Looting for Cuba: Defence Minister must lay criminal charges against Operation Thusano officials, or the DA will
19 May 2022
Note to Editors: Please find attached English and Afrikaans soundbites by Kobus Marais.
The DA is calling on the Minister of Defence, Thandi Modise, and the Secretary for Defence, Gladys Kudjoe, to lay criminal charges against all officials implicated in the malfeasance regarding Operation Thusano by Friday, 27 May 2022. Should the Minister fail to act by then, we will lay the criminal charges ourselves.
Operation Thusano is an agreement with Cuba that has seen payments to the tune of total of R1.4 billion made to the Caribbean nation by the Department of Defence. The ANC government has also seen fit to donate R50 million in food to Cuba, while doing nothing to address South African food security for the country’s poorest of the poor. This would form part of larger donation of R350 million to Cuba, as recently revealed by court documents. Not to mention the more than R147 million loaned to Cuba since 2018.
A report by the Auditor-General of South Africa (AG), indicates that all of the expenditure under Operation Thusano since 2015 – when the project commenced – until December 2021 has been irregular, with no procurement procedures followed or deviations obtained prior to entering into supplementary agreements.