Speaker conniving with SABC Inquiry liars seeking to avoid prosecution
In response to my statement accusing the Acting Secretary to Parliament of complicity in keeping the report into those who lied during the SABC Inquiry under wraps, the Speaker of the National Assembly has revealed the lengths to which she is prepared to go to shield them.
In a Parliamentary statement released late on 13 July, Baleka Mbete notes that “[a]ny insinuation that the Speaker seeks to quash a parliamentary probe into these allegations is erroneous”.
She is correct in as far as no such insinuation has been made.
The report from Parliament’s Legal Services Unit detailing any witnesses who gave contradictory or misleading evidence during the SABC Inquiry is not related to any Parliamentary probe. Rather, the Ad Hoc Committee on the SABC Board Inquiry completed its work and finalised its report on 24 February 2017; this same report was adopted by resolution of the National Assembly during a sitting on 7 March 2017.
However, flowing from this report was the instruction that “Parliament’s Legal Services Unit, with the assistance of the Evidence Leader, should … identify the persons who misled the inquiry or provided false information or false testimony with the aim of criminal charges being laid”.