Police wars: Shocking twists and startling new claims

No fear No Favour No Corruption accepted in South Africa.........

19 JUL 2013 00:00SALLY EVANS

                                                   RICHARD MDLULI (GALLO)

                                                       ANC BURNS

The shocking new claims against the police's crime intelligence division include torture, murder, fake hijackings, obstruction of justice and cover-ups.

Allegations of nepotism and corruption against the higher echelons of the division have surfaced since the Hawks and other agencies began probing suspended crime intelligence supremo Richard Mdluli more than two years ago – but a string of damning new statements have deepened the scandal.

They are contained in court documents submitted by the division's Colonel Johan Roos as part of a labour dispute with the South African Police Service.

Among the claims is the startling implication that suspended intelligence financial officer Major General Solly Lazarus faked two hijackings during which at least R1-million in cash was stolen from him.

The claim is made by a senior crime intelligence officer, referred to only as "Colonel A" for his own protection. According to Colonel A, Lazarus was hijacked "at least" twice and in both incidents he had "various expensive laptops and large amounts of cash in his car".

Each time, an amount of money "in excess of R500 000" was stolen.

Lazarus's cellphone was apparently also stolen in the hijackings.

Ordinary procedure
However, according to the colonel's statement, Lazarus did not report the hijackings and the ordinary procedure for reporting the crimes was ignored – no fingerprints were ever taken from Lazarus's car and he was never polygraphed in connection with the incidents.

The source claims that a Captain Roger Hinz, using a "grabber" to intercept cellphone signals, was asked to trace Lazarus's allegedly stolen phone and "he [Hinz] traced the instrument to Major General Lazarus", who then allegedly claimed he had supplied investigators with the incorrect phone number.

Colonel A also reveals an incident in which a police suspect was allegedly tortured and murdered.

In a February 2012 Hawks progress report on their investigation of crime intelligence, Colonel A refers to an incident in Booysens, Johannesburg, during which a suspect was allegedly tortured and drowned in a bath by a "special crime intelligence unit" created by Lazarus.

Lazarus is facing criminal charges and an internal disciplinary inquiry over his alleged abuse of the secret service account, used to fund covert intelligence operations.

The source notes that, "in most of the cases the special units are involved in or are in charge of, correct procedures are not followed.

"Evidence is usually short or missing, and crime scenes are tampered with and/or staged to suit their stories".

Referring to the alleged incident in Booysens, for which the date is not given, the source claims: "The suspect was interrogated and tortured at the scene, [and] died (drowned in the bath) under suspicious circumstances. But according to the death certificate, he died due to natural causes."

Working knowledge
In his labour case, Roos has relied on his own investigation notes, given to his bosses, and statements from crime intelligence sources with a working knowledge of the secret service account.

Roos's court application – reported by City Press last Sunday – shows the depths of alleged criminality within the crime intelligence division and points to the apparent complicity of external auditors in hiding the crimes.

The case revolves around his bid for reinstatement in his previous position in the division's auditing unit, after he was transferred to another unit in 2010 by Mdluli.

As the head of internal audit at crime intelligence from 2004 to 2010, Roos alleges that he discovered many instances of fraud and corruption in the division, which he claims were covered up by senior officials.

He takes specific aim at former crime intelligence bosses Mulangi Mphego, Mdluli and Lazarus. Mphego resigned in 2009 and the other two are on paid suspension.

Lazarus appeared again in the Pretoria Magistrate's Court this week on charges of theft, fraud and corruption, relating to buying cars for friends and family with funds from the secret services account.

Both he and his co-accused, the division's former head of procurement, Colonel Hein Barnard, celebrated with their lawyers on July 18 after the charge of theft against them was reduced from R1.2-million to R370 000.

But while they grinned and slapped each other on the back, the latest revelations in Roos's court proceedings have cast further suspicion on both Lazarus and Barnard.

Colonel A's statement to Hawks investigator Lieutenant Colonel Piet Viljoen goes further than the charges Lazarus and Barnard currently face – that they bought cars for themselves with taxpayers' money.

