Zuma wants Thuli Madonsela charged over ‘leaked’ interview
Public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane has laid a criminal charge against Thuli Madonsela, after receiving “a complaint from the president”.
According to a report in the Sunday Times, the charge relates to Madonsela releasing details of her interview with President Jacob Zuma during her “state capture” investigation.
Madonsela admitted to giving the audiotape of her interview with Zuma to news channel eNCA, which uploaded it and made it freely available to the public.
In the 4-hour long recording Madonsela can be heard becoming increasingly frustrated with the president as he refused to answer any of her questions relating to the allegations of state capture, implicating him and the Gupta family.
Instead, Zuma’s lawyer kept interjecting Madonsela’s attempts to get Zuma’s version of events.
Prior to the “leak”, and the publishing of the report into state capture, president Zuma took the matter to court, seeking an interdict blocking the report from being published. According to Zuma, he had not been given enough time to answer the questions.
Madonsela made it clear that the president had been made aware of the report and the investigation since March 2016, and had simply ignored every attempt for her office to get answers from him.
The public protector opened the case with the police on November 11, 2016. Mkhwebane had said leaking the audio recording of the interview was in contravention of the Public Protector Act which states:
“No person shall disclose to any person the contents of any document in the possession of a member of the Office of the Public Protector or the record of any evidence given before the public protector … during an investigation, unless the public protector determines otherwise”.
Bongani Ngqulunga, Zuma’s spokesman, told the Sunday Times that the Presidency had lodged a formal complaint with Mkhwebane.
On Friday the president announced that he was going to take the State of Capture report on judicial review.
To listen to the audio recordings, you can find them here.
Read: Zuma is not happy his 4-hour interview with the Public Protector ‘leaked’ online
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