DA is spying on us - Fransman
A heated spat between rival politicians over policing in the Western Cape has erupted into a full-scale attack.
|||Cape Town - A heated spat between rival politicians over policing in the Western Cape has erupted into a full-scale attack, with provincial ANC chairman Marius Fransman accusing the DA of illegally spying on his party’s leaders.
An allegation of a police Crime Intelligence officer working for the DA has also surfaced. The officer in question is at the centre of a court matter which Premier Helen Zille said could expose a possible plot by top politicians, police officers and gangsters to destabilise the province.
This week Zille questioned whether this possible political plot was shaping policing in the province, and whether national police leaders were working to ensure crime fighting failed in the province.
On Friday Fransman hit back, claiming that Zille was behind efforts to spy on him and his colleagues. “We can confidently say that the DA has used illegal intelligence operations to try to bring top ANC leaders down.
“We hope the national (police) minister will investigate this illegal intelligence that is currently being carried out in the Western Cape.”
Zille’s spokesman Michael Mpofu didn’t respond to the spying allegations yesterday, but questioned why Fransman appeared to be worried about the Crime Intelligence officer’s court case.
“Anyone who cares about the drugs and murders on the Cape Flats should welcome this. Why don’t they? That is why that case is so important, because we may find out.”
Today Fransman is expected to urge Police Minister Nathi Nhleko to investigate the alleged spying on him and his colleagues.
Fransman also plans to elaborate on other allegations against Zille today at a policing imbizo in Khayelitsha, an event which the DA has labelled an attempt to discredit the province.
“We will be there to correct the lies and deception the premier has spread,” he told Weekend Argus yesterday.
Fransman is expected to speak at the imbizo as an MP.
Yesterday the DA thought he was going to speak as a representative of the provincial legislature and called for him not to.
DA chief whip Mark Wiley said the choice of Fransman speaking was ironic because Fransman had been “vehemently opposed” to the Khayelitsha Commission of Inquiry, set up three years ago to investigate allegations of poor policing in the area.
“It is blatantly obvious that this is a political event, hosted by the Ministry of Police in Khayelitsha, to discredit our province,” Wiley said.
Earlier this week, in her weekly newsletter, Zille questioned whether the national police ministry wanted policing in the province to fail.
She said that when she established the Khayelitsha Commission of Inquiry, then-police minister Nathi Mthethwa had fought against it.
The commission had later proposed a memorandum of agreement be signed to try to improve policing and ensure police complied with the provincial community safety department’s oversight guidelines. This had not been signed.
“Why? It is beginning to seem as if the national ministry and SAPS leadership actually want policing in the Western Cape to fail,” Zille said, adding that this feeling intensified this week when a police officer from the Crime Intelligence unit approached the Western Cape High Court.
The officer, who she did not name but whose name is known to Weekend Argus, was apparently trying to get an order against the police to have them return items seized during a raid at his private office.
“(He) alleges that his equipment and documents were unlawfully seized, after three of his informers had provided him with sensational information asserting the involvement of high-ranking police officers in corruption and of links between the drug trade, gangs, and politics in the Western Cape,” Zille said in the newsletter.
Saturday Argus
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