Covert premises
The colonel alleges that Lazarus created two "special intelligence units" – allegedly filled with his family members, as well as those of Mdluli and other senior crime intelligence officials – that benefited from unlimited state resources.

The special units appear to have had their own source of funding, drawn not from crime intelligence's head offices in Erasmuskloof but from a "separate advance office created by Lazarus at his covert premises".

In Colonel A's statement to the Hawks, it is alleged that the units allowed members to draw up to R30 000 a month for operations that were not accounted for, while legitimate crime intelligence and priority crime operations were either "rejected or delayed".

The officer says that a Colonel Takoorparsadh "acknowledged during a meeting held with crime intelligence management on April 4 2011 that these special units' applications for projects get approved by General Lazarus with no delay, while other justifiable crime intelligence projects on priority crimes are rejected and/or delayed with no apparent reason".

Viljoen noted in his 2012 report that the allegations the Hawks received from Colonel A and Roos had been "90% substantiated with our investigations so far".

Roos uses this evidence to support his claims that his transfer in 2010 from the audit department by Mdluli was a way to stop him from digging any deeper into the nefarious activities allegedly going on in crime intelligence.

When Mdluli was appointed to head up crime intelligence in July 2009, Roos claims he was summoned to meet with Mdluli "out of office hours", and that the latter wanted to "clean the place up" and charge guilty members. Mdluli allegedly mentioned Lazarus's name.

Mdluli then appointed him to lead a task team to investigate cases of corruption.

Enquiries
However, "the investigation was suddenly stopped" and Mdluli's attitude changed, Roos claims.

A few months later, in September 2009, Mdluli "refused to sign a letter authorising [Roos's] access" to the secret service account.

"He [Mdluli] was suddenly friends with the same people he had tasked us to investigate," he notes.

Fraud and corruption charges against Mdluli, relating to his own alleged abuse of crime intelligence's secret service account, were provisionally withdrawn in 2011.

Prior to his dealings with Mdluli, Roos reported to Mphego.

According to Roos, Mphego "got very upset" with him and told him to "stop with his inquiries at once".

Mphego allegedly instructed Roos not to discuss his findings with anyone, including the audit committee.

Roos says he stopped reporting these issues "as it was evident that certain members, especially in management, were above the law".

In January 2009 Mphego, who was facing charges that were later struck off the roll, resigned from the police. He could not be reached for comment.

Lazarus has been on paid suspension since November 2011. His lawyer, Etta Szyndralewicz, said her instructions from her client were that he did not want to comment "until all the matters have been finalised".

* Got a tip-off for us about this story? Email amabhungane@mg.co.za

The M&G Centre for Investigative Journalism (amaBhungane) produced this story. All views are ours. Seewww.amabhungane.co.za for our stories, activities and funding sources.

COMMENTS BY SONNY

The life blood of the ANC is Crime and Coerruption.

NOTHING AND NOBODY WILL STOP IT NOW!!

ONLY THE PEOPLE OF SOUTH AFRICA!!

Said al-Shehri, Al Qaeda's second-in-command in Yemen, killed in drone strike

No Fear No Favour No Terrorism.........


Daniel DeFraiaJuly 17, 2013 09:05

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's second-in-command was killed by a drone strike in Yemen, an insurgent group official claimed on Wednesday.

A man protests against US drone attacks in Yemen near thee home of Yemeni President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi, in the capital Sanaa, on Jan. 28, 2013. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)

A high-ranking commander of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was killed in a reported drone strike in Yemen, the insurgent group claimed Wednesday.

Said al-Shehri, considered by US authorities to be a significant Al Qaeda operative, had been released from Guantanamo Bay prison after Pakistandelivered him to the United States in 2002.

Years later, after he was returned to Saudi Arabia in 2007, he escaped to Yemen and eventually became AQAP's second-in-command.

It's important to note that Shehri has been reported killed before. Last January, Yemeni officials said the commander had died during a military operation in Saada province on Nov. 28, 2012.

