DA files application to get Dramat report
|Published
01/10/2014. Minister of police, Nkosinathi Nhleko during a media briefing. Picture: Thobile Mathonsi 01/10/2014. Minister of police, Nkosinathi Nhleko during a media briefing. Picture: Thobile Mathonsi
Cape Town - The DA has filed an application in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act (Paia) to get hold of a report regarding the involvement of suspended Hawks boss Anwa Dramat in the illegal rendition of four Zimbabweans.
And the party believes Police Minister Nkosinathi Nhleko acted unconstitutionally in suspending Dramat.
The report was produced by the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid).
Nhleko placed Dramat on a 60-day precautionary suspension last month, pending a probe into his alleged involvement in the Zimbabwean episode in November 2010.
This week the head of the Hawks in Gauteng, Major-General Shadrack Sibiya along with Colonel Leslie Maluleke were also served with notices of suspension.
The pair have a week to respond to acting Hawks boss, Major-General Berning Ntlemeza, who issued the notices.
On Thursday the DA filed its Paia application, and said the move was prompted by Nhleko’s statement that he suspended Dramat based on the Ipid report.
DA MP Dianne Kohler Barnard said in the interest of transparency and accountability it was crucial to have all the facts and whether or not the Ipid report implicated Dramat. She said she was confident the report would clear Dramat of any wrongdoing. “We need to know why they would suspend a man who was cleared months and months ago. This report has already been dealt with. It is old news and has nothing to do with what is currently happening.”
In terms of Paia, Ipid executive director Robert McBride was compelled either to make the report on Dramat public, or to outline the reasons why not, within 30 working days from Friday.
On Wednesday, the DA wrote to the chairman of the portfolio committee on police, Francois Beukman, asking him to call an urgent sitting of the committee to institute an investigation into the police minister’s conduct in suspending Dramat.
Kohler Barnard said: “What we have here, I believe, is a constitutional crisis. We have a member of the executive who has basically been silent for the seven months he’s been in office, suddenly doing something that the Constitutional Court ruled, in November last year, to be unconstitutional.”
And the DA wants Parliament to put an end to the “purge of senior Hawks officials”.
“Minister Nhleko must be censured for any unconstitutional or illegal actions on his part. Mr McBride must, within 30 days, make public this report into Dramat,” said Kohler Barnard.
Cape Argus