Dangor robbery ‘curious’
PARLIAMENT has called on police to prioritise a break-in at the house of former Department of Social Development director-general Zane Dangor.
The standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) and the portfolio committee on social development yesterday called for the police to get to the bottom of the break-in.
Scopa chairperson Themba Godi said it was regrettable that a break-in had taken place at Dangor’s house.
“What makes it curious is that people were threatened and nothing was taken. It is clear that this was no ordinary robbery,” he said.
He said Dangor had stood up to corruption. “Police must investigate this and make it a priority. We condemn this kind of behaviour because it will turn our country into a banana republic,” said Godi.
Chairperson of the portfolio committee on social development Zoleka Capa said they were worried about Dangor and his family. She said no South African should be intimidated in their home. “Now that he is no longer with the department, it will be difficult to provide security. However, a crime was committed and we suspect something is fishy. We sympathise with him and his family, and we hope there are extra security measures at his house,” said Capa.
The break-in at Dangor’s house comes a few days after a burglary at the Office of the Chief Justice, Mogoeng Mogoeng. Fifteen computers, containing sensitive information on the country’s judges, including bank details and home addresses, were stolen from the office.
Acting national commissioner Khomotso Phahlane has set up a team to investigate the burglary.
The chief justice moved into the new offices last month. Phahlane has said they did not rule out collusion in the burglary and assured that the country’s police would get to the bottom of the crime.
Phahlane’s spokesperson Brigadier Sally de Beer did not respond to questions on the robbery at Dangor’s house. Police spokesperson Vish Naidoo also did not respond to messages sent to him.
ABREAK-IN – in which nothing was taken – at the home of Zane Dangor, the former director-general in the Department of Social Development, has added an air of menace to the ongoing furore over the social grants fiasco that played itself out last week.
Dangor, who quit his post a few weeks before the Constitutional Court stepped in to ensure that millions of social grant beneficiaries would be paid on time, saw the break-in as an attempt to intimidate him.
There certainly seems to be a strong smell of intimidation revolving around the burglary at the former DG’s home, and at the Office of the Chief Justice (OCJ) in Midrand on Saturday morning.
On Thursday, the Constitutional Court rebuked Bathabile Dlamini, the Minister of Social Development, publicly branding her incompetent and uncaring, potentially making her personally liable for millions of rand in legal fees associated with the court action, and put the South African Social Security Agency under its curatorship. Two days later 15 computers were stolen from the OCJ’s human resources department. Nothing else was taken. These computers hold the personal details of the country’s 250 judges; who their dependents are, where they live.
It is an unprecedented breach of privacy, leaving these judges vulnerable to attack, physically and emotionally should these details land up in the wrong, unscrupulous and criminal, hands.
And what about Dangor? He is even more at risk, and needs to know as quickly as possible that he and his family will be safe.
There is a growing belief that both break-ins were not ordinary burglaries, but rather part of a far more sinister operation designed to render the judiciary vulnerable to outside pressure.
Taken in tandem with the still unsolved break in at the Helen Suzman Foundation office, the slow murmur of suspicion becomes a cacophony of paranoia.
In that case, the offices were burgled almost exactly a year ago and its computers stolen as the foundation prepared court papers to interdict the appointment of Major General Berning Ntlemeza as the head of the Hawks – a decision ironically upheld by the North Gauteng High Court last Friday.
It is difficult to believe that these burglaries are anything but concerted, cynical attempts to cow and muzzle independent watchdogs.
The only way to disprove this is to find the criminals and bring them to book – promptly. Anything less only plays to the increasingly loud narrative of a country at war with itself.