Senior AQAP official Ibrahim al-Rubaish claimed in an online video statement that Shehri had been killed in a US drone attack, according to SITE, a US-based website that monitors terrorist threats.

"I present my condolences to all the Mujahideen on the martyrdom of Said al-Shehri who was killed in a US drone attack," Rubaish said.

As with most alleged US drone strikes in Yemen, few details are known. It remains unclear exactly when or where the strike occurred.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/130717/said-al-shehri-al-qaedas-2-killed-yemen-drone-strike

GLOBAL POST

Weaponry of the future - THE USA DRONE!!

WHAT A WEAPON!

Zuma's right to remain silent vs. accountability and transparency

No fear No favour No fortune....  No rights......

• RANJENI MUNUSAMY

• SOUTH AFRICA 12 JULY 2013 01:00

The presidency issued a terse statement this week explaining that President Jacob Zuma does not need to explain his surprise Cabinet reshuffle. “The Presidency wishes to remind the opinion makers that the President of the Republic uses his prerogative when appointing members to the National Executive. He does not need to provide reasons.” Thing is, prerogative relates to the president’s right to appoint whomever he wants. It does not, however, supersede transparency and accountability, which we would like to remind the Presidency is guaranteed in the Constitution. By RANJENI MUNUSAMY.

For over a month now, the Presidency has been issuing regular updates on the health of former president Nelson Mandela while he has been receiving treatment at a Pretoria hospital. While no details can be provided on Madiba’s exact condition in order to maintain his privacy, the updates from the Presidency have come to be accepted by the nation and the world as assurance that the former statesman is in good care, even though the words “critical but stable” convey little in meaning.

Uppermost in everyone’s mind is that Mandela is comfortable and receiving the best medical treatment. And considering the news blackout that we have had to previously endure during one of Mandela’s earlier hospital stays, the stock statements being issued are at least a sign that Presidency understands it needs to say something – even if it is the absolute bare minimum titbit of information.

While this may suffice when it comes to the health of Nelson Mandela because of exceptional circumstances, it is not a one-size-fits-all communications strategy for running the South African government. Yet that’s what happened this week when President Jacob Zuma announced changes to the Cabinet without any explanation as to why he found it necessary to do so. He fired three ministers, promoted two deputies to full ministers, swopped two Cabinet members around and elevated some MPs to the executive.

Few people are sorry to see the back of Dina Pule, the former Communications Minister who used her department to sponsor her love affair and failed hopelessly to provide political leadership in the important portfolio. Equally, Richard Baloyi is destined to disappear into the political wilderness after being one of the least visible and worst performing members of Cabinet.

Tokyo Sexwale certainly created the impression that he was busy in the Human Settlements portfolio, but was performing below par in terms of actual results. However, as compared to several duds in the Cabinet, his unceremonious axing could only be explained in the context of his failed bid to challenge Zuma for leadership of the ANC at last December’s national conference in Mangaung.

But in all the commentary and analyses in the aftermath of the Cabinet reshuffle, there is no conclusive explanation as to why Zuma acted this week, and why he made the changes he did. His rather sullen sign-off at the media conference where he announced the changes added further intrigue to the motivation behind a fourth reshuffle in four years, and one so close to the national elections in 2014. Unless all the new appointees have been given guarantees that they will remain in their posts after next year’s elections, it is difficult to fathom how they will derive any tangible results in less than 10 months.

A day after the reshuffle, the presidency issued a media statement saying it had noted “complaints” from some media houses and commentators that Zuma did not provide reasons for the changes. It wheeled out the explanation that the president “uses his prerogative” when appointing members to the Cabinet and therefore “does not need to provide reasons”. Whoever wrote the statement is under the misconception that presidential prerogative extends beyond appointing who the president wishes to serve in his executive to not needing to be accountable for his actions.

