ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema has claimed that he has an “intelligence document” listing the names of prominent political leaders who backed President Jacob Zuma’s rise to power, but who are now being targeted to be toppled.
Interviewed on SAfm’s After Eight Debate radio programme yesterday, Malema further claimed that preliminary investigations by the police had determined that the document was genuine. A probe was now under way, he said. Without naming any of the individuals said to be behind the alleged plot, Malema said intelligence officers had tipped off the youth league about the list and then passed it on to them.
He had told Zuma about the existence of the list. Under attack for his lavish lifestyle and links to companies that reportedly raked in millions through government contracts, Malema said he was the target of a smear campaign for not backing any of the ANC’s leftist allies for leadership positions at the party’s 2012 elective conference.
He said he would not mind Sars conducting a lifestyle audit on him, but would have a problem if one was carried out as a result of political interference – “to further factional interests of certain people in the ANC” or the agendas of opposition parties like Cope, the DA and Independent Democrats.
“I am saying so because we’ve got a document of a list of people – and I will make it public, we just took it to the police to verify it – who must be targeted. These people are still called Zuma people,” Malema said.
He said he had told Zuma that KwaZulu-Natal Premier Zweli Mkhize was one of the leaders being targeted. Mkhize on Monday denied any conflict of interest over government contracts worth millions of rands awarded to his wife, Dr May Mashego, and his daughter Nokulinda.
Malema did not identify the intelligence officers who he claimed had handed over the document to him. “They (intelligence officers) found this to be very unacceptable and they thought they needed to alert us. We had to take it to the police to verify it, and so far we are satisfied with the investigation. “The preliminary report shows that this is an authentic document that deserves to be taken seriously. I told the president (on Monday) ‘I will give you that report before I take it anywhere else’,” Malema said.
There are still concerted efforts to try and discredit the leadership of the ANC and particularly those that are seen to be in the frontline in defence of President Zuma. “We are dealing with a concoction, a mix masala of a political environment which is polluted and people who have resorted to dirty tricks, and these dirty tricks failed before Polokwane and they will fail even now,” said Malema.
The DA is now likely to raise questions about Malema’s claims in Parliament. DA national youth spokesman Khume Ramulifho said Malema’s claim was “deeply problematic”. “First, if the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) is giving its intelligence reports to the head of the ANCYL – a party-political position with absolutely no public duties or functions – this constitutes a fundamental conflation of party and state.”
If Malema was referring to “some sort of parallel intelligence structure within the ruling party, this too is deeply problematic”, Ramulifho said. The country’s intelligence structures had been “systematically warped” to serve a number of political agendas in recent years and the immense power they wielded, the possibilities of abuse and the “highly sensitive issues” they dealt with were all reasons why the intelligence services were run by the state and not political parties, he added.
He would be asking DA MP colleague Theo Coetzee to raise the issue in the joint standing committee on intelligence to establish whether “NIA operatives are handing over secret dossiers to the ANCYL”, and if so, whether any action was being taken against them.
“One way or another, Julius Malema owes the South African public an explanation,” he said. The department of Police could not confirm yesterday whether the document had indeed been brought to the attention of the SAPS, but this was being investigated.
Meanwhile, Young Communist League spokeswoman Gugu Ndima has denied her organisation was plotting against Malema.
Source: thestar online, 20100224
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