The DA is seeking an order compelling the ANC to hand over to an independent IT expert the electronic equipment of the ANC staffer whose laptop mysteriously crashed with some of the cadre deployment records on it, and who “mistakenly deleted” some of them.
This was revealed in an urgent contempt-of-court application filed by DA MP Leon Schreiber in the Johannesburg high court on Monday. The application will be heard on March 19. The ANC, its secretary-general Fikile Mbalula and the strategic support manager in the deputy secretary-general’s office, Thapelo Masilela, are cited as the first, second and third respondents.
Schreiber wants the ANC declared in breach of a court order handed down in February 2023 which set aside the ANC’s refusal to hand over the records and ordered it to hand them over to the DA within five days.
The ANC unsuccessfully tried to appeal against the judgment both in the Supreme Court of Appeal and the Constitutional Court and was given five days to do so by the apex court.
It eventually handed over the records but in a redacted form and with some records missing after they were deleted either when Masilela tried to clear some space on his email account, or when his laptop crashed.
Schreiber, in the latest application, asks the court to compel the ANC to “give effect to the court order” by:
- Giving him the records in an unredacted form “so as to ensure all names of people are legible”;
- Provide Schreiber with all the information relating to the processes and decisions made by the cadre deployment committee between January 2013 and January 2021 including: minutes, draft minutes, notes, attendance registers, communication and “decisions of the committee whether prepared by or communicated to staff members” by ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula, members of the committee or government officials;
- To hand over emails and social media communication between and among committee members and government officials from January 2013 to May 2018, August 6 2018 to March 22 2019; and August 19 2019 to November 12 2019 and to provide legible copies of these;
- To hand over Masilela’s hard drive, laptop and personal email to a “third-party IT expert” agreed to by the DA “for the purposes of extracting information required to be disclosed by the court order”; and
- To hand over Lungi Mtshali’s laptop.
The DA wants the ANC to be directed to confirm it has complied with the requested order and to pay the costs for the application on an attorney-and-client scale.
The ANC was given until March 6 to file a notice of opposition, until Friday to file its answering affidavit and until March 14 to file heads of argument alongside the DA’s.
Schreiber first lodged a Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) request in 2021 at the height of the exposure of state capture under Jacob Zuma’s presidency.
The deleted files and emails go back to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s time as chair of the ANC’s cadre deployment committee, for which the records are being sought by the DA. They cover the period when Ramaphosa was elected as the party’s deputy president in December 2012, until he was elected president in December 2017.
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