Cope wants urgent parly debate on Jacques Pauw’s The President’s Keepers

The Congress of the People (Cope) has written a letter to National Assembly speaker Baleka Mbete requesting an urgent debate relating to President Jacob Zuma’s alleged tax evasion and dodgy dealings with gangsters, contained in author Jacques Pauw’s bestselling book, The President’s Keepers.

“I hereby formally request you, in terms of rule 130 of the Rules of the National Assembly, to schedule without delay an opportunity for the House to discuss a matter of great national public importance which arises from a number of explosive allegations made by investigative journalist Jacques Pauw in his book The President’s Keepers,” Cope leader Mosiuoa Lekota said in a letter addressed to the speaker last Monday.

Lekota said Pauw in his new book laid bare the nature of the wrongdoings at the SA Revenue Service (Sars), police service (SAPS), State Security Agency (SSA) and National Prosecuting Authority (NPA).

He said he was concerned Mbete was yet to schedule the debate, as South Africans needed to know how parliament intended to deal with the allegations contained in Pauw’s book.

“The exposures in the book are so damning and so extensive as to be considered treasonable and so widely publicised as to warrant your invoking sub-section (3) of rule 130 in allowing parliament to debate the matter at the highest level without a moment’s delay to give the nation guidance and direction and to demand utmost accountability without fear or favour,” Lekota wrote in his letter.

Pauw exposes, among others, an alleged plot by Zuma to quash his massive R63-million tax bill, his failure to submit his tax returns during at least the first five years of his presidency, and how Zuma kept receiving secret monthly pay cheques from a friend despite being paid by the state as president.

The SSA last week filed criminal charges against the author for possessing classified information. This after the agency issued Pauw and his publisher, NB Publishers, with two “cease and desist” orders from publishing his controversial book, after saying the book was replete with inaccuracies and threatened national security.

The South African Revenue Service has also threatened legal action against him.

Pauw and NB Publishers have denied they have done anything illegal.

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