Communications Minister Dina Pule on Monday shot back at reports published in the Sunday Times, claiming that the “persistent smear campaign” against her was a result of a failed blackmail attempt to influence a set-top box (STB) manufacturing tender, besides others.
Speaking at a last-minute press conference on Monday, she accused the “Sunday Times handlers”, who she said were high profile business people and politicians, of allegedly attempting to coerce her into “making decisions in their favour, through threats of injurious revelations or accusations”.
Pule, whose actions within the Department of Communications (DoC) have been publicly scrutinised over the past ten months, has been accused in the media of ceding control of the DoC to a boyfriend; interfering in the strategic appointments of officials and board members of State entities by appointing friends of her boyfriend; the issuance of tenders to said boyfriend and meddling in the tender processes for the boyfriend’s benefit; mismanagement of the funds from the ICT Indaba in Cape Town last year; and being bribed with a pair of shoes.
“It is common cause that the Sunday Times, in the main, has sought to project me as a corrupt Minister who is hellbent on manipulating tender processes for the benefit of my alleged boyfriend, his friends and relatives,” Pule commented.
The latest accusation, on Sunday, comprised the alleged deviation of procurement regulations in the appointment of recruitment agency Mindworx.
Pule returned accusations, stating that it was a “highly sophisticated campaign” to influence the direction of the multibillion-rand STB tender, which had yet to be awarded.
STBs will be required to receive a digital terrestrial signal as South Africa migrated from analogue to digital terrestrial television. In excess of five-million of the country’s poorest television-owning households would receive a 70% subsidy for the STBs.
The much-delayed tender, which closed in September and was supposed to be announced by the end of last year, had been halted until the resolution of a legal dispute regarding the conditional access control of the STB.
The DoC withdrew from the legal row earlier this year following a court order to meet with the broadcasters and collectively decide the future of the conditional access control standard, which was still pending.
“It is common knowledge that the STB tender involves billions of rands. The process to finalise the tender is still under way, having been delayed by litigation from interested parties,” Pule commented.
“… the smear campaign was swiftly taken over, with the collaboration of Sunday Times journalists, by business people and politicians with interests in the tender for the manufacture of STBs as part of digital migration,” she added.
She stated that some had submitted a bid for the tender and had allegedly offered to aid in getting rid of the first of a series of slanderous stories to be published, owing to alleged close ties with the journalists involved.
While an investigation by the Auditor General deemed departmental processes clean and cleared Pule and the department of any wrongdoing, investigations by the Public Protector and Parliament’s Ethics Committee were ongoing.
She further accused the journalists and involved parties of allegedly using the public platform to “sway” the investigations.