{"id":36852,"date":"2013-04-29T23:59:34","date_gmt":"2013-04-29T21:59:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=36852"},"modified":"2013-04-30T09:31:47","modified_gmt":"2013-04-30T07:31:47","slug":"presidency-tight-lipped-over-pule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/36852\/presidency-tight-lipped-over-pule\/","title":{"rendered":"Presidency tight lipped over Pule"},"content":{"rendered":"

The South African presidency says it has taken note of the allegations made against current communications minister, Dina Pule<\/a>, and will only comment following her appearance in a Parliamentary hearing later this week.<\/p>\n

Parliament\u2019s joint committee on ethics and members\u2019 interests appointed a nine-member panel in March to investigate \u00a0whether Pule declared her relationship with businessman\u00a0Phosane Mngqibisa<\/a> to Parliament, and whether he made any financial gains through the alleged romance.<\/p>\n

Mngqibisa earned millions from co-ordinating the 2012\u00a0ICT Indaba<\/a>, organised by Pule\u2019s department.<\/p>\n

It was reported the panel was appointed after the\u00a0Democratic Alliance<\/a>\u00a0laid a complaint and asked the committee to probe Pule\u2019s alleged romantic links to Mngqibisa.<\/p>\n

The parliamentary hearing for minister Pule had been scheduled for last week; however, that has since been delayed to \u201cearly May\u201d.<\/p>\n

Presidential Spokesperson, Mac Maharaj<\/a> told BusinessTech in a telephone interview:
\n\u201cWe are taking note of this (Parliamentary enquiry). We need to allow those processes to take place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pule\u00a0said in a press briefing on 22 April 2013, that a recent series of damaging reports published in the\u00a0Sunday Times<\/a>\u00a0over the last 10 months are part of a \u201csophisticated plot\u201d to blackmail her.<\/p>\n

The reason for the blackmail, Pule alleged, is the multi-billion Rand tender \u201cand related issues\u201d for the set-top boxes needed for South Africa\u2019s migration from analogue to digital television.<\/p>\n

According to Pule, the intention was to force her to make decisions that favour the interests of certain powerful people and organisations.<\/p>\n

Pule has also rejected claims that she is romantically linked to\u00a0Mngqibisa.\u00a0In a recent radio interview, the minister said:<\/p>\n

\u201cI know him as a comrade, but I have nothing to do with him, and I am surprised that the Sunday Times wants me to take responsibility for activities of people that are happening outside, private people that I don\u2019t know, and I have to say I know him. And they don\u2019t bring a shred of evidence.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

City Press on Sunday (28 April)\u00a0reported that soccer boss Jomo Sono is at the centre of the alleged blackmail campaign against Pule.<\/p>\n

The newspaper alleged Sono\u2019s company, Jomo Sono Investments, was one of 36 companies in the running for a R2.5 billion tender to be awarded by Pule\u2019s department.<\/p>\n

More on Dina Pule<\/h3>\n

Pule to be investigated by Parliament<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

He is not my boyfriend: Pule<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mac Maharaj says that the SA Presidency will only comment on Dina Pule following her appearance in a Parliamentary hearing later this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":36856,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[2061,1083,26,3080,5151,3786],"class_list":["post-36852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-democratic-alliance","tag-dina-pule","tag-headline","tag-ict-indaba","tag-mac-maharaj","tag-phosane-mngqibisa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36852","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\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36852"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36858,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36852\/revisions\/36858"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}