‘Intel report’ on Pravin probed

OR PART OF AN ALTERNATIVE AGENDA Opposition parties want to know what role intelligence agencies played.

Inspector-General of Intelligence Sethlomamaru Dintwe is investigating the intelligence report cited as the basis for former finance minister Pravin Gordhan’s axing.

In a response to a letter penned by Democratic Alliance MP David Maynier, Dintwe said a probe was under way into the veracity of the so-called intelligence report that formed the basis of President Jacob Zuma’s decision to fire the minister.

This comes after Zuma’s major cabinet reshuffle in which Gordhan and his deputy Mcebisi Jonas lost their jobs.

Maynier said: “The request followed reports suggesting that President Jacob Zuma acted on a bizarre ‘intelligence report’ claiming the former minister intended to use an international investor roadshow to mobilise people to overthrow the state, as a pretext to cancel the former minister’s roadshow and to request his immediate return to South Africa.

He added: “We welcome the investigation, because we need to get to the bottom of whether any element within the national intelligence structure played any role in the production or dissemination of the bizarre ‘intelligence report’, reportedly used as a pretext for the cabinet reshuffle, which pulled the plug on the economy and triggered ‘junk status’ in South Africa.”

United Democratic Movement leader Bantu Holomisa, who has been very vocal on this issue, said even though an investigation was under way, Minister of State Security David Mahlobo and senior officials in the department still had to explain themselves to Parliament. “They didn’t have a leg to stand on… We are not interested in spinning,” he added.

Holomisa said he requested that the intelligence committee convene a meeting over a week ago, but he was yet to get a response.

Director of the Institute for Accountability Paul Hoffman said the so called-called intelligence report was “unintelligent” and perhaps had an ulterior motive.

“The person who wrote it was smoking his socks or he didn’t really understand how things work; or [he] was specifically mischievous in pursuit of an alternative agenda.”

Neither the committee chairperson nor the department could be reached for comment. –