In a hastily arranged press conference in Rosebank on 22 April, Minister of Communications Dina Pule lashed out not only at the Sunday Times and specific journalists who work for the newspaper, but also at those with “business and political interests related to the multi-billion rand set-top-box tender and related issues” as being complicit in a blackmail plot against her.
The backlash came in the wake of an article printed in the 21 April edition of the Sunday Times – the latest in a series of articles attacking Pule’s credibility and accusing her of corruption in an ever more colourful variety of forms. Proclaiming that “the mud throwers’ hands are not always clean”, she proceeded to scoop up a handful of her own and lob it in the direction of her accusers.
In addition to denying the allegations against her, Pule made the startling revelation that these articles have all been part of a sustained blackmail plot by the journalists in question, in cahoots with 'their handlers' whom she says are representatives of prominent organisations which are tendering for business relating to the manufacture of the set-top boxes required to facilitate South Africa’s transition from analog to digital television broadcast signals. When asked, Pule refused to name these companies or their representatives.
The goal of the alleged blackmail, Pule claimed, was to force her to make decisions in favour of these unnamed organisations, against the threat of creating sufficient uproar through a Sunday Times backed smear campaign as to make her position untenable.
Pule is due to appear before a Parliament ethics committee on the 2nd and 3rd of May.
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