State to decide who can hear Nkandla inquiry

Durban - Media companies face being barred from the government inquiry on the conduct of Department of Public Works officials involved in the upgrading of security at President Jacob Zuma’s Nkandla residence.

The media were allowed to report on all the preliminary hearings, but were told on Wednesday to submit a formal application before November 5 to be allowed any further access.

A “media hearing” will be held next week, where attorneys representing the media will have to present their arguments before the three chairmen, the state’s attorneys, the accused and their representative, the Public Servants Association.

The media application must include details of how the stories will be used, including whether articles will be shared with sister publications, plans for publishing online and on social media platforms.

Murray Hunter, a spokesman for the media freedom organisation Right2Know, said: “In the battle to get the Nkandla procurement documents released, top Public Works officials lied under oath about the contents of the documents. They claimed that the contents were so critical to national security that not even one page could be released, which turned out not to be true. So the department’s conduct has eroded public trust.

“Making this process open would be the best way to ensure that the civil servants get a fair hearing – it would also be crucial to ensuring that the public finally got to know the truth.” The inquiry is taking place in Durban, where 12 officials have to answer to charges of failing to comply with the statutory and regulatory measures that governed the procurement of goods and services by the department for the R246 million project.

Earlier this month, one of the chairmen, Thulani Khuzwayo, announced that the media would have to make a formal application to report on the hearings. This is believed to be on the instruction of the department.

Advocate Joseph Nxusana initially permitted the media to report on the inquiry when he presided over the first sitting on September 30. This was in spite of argument by the department’s attorney, Lynette Naidoo, that the identities of the state’s witnesses would be compromised by the media’s presence. She also said the inquiry was by the department, that it concerned the conduct of its own employees, and media should not be present at internal hearings.

The Public Servants Association’s labour relations officer, Roshan Lil-Ruthan, has on many occasions stated that the association’s members have no objections to the media covering the hearings.

In September, he said if the hearings were like that of any other internal inquiry, the State would not have hired external attorneys as prosecutors and the proceedings would have been chaired by senior employees of the department instead of advocates from the KZN Society of Advocates, as was the case.’

- The Mercury