Perhaps it is Zuma’s disdain for the media or belief that by saying little, he will starve the news monster that informs his approach. Perhaps he forgets that the media is the channel to the 51 million people he presides over, including those he will be asking to vote for him and the ANC next year. Perhaps it does not occur to the president that there are industries and constituencies that function around every government portfolio, which are left disorientated by sudden moves without explanation in the Cabinet. Are they also supposed to guess like the media as to what prompted the moves and try to forge relationships with the new political heads in a few months, without any clue about the impact on their sector?

Perhaps Zuma has also forgotten his State of the Nation speech in February this year when he said: “We are duty bound to uphold, defend and respect the Constitution as the supreme law of the Republic. We will spare no effort in doing so.” The Constitution is unambiguous that the president is accountable for his actions and also that citizens have the right to information.

So why should it matter to citizens that the president moves around members of his executive and fires others? Because unless we know the reason behind the moves, it’s all in the realm of guessing. For example, we do not know why Ben Martins was moved out of the Transport portfolio and Dipuo Peters was moved into it. Has Peters been given a new mandate on the issue of e-tolling?

The lack of housing and sanitation are the reasons for dozens of service delivery protests every year. These will also be major election issues next year. Why was Connie September chosen to head this portfolio? What is her brief? How will she relate to communities that are up in arms? All these questions are pertinent for the millions of people whose lives are affected by these government portfolios.

It is unfair to expect the new appointees to step up and answer all the burning questions around their dysfunctional departments on the turn as they still have to orientate themselves with their new portfolios. They, too, must wonder why they were chosen. In the information-starved atmosphere, we can only hope that they were given proper briefs and not handed blank cheques.

It is bizarre that Zuma would behave with such contempt towards his citizens when this was the very thing he found objectionable about Thabo Mbeki’s presidency. He found it inexplicable that Mbeki cut himself off from the people of his country and rotated around his own axis. Zuma used to love interacting with ordinary people, hearing about their lives and sharing his views. His security detail had endless problems trying to separate him from the crowd once he was part of it. Now he has locked himself in an ivory tower, quite similar to the one which was bulldozed when Mbeki was recalled.

In a few months, though, we will see a metamorphosis back to the “Man of the People” when Zuma hits the election trail. Then he’ll be back to embracing ordinary people and willing to talk about the work of his government.

It is difficult to reconcile this image with the man who has consistently avoided answering questions on Nkandla, the Guptas and the appointment of the National Prosecuting Authority head, and defers responsibility for everything that goes wrong in his government.

The right to remain silent comes handy many times, but a sign of leadership it is not. Zuma might have the prerogative to appoint and dismiss members of his Cabinet, but the South African voter has the ultimate prerogative as to where they put their cross on the ballot paper. And if Zuma is given back his prerogative next year, what will he do with it for another five years? Don’t count on him telling you. DM

Photo: President Jacob Zuma on the last day of the ANC's 53rd conference which saw Zuma tighten his hold on the ANC.  Mangaung 20 December 2012  (Greg Marinovich / NewsFire)

DAILY MAVERICK

comments by sonny

zuma is a public figure - he has no hidden rights - just a hidden agenda!

he should be impeached and replaceD by somebody more competent!

ZUMA IS BY NO MEANS OUR CHOICE.

Loved by the miners, attacked by the ANC: who really is Liv Shange?

NO FEAR NO FAVOURS NO BLONDES PLEASE.....

• REBECCA DAVIS   SOUTH AFRICA  O9 JULY 2013 10:56

Last month, ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe blamed a diminutive Swedish woman for being “at the centre of anarchy in the platinum industry”. Liv Shange, 32, a leader of the Democratic Socialist Movement, has lived in South Africa since 2004 and is married to a local man. Now her immigration status appears to be under threat – and it’s hard not to suspect that Mantashe’s finger-pointing may play a part in that. REBECCA DAVIS tries to get some answers.

Blaming foreign nationals for stoking unrest in South Africa’s mining sector appears to have become a favoured tactic of the ANC lately. President Jacob Zuma recently hit out at “shadowy international elements and movements” for stirring up trouble on the platinum mines. Mid-June, Mantashe told an audience in Sandton that events like Marikana were the result of “anarchy, anarchy, anarchy, driven by people who are from far away…Sweden, Irish”.

