Hawks call on news agency to apologise for report
Johannesburg – The Hawks have condemned a national news report that implicated one of its high ranking officers in a burglary at the Pretoria office of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), a spokesperson said on Tuesday.
Eyewitness News reported that the offices were burgled and two laptops were stolen. They said the laptops belonged to prosecutors that were handling the case in which controversial Hawks Brigadier Nyameka Xaba is a suspect.
The report highlighted that Xaba and several other Hawks officials are accused of taking South African Revenue Services (SARS) employee Vlok Symington hostage at his workplace last year.
It also said that Xaba met with the two advocates handling the Symington case.
“For the record, Brigadier Xaba who is currently on leave is not the investigator into the Symington matter and has never met the prosecutor handling the case. Brigadier Xaba and his team members recently honoured an invitation from a prosecutor at the NPA offices to deliberate on an unrelated case as opposed to what Eyewitness News has reported,” Hawks spokesperson Brigadier Hangwani Mulaudzi said in a statement.
He said the Hawks were shocked at the report and found it concerning.
“The Eyewitness report is baseless and such accusations should never have been given so much credence. It is clear that the report is an attempt to damage Brigadier Xaba's personal reputation based on uncorroborated facts.”
Mulaudzi called on Eyewitness News to “retract the defamatory report which is entirely based on false allegations and deliberately intended to ridicule both the [Hawks] and Brigadier Xaba in the country”.
Mulaudzi said Xaba was in discussion with his lawyers regarding the report.
EWN Editor-in-Chief Katy Katopodis declined to comment on the matter.
The burglary on Monday follows a break-in at the Hawks headquarters in Pretoria last week‚ when thieves stole hard drives and computers that contained personal staff information.
The information was at the centre of a high-level anti-corruption investigation into staff appointments made by former Hawks boss Berning Ntlemeza. He was fired by Police Minister Fikile Mbalula earlier this year.
In March, 15 computers which contained sensitive information about the country's judges were stolen from the office of the chief justice in Midrand. Three men who were arrested for the crime were granted R1 000 bail.
