Originally: DA Takes Haiti Ams Concerns to National Director of Public Prosecutions Ngcuka
Capetown
The DA has requested that the National Prosecuting Authority investigate whether government has contravened the National Conventional Arms Control Act by shipping arms to Haiti using a South African Airforce aircraft.
In a statement released on Wednesday Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon said he had asked National Director of Public Prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka to investigate the matter.
Leon dismissed a response from the presidency on the matter as “evasive”.
Lindiwe Vilakazi, head of legal and executive services in the Presidency, had responded to the DA’s concerns on behalf of the president in a letter.
In the letter Vilakazi said: “It was not the intention of the legislature that each time (an) aircraft belonging to the defence force leaves the country or, for that matter, transports persons or goods, it should be on the president’s authority and with the consequential reporting responsibility of the president to Parliament”.
“Advocate Vilakazi’s defence of the president’s actions is evasive on all counts,” Leon said.
“That is simply an attempt to avoid the question. The issue is that the president has not told us or the nation, and perhaps cannot tell us, who ordered the shipment of arms to Haiti, and the employment of the SAAF aircraft, and under what legal authority.”
Sapa