The Irish element fingered by Mantashe was likely a reference to Irish Socialist Party MP Joe Higgins, South African labour analyst Terry Bellsuggested last month. Higgins has long had ties to South Africa’s labour movement, and was present earlier this year when the Workers and Socialist Party (WASP) was launched.

When the Sunday Independent called up Mantashe two weeks after his Sandton remarks for clarification, he doesn’t seem to have pursued the Irish angle any further. But he was still dead-set on Swede-blaming: “The reality is that it is a Swedish citizen who is at the centre of anarchy in the platinum belt,” Mantashe insisted to the newspaper. “I did not suck it out of my thumb.”

The Swedish citizen in question is Liv Shange, who captured some media attention around the time of Marikana due to the fact that she stuck out like a sore thumb: it is not every day that you see a small blonde woman address crowds of striking miners in fluent Zulu. Terry Bell suggests that it was largely this incongruity that won her scrutiny: “Her gender and complexion made her more newsworthy than other socialists who were – and remain – more active among miners, especially in the platinum sector,” he writes. “Mametlwe Sebei and Elias Juba, who are both more prominent in the Rustenburg area, have attracted little media attention.”

However it happened, Shange’s involvement clearly attracted the attention of ANC bigwigs, and they clearly weren’t best pleased. And in a coincidence that many of cynical minds would term suspicious, Shange now appears to be facing the threat of deportation. Currently visiting her parents in Sweden with her three children, Shange is having trouble receiving the requisite bureaucratic permission to return to South Africa in time for the start of the new school year.

This may be a case of Home Affairs bungling, although in recent years the department has radically stepped up its game from its former shambolic state. What seems to cast a different light on the matter, however, is the fact that comments made to the Sunday Independent by anonymous officials within police, intelligence and Home Affairs suggested a targeted probing of Shange.

The Swedish national told the Daily Maverick on Monday that she met her future husband, Xolani Shange, in Belgium in 2002. “We were both attending the world congress of the Committee for a Workers’ International,” Shange said via email. She was a member of a Swedish socialist group at the time, while Xolani was attending the event as a delegate for South Africa’s Democratic Socialist Movement. “We kept in contact, I came to visit, and eventually decided to come and study in South Africa so that we could try out actually being together.”

Liv subsequently enrolled for a BA in Zulu and Economic History at the University of KwaZulu Natal in January 2004. By December that year, she was married to Xolani Shange, and thus entitled to a spousal visa, which she says she received. By the time she graduated from UKZN in 2007, she had already become active in South Africa’s socialist movement.

“I was active in Durban while I stayed there, for example in the Socialist Student Movement at UKZN, where we were fighting against financial exclusions, amongst other things,” says Shange. After graduating, she was elected on to the Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM)’s executive committee: part of an international network of socialist groups which fight for “decent wages, jobs, education and public services”, but also “the overthrow of the capitalist system”, according to their website. It was the DSM, together with independent mineworkers’ strike committees, which provided the impetus to form WASP. “So I’m involved in WASP as a member of the DSM,” Shange explains.

Shange does not deny having played a part in the organising of mineworkers in Rustenburg last year, saying that she and other members of the DSM played the role of “unifier and coordinator”, linking up workers’ committees at different mining houses and bringing Rustenburg workers together with striking mineworkers in Gauteng and Limpopo. “We did not start the strikes, but I think we contributed towards harnessing the strength of the strike action by linking the workers together and coordinating the action,” Shange says.

It was during this time that Shange first heard the threat of being deported. “It happened during the strike that I was detained, completely unwarranted, by mine security and interrogated by police, who tried to intimidate me with talk of deportation and charging me with high treason,” says Shange. In previous years she had been able to leave and return to South Africa quite freely, but that all changed in June this year.

