation. Government’s reaction is to undermine and destroy anyone who takes a stand and draws the line,” she told the party’s Western Cape congress in Mossel Bay.
Zille said state institutions were not fulfilling their mandate and were being manipulated by the ANC in pursuit of its own political agenda.
The party also referred to its political rivals as ”the enemy”, said Zille.
Allegations of bribery, threats and criminal connections levelled against Cape Town councillor Badih Chaaban had been ignored by the South African Police Service. This was despite the criminal charges laid against him months ago.
Chaaban ”pursues a uniquely low level of muck-raking politics”.
She said Mbeki was protecting police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi by suspending National Prosecuting Authority director Vusi Pikoli.
Zille also blasted public protector Lawrence Mushwana. Since 2002 he ”has succeeded in protecting the ANC, rather than the public, from a string of allegations of corruption”.
Mushwana found no wrongdoing on the part of PetroSA, Imvume Management or the ANC, even though R11-million in public funds were misappropriated, ”channelled towards the ANC’s 2004 election campaign and never returned”.
Other examples Zille cited of a ”growing constitutional crisis” included Sunday Times editor Mondli Makhanya being subject to a criminal investigation and the imminent passing of the Film and Publications Act. The latter, she said, harked back to the worst days of censorship under apartheid.
She also warned against what she called a narrowing of the public space for ”genuine debate and dialogue”.
‘A man who bribes and threatens people’
Meanwhile, Western Cape police commissioner Mzwandile Petros has accused Zille of ”not telling the truth” when she claimed that the city council employed private investigators because the police had failed to probe Chaaban.
Said Petros in an interview: ”I called a press conference and played recorded evidence to show that the council employed the private investigating firm, George Fivaz and Associates (GFA), two months before a charge was laid with us.”
Petros said a private investigator, Phillip Du Toit, not the city, had laid the charge. ”We told him that there’s not sufficient evidence. The council speaker was supposed to bring more evidence on September 2, but never did.”
Zille did not deny that GFA was hired months before a complaint was laid with police, but angrily branded Petros’s statement a red herring.
”The scandal is not when we employed GFA and the nature of the contract the city had with it. The scandal is: why don’t the police investigate Chaaban, a man who bribes and threatens people? – Sapa