By Sello Theletsane
Tourism Minister Lindiwe Sisulu’s senior staff members, residents of Lower Didimana village in the Eastern Cape and a senior police officer in the village have all denied allegations in an article in Amabhungane (Amabhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism is an investigative journalism organisation focusing primarily on exposing political corruption in South Africa). The article claimed, among others, that Sisulu was not in full control of her own destiny and was being manipulated by her long-time aide and political advisor, Mphumzi Mdekazi.
The article further alleged Mdekazi even had Sisulu’s electronic signature, and as a result might have made some of the appointments that were thought to be conducted by Sisulu.
The article further claimed residents in the village of Lower Didimana, outside Whittlesea in the Eastern Cape, where Mdekazi hails from, spoke of a man who was feared in the village.
The article claimed that, at a family gathering towards the end of last year, a disagreement ensued between Mdekazi and another family member, which led to Mdekazi attacking the man in full view of witnesses. The article claimed the victim did not open a case because Mdekazi was “connected” and had all the resources to make the case disappear.
In a sworn affidavit, Sisulu’s private secretary, Zoe Adams, said she was the sole custodian of Sisulu’s electronic signature. Sisulu’s Chief of Staff, Beza Ntshona said the allegation that Mdekazi was calling the shots in Sisulu’s office was not true.
“The Chief of Staff is responsible for the entire administration of the office, budget, programme and parliamentary procedures,” said Ntshona.
“Mr Mdekazi as the political advisor of the minister, initiated with the minister, zero tolerance on corruption. Having received the hand-over report from former minister [Gugile Ernest] Nkwinti, Mr Mdekazi followed up, mandated by the M\minister on all disciplinary cases that were outstanding, of senior managers and boards."
Ntshona said after discovering massive corruption, Mdekazi advised Sisulu to establish a team led by former minister Susan Shabangu to speed up the cases. “That’s when he started to have many enemies internally and externally in the organisation. With regard supply chain management, that is the departmental domain with no ministry staff, playing any role whatsoever in that space.
“Bid evaluation and adjudication committees are established by the director general with no ministry involvement, including service providers appointment.” Ntshona said Mdekazi could not have been able to influence or play a role in supply chain matters, nor did he play any role in the hiring and firing of ministry staff, who are all appointed as per the ministerial handbook by the minister and overseen by him (Ntshona) as a chief of staff.
Themba Vumazonke, a community leader in Lower Didimana, said: “I must say upfront that, I have a moral obligation to attest and give an accurate picture of who Mphumzi Mdekazi is, as he is a child like many others from our community who grew up in front of me since he was a young boy.”
“There are many young progressive professionals in our community and I am wondering why is there so much attention given to Mphumzi, but only time will tell. Once upon a time I was the chairperson of the ANC in our branch, I also featured prominently in the farmers association, police forum and the development forum in our community. In all these structures I came across Mphumzi’s sterling and consistent contribution.
“At times, he went beyond what we expected of him in our community, he established school sports’ leagues both at primary level and high school levels, he would single- handedly intervene in many struggling families, especially in times of need, be it funerals/burials or children who are struggling with educational fees,” he said.
“I have a list of all his initiatives and social positive interventions. If Amabhungane are genuinely interested I won’t hesitate to spend a day with them to attest on these together with other local leaders. We have clean churches here because of Mphumzi, we interact with provincial MECs because of Mphumzi in trying to address our problems. We have graduates here in this community because of him.”
Vumazonke said contrary to claims that Mdekazi was a feared perpetrator, “it is Mphumzi who is a victim of crime in this community, starting from stock theft where his cattle was stolen and his house burgled, problems that we all know”.
“We would therefore like to invite people who have taken a decision to make Mphumzi their area of sharp focus to please come and ask us as community leaders about who Mphumzi is. We plead to them not to go behind our backs and interview criminals and expect that we, as the community, we will keep quiet, we won’t.
“We stand for the truth and if Daily Maverick, News24 or Amabhungane are serious about truth telling, they must respect social protocols. We are here, we want to talk to them. Deliberate character assassination because of politics is not the measure of ethical journalism. We therefore invite Sam Sole, the director of Amabhungane to do the right thing and come to us daylight. We will probably slaughter for him. What he did in trying to destroy Mphumzi through lies and gossip was just too low and unhygienically pathetic. It is actually cheap and mischievous for an adult like him.”
In his response to allegations that police in the area were reluctant to investigate cases against Mdekazi, a senior police officer at Kleinbulhoek Police Station, who spoke on condition of anonymity said: “I want to put it on record that Lower Didimana is one of the communities that is serviced by us as the police centre. At no stage have we done favours to anyone when it comes to executing our police responsibilities.”
The warrant officer added: “Contrary to what we have read in a form of Amabhungane article on Minister Sisulu’s advisor Mr Mphumzi Mdekazi, we have instead cases in our system where Mr Mdekazi has been a complainant after many incidents he encountered, with the following case numbers: CAS 5/08/2013; CAS 1597/09/2018; CAS 247/01/2019; CAS 81/10/2020 and Cas 96/05/2020.
“We also would like to put it on record that we don’t have relationship with Mr Mdekazi, except to be of service to him when he comes to report incidents to us. We do that to everybody, to all the members of the community. We treat people equally. We therefore would like to distance ourselves from the insinuation that we are doing favours for some community members.
“We would like to challenge anyone who has ever reported a case against Mr Mdekazi which was never attended to. Equally, Amabhungane, Daily Maverick and News24 should produce evidence of what they claim in relation to our work, especially if there is something untoward that we have done to their dissatisfaction with specific reference to Mr Mdekazi,” said the officer.
Mdekazi’s family noted the “criminal intrusion” of their home, during which Amabhungane illegally took pictures of their home without family permission. This the family views as a deliberate ploy to put Mdekazi’s life in danger.
The Star