“When I left SA with my children on June 20, to visit family in Sweden, I was stopped by Home Affairs officials at OR Tambo, who said they would not even look at the papers I had with me from Home Affairs. All that mattered was that there was no valid permit stuck into my Swedish passport,” she says. The reasons for this she describes as a “long story of complications”: Shange was mugged in 2010, and her passport – with her spousal permit inside – was stolen. When she applied for a transfer of her spousal permit, Home Affairs informed her that there was no record of such a document existing, and that her continuing presence in South Africa was illegal. Her re-application for an extension of the permit was denied, she says, and she has heard nothing since from her appeal against this decision and re-lodging of the application.

“To my understanding that process is still pending, because I have not received any response, despite having lodged several inquiries,” Shange said. “It hasn’t been a problem leaving SA and coming back previously, despite those problems, until now. Of course this time my departure followed on weeks of the ANC and government more or less explicitly scapegoating the DSM and me in particular.”

The Daily Maverick asked Home Affairs spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa whether it was possible that political pressure was being brought to bear on the consideration of Shange’s visa application. Mamoepa responded in fluently vague bureaucratese: “Should it be found that an individual in the country without the necessary permits and in violation of provisions of the Immigration Act, the Home Affairs Inspectorate Unit will be expected to ensure full compliance with provisions of the law in general and the Immigration Act in particular,” he said.

The Sunday Independent reported that Swedish diplomats had protested against Mantashe’s comments, but Shange said that she had not appealed for any assistance thus far from the Swedish embassy. When the Daily Maverick contacted the Swedish embassy in Pretoria, we were politely requested to direct our inquiries to Sweden’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs.

Instead, the Daily Maverick turned to someone with direct experience of the grey area around Home Affairs and politicking: immigration lawyer Gary Eisenberg, who represented Mangosuthu Buthelezi in 2011 when the IFP leader took to the courts to seek redress for the government’s snubbing of the Dalai Lama’s visa application.

“The Dalai Lama didn’t really know if he was Arthur or Martha in the sense of what the Minister [of Home Affairs] was actually doing,” Eisenberg said. “The one question that the counsel for the state could not answer was whether [the Dalai Lama’s visa was denied because] it was a legal situation, or purposeful obfuscation.”

Certain people may be denied permission to travel to, or live in, South Africa because they are “prohibited”, as specified by Section 29 of the Immigration Act. This would apply to someone who has been convicted for genocide, terrorism, human trafficking, and similarly serious crimes. Alternatively, the Minister of Home Affairs has the authority to declare an individual believed to be a danger to the country in some way an “undesirable person”, Eisenberg explains; but in order for this to happen, you have to receive a notification. “If you haven’t received that, you can’t be an undesirable person,” he says.

Even though neither of these scenarios would appear to apply to Shange, Eisenberg cautions against leaping to sinister conclusions in cases like Shange’s. “There may not be a conspiracy against her at all. It may well be down to an inefficiency of the department, which is routine these days,” he says. “Maybe the Department of Home Affairs has lost her application, maybe they just haven’t gotten around to it: I would call that administrative malaise.” It is also possible, Eisenberg says, however, that no decision has yet been made in Shange’s case but her application has been suspended pending her being declared undesirable.

“We won’t know whether the visa blocking is being done purposefully or due to administrative inefficiency until she hires a clinical lawyer to get to grips with the situation,” Eisenberg says. “She needs to brief an attorney and give the department notice to cough up that information.”

Whether the Home Affairs delays are benign or not, however, there’s still the matter of Mantashe considering Shange to be at the centre of anarchy in the platinum belt, which Shange terms “disgraceful”.

“My response is to challenge him to a public debate on what really drives this mis-labelled ‘anarchy’,” Shange says. “In my view it is the slave-like conditions mineworkers still work and live in, the NUM’s betrayal of its members, and the ANC government’s resort to drowning independent working class struggles in blood.” DM

Read more:

• Gwede’s Swedish diplomatic row, on IOL
• Standing up for Liv Shange, in TimesLive
• Militant Tendency sends shivers through South Africa, in the New Statesman

Photo: Liv Shange with her three children, aged 8, 5 and 14.

DAILY MAVERICK

ON THE LONMIN MINES THE WOMEN RULE........

