ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula.Photo: Luba Resore/Gallo Images
The Democratic Alliance (DA) has given ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula two days to provide the full, unedited minutes of the National Development Committee or face contempt of court. .
The party claims Mbalula illegally redacted some documents and failed to provide records from December 2012 to December 2017, when Cyril Ramaphosa chaired the deployment committee. There is.
Lawyers representing DA MP Leon Schreiber submitted a demand letter to Mr Mbalula on Thursday night.
In an affidavit to the court, Mr Mbalula said redactions were made to comply with the Protection of Personal Information Act (Popiah) and the ANC no longer held records for the period before 2018.
The DA said the ruling party had “violated” the court order by “unilaterally redacting some of the disclosed documents and thereby making them private”.
The DA objected “in particular” to redacting the names of committee members, communicating parties and individuals discussed in the committee.
The group's lawyers said Popiah “did not require or authorize the ANC to make such edits” but that even if it did, “a court order would prevail.”
“Complying with the order requires the disclosure of the full, unredacted record. The processing of personal information that follows that disclosure is in compliance with a legal obligation owed to the ANC and is therefore permitted under Popia. ” they said.
They said Mr Mbalula's claim that Popiah had asked the ANC to carry out the redactions was therefore “unsustainable”. “The obligation is to disclose the full record.”
They said the ANC's claim that it could not find the commission's records from January 1, 2013 to May 2018 was “unreliable”.
The ANC did not indicate at any stage in the three-year legal process that these records were not available, while communications with the party's legal director, Krish Naidoo, indicated no willingness to release the information. It was showing. It existed. ”
The ANC also “failed to raise this as a defense at any stage of the proceedings” and had a legal obligation to inform the court if it did not have the information requested by the DA, the lawyers said. .
If the ANC does not have minutes, it may be able to obtain digital records of committee meetings, including correspondence, if they exist.
“It is not credible for the ANC to claim that no documentary or digital trace of the commission’s process over the past five years exists,” they said.
The President told the Zondo State Capture Commission that people had taken notes at the commission's meetings so the ANC could track down the records and submit them to the court.
The DA's lawyers also said the ANC had not included the committee's decisions for the same period, as it was legally required to do.
They demanded the party provide complete records from the time, including computers owned by ANC officials, one of whom could face charges regarding Popiah for allegedly destroying some records. .
DA party leader John Steenhuisen said if the ANC did not comply with the demands, he would seek emergency contempt of court rulings imposing a prison sentence on Mr Mbalula, who acted on behalf of the ANC in the matter.
“We will use the precedent set when Jacob Zuma was similarly sent to prison for contempt of a Constitutional Court order,” Steenhuisen said.
He said the public prosecutor's office would also file criminal charges against ANC officials involved in the destruction “as part of a blatant cover-up to remove President Ramaphosa's fingerprints from the cadre deployment records.”
