Disgraced Pule avoids penalty

INLSA

Former Communications Minister Dina Pule. Picture: Neil Baynes

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Cape Town – The ANC won’t be taking any punitive action against disgraced former communications minister Dina Pule – at least for now.

A parliamentary multiparty panel set up by the joint ethics and members’ interests committee found Pule guilty of misconduct last week when it released its findings into allegations that she had “wilfully misled” Parliament.

Pule was accused of abusing taxpayers’ money when her department funded her lover Phosane Mngqibisa’s trips abroad. Mngqibisa’s company, Khemano, also pocketed R6 million for services to a company contracted by the department to organise last year’s ICT Indaba in Cape Town.

Pule has also been dragged into an alleged plot to assassinate joint ethics committee co-chairman Ben Turok and committee registrar Fazela Mohamed, who led the investigation into her conduct.

But the recently established integrity committee of the ANC, the chairman of which is Rivonia triallist and former Robben Island prisoner Andrew Mlangeni, said that the matter had been adequately dealt with by Parliament and did not need to be investigated further.

“Parliament has taken its stand,” said Mlangeni on Sunday. “The committee that investigated her issued a statement about two days ago. The issue of Comrade Pule has been dealt with.”

Pule, who has been reassigned to Parliament’s transport committee, would not comment on the findings or on the alleged plot.

“Just respect the fact that I don’t want to comment,” she said. “I wish I can but I’m sorry I can’t.”

Both Turok and Mohamed have played down the assassination plot.

The panel that investigated Pule noted how Parliament’s head of security services and management, Zelda Holtzman, had received information “of a threat to harm the chairperson of the panel and registrar and to disrupt the proceedings of the panel”.

“I’ve been in the Struggle all my life and much more powerful people than these have intimidated me,” said Turok.

ANC chief whip Stone Sizani said that the threats and intimidation against Turok and Mohamed were a “serious concern”.

“We don’t take lightly these threats,” said Sizani. “Both Turok and Mohamed were part of a collective assigned to probe the allegations on behalf of Parliament of the Republic of South Africa.”

He said that the police should leave “no stone unturned to ensure that such acts of bullying and thuggery are never repeated against an institution such as Parliament”.

Pule will only know her fate once the National Assembly considers the joint ethics committee’s report and endorses its findings and recommendations.

DA chief whip Watty Watson called on Sizani to suspend Pule immediately. “These are serious allegations which must be investigated,” said Watson. “Dina Pule should be suspended from Parliament, and the portfolio committee of transport, until such an investigation is finalised.”

Watson said that if Pule was not suspended immediately, the DA would push for her suspension at the next chief whips’ forum on Thursday.

Political Bureau