Burglary at Zondo Commission offices investigated

GaAUTENG police are investigating a business robbery following a burglary at the offices of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture on Saturday.

Yesterday, Gauteng police spokesperson Colonel Noxolo Kweza said details of the case would be released after police had completed their probe.

Kweza was reacting to reports that unknown people broke into the offices of the Zondo Commission on Saturday night and removed various items, including laptops containing vital information.

Cope national spokesperson Dennis Bloem said his party was not surprised by the burglary at the Zondo Commission offices, saying “this is the work of those thieves who have looted the country over the past 10 years”.

“This is part of their strategy to intimidate Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo not to continue with the work of the commission,” Bloem said.

He said his party was calling on police to beef up security around Justice Zondo and the commission’s entire operations.

Commission spokesperson Mbuyiselo Stemela could not give finer details of the incident. “We will issue a statement after obtaining details of the burglary from the police,” he said.

Stemela said, however, commission hearings would continue today. “The commission will hear parliamentary oversight-related evidence from the speaker of the National Assembly, Thandi Modise, on Monday.

“The commission will also hear evidence from the chairperson of the National Council of Provinces, Mr Amos Masondo,” Stemela said.

In addition, the commission was scheduled to have an evening session to hear parliamentary oversight-related evidence from ANC national chairperson Gwede Mantashe. the party’s former secretary-general.

Modise and Masondo are likely to face a grilling about damning evidence heard about the alleged capture of Alexkor mine in the Northern Cape by politicians and business people.

In January, a contractor of Alexkor Mine told the commission Parliament had done nothing about his reports of the alleged capture of the mine.

Gavin Craythorne of Equitable Access Campaign told the commission that the capture of Alexkor – a state-owned diamond mining company – began with the appointment of Malusi Gigaba as Public Enterprises minister in 2010. He said Gigaba, after his appointment, had started propagating the diversification of Alexkor mine into the coal sector.

According to Craythorne, mine bosses “had on numerous occasions told Parliament that in the next five to 10 years there would be no diamonds to mine at Alexkor. They’ve misled Parliament. Alexkor mine had in the past 100 years of existence only mined 10% of the mining assets”.