{"id":21205,"date":"2012-09-01T23:43:45","date_gmt":"2012-09-01T21:43:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=21205"},"modified":"2012-09-03T09:26:25","modified_gmt":"2012-09-03T07:26:25","slug":"the-minister-the-shoes-and-the-missing-millions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/21205\/the-minister-the-shoes-and-the-missing-millions\/","title":{"rendered":"The minister, the shoes and the missing millions"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Sunday Times reported that there is a direct like between Communications Minister Dina Pule<\/a>\u2019s Christian Louboutin shoes and the missing millions of the ICT Indaba.<\/p>\n

The newspaper reported that the Christian Louboutin shoes, which was worn by the minister at the ICT Indaba, was bought with the R25.7 million which sponsors gave for the event.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe shoes were bought in Barcelona, Spain, by her romantic partner, Phosane Mngqibisa<\/a>, during one of their international trips together. Mngqibisa\u2019s company, Khemano<\/a>, had been hired by the event organizer Carol Bouwer Productions<\/a> to help stage the ICT Indaba<\/a>,\u201d the Sunday Times reported.<\/p>\n

According to the report Mngqibisa denied buying the shoes for Pule, but Carol Bouwer\u2019s spokesperson said that the shoes were indeed bought with ICT indaba sponsorship money and that they have an invoice to substantiate this.<\/p>\n

This latest report followed the initial Sunday Times article in June where it was revealed that the DoC spent R102 million on its ICT Indaba held at the Cape Town Convention Centre from 4 to 7 June 2012. The newspaper then highlighted some irregularities regarding the finances at the event.<\/p>\n

On 3 August 2012 the Department of Communications (DoC<\/a>) released a statement saying that there was no wrongdoing on the part of the minister or the conference organisers.<\/p>\n

However, DA<\/a> shadow minister of communications, Marian Shinn<\/a>, said that the statement from the DoC only added to the smokescreen that minister Pule tried to create to deflect attention on whether Mngqibisa benefitted improperly from the Indaba.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Department\u2019s statement goes to great lengths to emphasise the fact that the Auditor General\u2019s (AG\u2019s) investigation into the matter has cleared the Minister of any wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe scope of the AG\u2019s investigation, however, was limited to focus on the payment of R10 million from the Department of Communications to the ICT Indaba to ensure that due process was followed by the department,\u201d Shinn said.<\/p>\n

\"Dina<\/a>

Dina Pule’s red-soled shoes<\/p><\/div>\n

Related articles<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pule suffers from \u201cintegrity deficit\u201d: DA<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Dina Pule cleared of Indaba wrongdoing<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

How not to blow R102 million<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Talk, talk, talk, but no action whatsoever<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

100% broadband by 2020: Treasury gets involved<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New Sunday Times report links Communications Minister Dina Pule\u2019s Christian Louboutin shoes to ICT Indaba\u2019s missing millions<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14538,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[1083,26,3786],"class_list":["post-21205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-dina-pule","tag-headline","tag-phosane-mngqibisa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21205"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21207,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21205\/revisions\/21207"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}