#Jetgate Bombshell: No minutes exists of meeting between Defence Minister and Zim counterpart
1 December 2020
The Democratic Alliance (DA) has learned through a Promotion of Access to Information Act 2000 (PAIA) application that there is no evidence of the meeting that supposedly took place between the Minister of Defence and Military Veterans, NosiviweMapisa-Nqakula, and her Zimbabwean counterpart in September.
In an affidavit Ambassador Gladys Kudjoe, the Secretary for Defence, confirms that no minutes exist of the supposed meeting between Minister Mapisa-Nqakula and the Zimbabwean Minister of Defence and War Veterans Affairs, Opah Muchinguri-Kashiri, on 9 September 2020 in Zimbabwe.
According to the affidavit, a letter received from the Office of the Minister on 26 October 2020 stated that the meeting “was a verbal meeting and no minutes were recorded”.
How can there be no minutes to such an important, urgent meeting that warranted the breaking of Ministerial handbook rules to attend it? It is common best practice to record meetings of Ministers on international missions, and surely a meeting deemed important enough to organise in a matter of days would not be the exception.