Calls are growing within the Western Cape ANC and among opposition parties for President Jacob Zuma to withdraw Ebrahim Rasool’s candidacy for ambassador to the United States after ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe confirmed this week that he was fired as Western Cape premier because of allegations that journalists were bribed to manipulate the news in his favour.
The reasons for Rasool’s firing were already widely known by ANC members and journalists, who were leaked internal ANC documents outlining the allegations when he was axed in 2008.
The Western Cape government turned the knife this week, when Premier and DA leader Helen Zille handed the police’s commercial crime unit a dossier dealing with allegations of corruption involving contracts with communications companies during Rasool’s tenure.
Zille said that the report, compiled by the provincial government’s forensic unit, outlines how about R80-million was spent in four years on three allegedly linked communications companies.
“It also alleges that this money was filtered for various purposes, Âincluding the alleged payments to journalists,” she said.
As a result of Mantashe’s “recent admission”, said Zille, Zuma should withdraw Rasool. “An ambassador is supposed to represent a country and should be beyond reproach,” she said. “It’s not possible for Mr Rasool to fulfil this requirement with such allegations hanging over his head.”
Rasool was removed as premier by Zuma in July 2008. After his dramatic fall from grace, many ANC insiders are asking why he was chosen for one of the most coveted and powerful diplomatic posts.
“Rasool must explain himself now that the truth is coming out,” said a senior ANC figure in the Western Cape. “Why would a journalist make these claims?”
The Cape Argus splashed an article on its front page last month based on an affidavit by its former political journalist, Ashley Smith, in which Smith alleged that he and former Argus political editor Joe Aranes were paid through a media company he co-owned to write stories to further Rasool’s political career.
Claims have been made by senior Western Cape ANC members Mcebisi Skwatsha, Max Ozinsky and Lynne Browne that journalists were paid to manipulate the news but, until now, they were widely dismissed as the result of factionalism.
Rasool could not be reached this week for comment about Zille’s forensic investigation, but he has consistently denied all allegations involving his office in payments to journalists. In a radio 567 CapeTalk interview on the eve of his departure last week, he challenged anyone with evidence that he had committed a crime to lay a criminal charge or desist from making allegations.
This week ANC sources in the Western Cape also complained that Rasool’s ambassadorship had not been vetted by the party’s deployment committee. The ANC’s deputy secretary general, Thandi Modise, who sits on the deployment committee, declined to comment.
Meanwhile, Zille said she was calling for lifestyle audits of key politicians in high posts during Rasool’s tenure.
The provincial ministers responsible for the departments that contracted the three communications companies were of particular Âinterest, she said.
Last week Western Cape transport and public works minister Robin Carlisle slated his predecessor, Marius Fransman, now an ANC MP, for shifting blame for tender irregularities during Rasool’s administration.
Fransman had responded to a report Carlisle presented to members of the Western Cape legislature’s standing committee on public accounts on the awarding of four contracts during Rasool’s tenure.
Government procurement rules were flouted in some cases, according to the internal investigation launched by then-premier Lynne Brown, who replaced Rasool when he was fired.
The awarding of contracts to two communications companies, Hip Hop Media andBrand Talk, were among the contracts investigated.
Fransman told the Mail & Guardian that he had no hand in awarding contracts and that the allegations were “real smoke and mirrors”.
“These issues have been debated extensively and dealt with extensively over the last two years,” he said. “At no stage would I have been personally able to oversee any of that because it is not handled by politicians.”
The responsibility would have fallen to the accounting officer and former head of the department, Thami Manyathi, said Fransman.
Manyathi was suspended after the DA came into power, but was cleared by the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration.