DA accuses Zwane of ‘lying’ in parly on ‘Gupta-sponsored’ trip to Dubai

The DA on Wednesday said it had submitted formal complaints to parliament’s ethics committee and public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane against Mineral Resources Minister Mosebenzi Zwane for deliberately misleading the national legislature.

The party’s spokesperson on mineral resources, James Lorimer, said Zwane appeared to have deliberately misrepresented information to MPs when he recently stated, in a written parliamentary reply, that his controversial December 2015 trip to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, was organised and paid for by his department.

“However, the public protector’s State of Capture report found that Zwane had not used the ticket the DMR [department of mineral resources] purchased for him to travel from Zurich [Switzerland] to Dubai. The question is, how did Zwane get to Dubai?” Lorimer said in a statement.

He said the Gupta emails leaked to the public domain had allegedly listed the minister alongside Tony ‘Rajesh’ Gupta as a passenger on a “Gupta-sponsored flight” that was cleared to fly to Dubai on December 2, 2015.

The DA said it had referred this evidence to the ethics committee and the office of the public protector to request that Zwane be investigated as a matter of urgency.

“Based on the replies he submitted to parliament, it appears that Zwane deliberately misled parliament, which is a breach of Section 7 (a) and (b) of the Powers, Privilege and Immunities Act.

“In addition to these allegations, Zwane has also seemingly misled parliament when he failed to satisfactorily answer a DA parliamentary question regarding interaction with the Gupta family. In his response to the DA, Minister Zwane stated that he ‘has not met with any member nor close associate of the Guptas’,” Lorimer said.

Yet, Zwane has been quoted in the media admitting that he had met with the Guptas before, and “the leaked Gupta emails show that the minister was due to meet with Tony Gupta at the Guptas’ Saxonwold compound”, Lorimer added.

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