Probe finds Boeremag link in Sita

AGENCY BOSS: MAY LEAD TO FIRM THAT SWITCHED OFF SAPS

Has Saps ... been used to fund a white supremacist organisation whose sole aim is to destroy, by violence, the constitutional order, asks McBride.

One of the jailed leaders of the notorious South African white supremacist group Boeremag has been sending and receiving e-mails with sympathisers in government, MPs heard yesterday.

It emerged during a briefing by State Information Technology Agency (Sita) chief executive Setumo Mohapi to parliament’s standing committee on public accounts (Scopa). A forensic probe last year found that two employees of Sita, which procures and managed IT services for the state, had exchanged communication with Andre du Toit, who was jailed in 2013 for high treason.

Mohapi said the information came to light while Sita was investigating employees in the supply chain management division following allegations of irregularities involving contracts procured on behalf of the SA Police Service (Saps) worth billions of rands.

Mohapi said there were direct e-mails between an employee and Du Toit, as well as with members of his family.

One of the employees resigned before his disciplinary process, while another woman was on suspension.

“We are cleaning up now. Over these years, there have been issues. You can’t tell if there’s evidence of collusive behaviour in tenders by third parties and obviously a suggestion that money could have flown from SAPS all the way to providing financial support to the families of people in correctional services – the Boeremag,” said Mohapi.

Sita and the SA Police Service are set to go to court after one of the outside service providers under investigation, Keith Keating of Forensic Data Analysis (FDA), followed through on switching off critical IT systems of the police, including the Property Control and Exhibit Management (PCEM) and Firearm Permit System (FPS).

Keating claims the police have not paid him maintenance since December.

Sita later switched the systems back on, locking FDA out of the system and prompting the legal action.

Democratic Alliance MP Tim Brauteseth, who has been pursuing the matter in Scopa since last year, again held up a photo in the committee of two Saps members posing with Keating and the then project director of Unisys, a company which supplied the police with forensic equipment, through FDA, at Old Trafford in Manchester United jerseys.

Brauteseth wanted to know if the trip could have been in exchange for favours from the two officers – both in the supply chain management division of Saps.

“We’re concerned there could be a link between what sort of financing has been done from the side of Sita and the Saps,” said Brauteseth.

“Are all these irregular contracts ... some of the funds or a lot of the funds from those particular contracts, which have now been shown to be dubious at the very least – are they going towards the funding of the Boeremag or the funding of Boeremag prisoners?”

National Police Commissioner Khehla Sitole said SAPS was conducting its own probe into the Boeremag angle, but he would not divulge details.

Head of the police watchdog, Independent Police Investigative Directorate, Robert McBride also weighed in, saying a bigger question needed to be answered.

“The question needs to be asked whether Saps has been used to fund a white supremacist, non-Constitutional organisation whose sole aim is to destroy, by violence, the Constitutional order.”

The Boeremag were responsible for planting various bombs and conspiring to plant more in a campaign to destablise the country by attempting to bring about a race war in 2002. Many of their leaders were later jailed, including Du Toit and his brother. – ANA