Mantashe silent on bribe claims
MINERALS and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe yesterday refused to comment on allegations that he bribed two Sunday World journalists to quash a story on an alleged love triangle involving Finance Minister Tito Mboweni.
Mantashe, who appeared before MPs yesterday on the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP), refused to speak to the media when the meeting adjourned.
“I am here for the IRP,” said Mantashe.
Approached again by journalists as he left the venue. Mantashe would not be drawn.
He said he had not seen an EFF statement calling him to resign.
The Sunday World challenged the ANC national executive committee and Mantashe to sue it and said it stood by its story. This was after Mantashe denied the allegations of bribery in an earlier statement.
The ANC, however, came out in support of Mantashe, saying it believed his assurance that he didn’t bribe journalists.
“The ANC has neither a policy nor culture of buying journalists and strongly associates itself with the letter and spirit expressed in the preamble of the Press Code of the Press Council of South Africa, affirming that media exist to serve society,” it said.
The South African National Editors Forum called on Mantashe to come clean and said it would write to President Cyril Ramaphosa to raise its concern.
Meanwhile, during Mantashe’s briefing to the energy committee on the IRP, MPs expressed concern about the shut down of some of the coal power stations as they had reached the end of their life cycle.
Some power stations are 55 years old.
ANC and EFF MPs said they were worried that areas would be turned into ghost towns after the decommissioning of the power stations.
Dumisani Mthenjane of the EFF said the government could not simply shut down the towns when there were people still staying and working there.
“As you speak of decommissioning those power stations, most of them were built to supply coal and there are families staying there, don’t you see that you are going to create ghost towns in Mpumalanga and Limpopo,” said Mthenjane.
He said this was tantamount to solving a problem by creating another problem.
“You must come up with a plan, minister,” said Mthenjane.
Mikateko Mahlaule of the ANC said there were communities at the power stations to be shut down and the government must consider them.
“Honourable Mthenjane is correct that there are families and jobs to be lost if you shut down the towns. You are simply saying ‘let us shut down the towns’,” said Mahlaule.
But Mantashe said they would meet with Eskom to look at how they would prevent these towns from being turned into ghost towns.