Call Municipal Manager, ANC Provincial Secretary as witnesses for "cargate" debacle - COPE

Today I wrote to the Chairperson of the Northern Cape Legislature's task team investigating the purchase of a Mercedes Benz ML320 and its registration in the name of Zamani Saul, ANC Provincial Secretary. The legislature paid R600 000 (almost a tenth of the institution's annual budget) for a second-hand vehicle which is registered in the name of a person who is not even an MPL, according to documents before the task team.

The letter was to express my concern about serious omissions in the list of witnesses due to appear before the task team. Neither Saul, whose signature is on the car's registration documents, nor David Molusi, the ANC's Chief Whip who requested the procurement, were called to testify. The owners and agents of the dealership from which the car was bought, Moto-net in Kimberley, were also not called. These people were all on the original witness list. The task team appears to be ready to finalize its report but we do not believe that a proper investigation can be done without these crucial witnesses.

The municipal manager of Sol Plaatje municipality, Goolam Akharwaray, has also submitted a letter as evidence that suggests the forgery of Saul's signature on the car's registration documents. He places the responsibility for this on the Dealership's shoulders.

He also advises the ANC to take criminal action and apologises to the party for the "pain" this investigation is causing. In an affidavit in our possession, a local attorney claims to have consulted with Moto-Net's owners after Saul originally made the forgery claims. They say he is lying and that he was fully aware that the car was to be registered in his personal name. He even came to pick up the vehicle.

Given the seriousness of the allegations in the municipal manager's letter, he should come and testify as well. It is interesting to note that the city's highest-ranked official is responding to this matter instead of the traffic department.

We are also requesting the recusal of ANC MPL Bongiwe Mbinqo-Gigaba from being a member of the task team. Her signature is on the procurement documents for the car which implicates her in the process. She cannot claim to be an independent judge of what took place if she was involved. We want to restate that the Standing Committee on Public Accounts should be investigating this and not a task team, as is standard procedure with all provincial financial matters.

The task team is a sub-committee of the legislature's Rules committee, which is chaired by the Speaker. Should he decide to, the Speaker could dilute this report when it is presented to him, or reject it altogether. That is why we are also demanding the tapes and transcripts of all proceedings to be released to task team members so that expert opinion can be obtained on witness testimonies.

I have refused to sign a contract presented to me by the task team based on the Protection of Information Act of 1982. The contract states that I cannot speak publicly about the work of the task team. It threatens me with lie-detector tests if I leak the information and ten years in jail or a R10 000 fine if I don't keep my mouth shut.

This contract has since been shown to be unconstitutional as it is based on an Apartheid law intended to hide military secrets from what the government called "terrorists". This is not a matter of state security. It is a matter of the transparent use of public funds.

Statement by Fred Wyngaard, MPL, COPE Leader of the Opposition in the Northern Cape Legislature, July 5 2011

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