Full statement: President Jacob Zuma reshuffles Cabinet

No fear No Favour No Opposition........





9 July 2013 15:55

Full statement: President Jacob Zuma reshuffles Cabinet

9 July 2013 15:55

3

President Jacob Zuma announced a Cabinet reshuffle on Tuesday (July 9 2013).

CITY PRESS

COMMENTS BY SONNY

READ ALL ABOUT IT TOMORROW 10 JULY 2013........

Zuma unlikely to be impeached

No fear no Favour No Impeachments...........




Jan-Jan Joubert @City_Press #Nkandla7 July 2013 14:00

DA parliamentary leader Lindiwe Mazibuko wrote to Speaker Max Sisulu on Friday, asking him to ­investigate whether President Jacob Zuma had ­misled Parliament about his R206 million Nkandla development.

This comes after the Mail & Guardian published more documentation on Friday showing that Zuma was aware of the extent of the expenditure on his private compound.

The documents include:

» A letter from a police divisional commissioner stating that “by instruction of … President Zuma, the existing house at Nkandla, currently accommodate (sic) SAPS members, must be converted as part of the president’s household”;

» A Public Works memorandum that states a deadline was given by “the principal” – government speak for the president; and

» Another memorandum on a meeting with former deputy minister Hendrietta Bogopane-Zulu, in which she confirmed Zuma did not want other contractors on site.

“This evidence shows that President Zuma ­omitted important information when questioned in Parliament regarding this upgrade,” Mazibuko said.

If Zuma were an MP and a charge were to be laid against him for misleading Parliament, it would have been handled in terms of the Powers and ­Privileges of Parliament Act.

However, in terms of the Constitution, Zuma ceased to be an MP the moment he was elected president.

Although Zuma is treated as being subject to ­parliamentary rules whenever he addresses Parliament or answers parliamentary questions, the act was not written with the head of state in mind.

Two alternatives exist if the opposition wants to bring the president to book.

The first is a motion of no confidence, which is followed by a debate and a vote. The ANC can defeat the no confidence vote by a simple majority.

The opposition is unlikely to favour that option either after the ANC last year used its majority to block a proposed no confidence debate.

The other option is the one Mazibuko is currently pursuing, which is an effort to impeach Zuma for serious misconduct, in terms of section 89 of the Constitution.

For Zuma to be impeached, a thorough ­parliamentary investigation needs to be conducted. If two-thirds of the National Assembly agree that Zuma is guilty of serious misconduct, he will be ­removed as president.

Given the ANC’s majority in the National ­Assembly, the opposition’s efforts are unlikely to ­succeed.

City Press

COMMENTS BY SONNY

GIVEN THE FACTS ABOVE, ONE IS LEAD TO BELIEVE THAT ZUMA KNOWS HE IS UNTOUCHABLE AND GUARDED 

AGAINST MISCONDUCT PROCEDURES BY HIS CABINET MEMBERS.

This is just more proof that Zuma is in a Dictatorial position and believes that he is here to stay!

HIS EGO, ATTITUDE AND DEMEANOUR IS  DICTATOR .

GIVEN THESE FACTS THERE IS JUST ONE QUESTION?

WILL SOUTH AFRICA EVER BE FREE??

R42m worth of tik seized at OR Tambo Johannesburg

R42m worth of tik seized at OR Tambo
2013-07-05 22:33




Related LinksPolice catch 2 with drugs at OR Tambo
3 drug busts at OR Tambo Airport
Man held for drugs at Cape Town airport


Johannesburg - Drugs with an estimated street value of R42.6m were seized at OR Tambo International Airport, in Kempton Park, on Friday, said the SA Revenue Service's (Sars) customs' team.

Two women arrived from Tanzania with six large, black holdalls, Sars said in a statement.

When the bags were searched, they were found to contain nearly 150kg of crystal methamphetamine, also known as "tik".

The women and the drugs were handed over to the police.


- SAPA

Read more on: sars | johannesburg | crime | narcotics