Cape Town – Deputy President Paul Mashatile has gone on the defensive, rejecting news reports and social media posts that claim he is being investigated by the Hawks and other law enforcement agencies over a R28 million house in Cape Town.
The Citizen reports that Mashatile’s acting spokesperson Keith Khoza rubbished a post on X by the “notorious account”, GoolamMV, which claimed that the deputy president is being investigated by the Special Investigating Unit, the Hawks and the Public Protector, as a “falsehood […] with no believable basis”.
Deputy President @PMashatile has become aware of the existence and propagation of a post on social media, which distinguishes itself by launching unverified information and often propaganda-laden attacks on the supposed political rivals of its handlers. https://t.co/ByLrCRltZX pic.twitter.com/05xoW7R4Av
— The Presidency 🇿🇦 (@PresidencyZA) October 11, 2024
“The post in question is a collection of fabrications, exaggerations, innuendo, and outright lies. It is yet another instalment in the now evident agenda being pursued by some in public life to tarnish the Deputy President’s image and destroy his reputation for purely political motives,” Khoza said.
He said a story that subsequently appeared in News24 on Wednesday, 9 October 2024, “had no information to share but seemed to be calculated to keep the invented narrative of the Deputy President’s ‘lavish lifestyle’ in the public domain, for the express purpose of having the GoolamMV account pick it up and spread the lies on social media”.
“The post on X, the News24 stories and the alleged claims about state ‘investigations of Mashatile’, and the wholly spurious police ‘complaints’ by two opposition parties are all just part of a concerted ‘pressure campaign’ against the Deputy President. We view these allegations for what they are: an attempt to tarnish the standing of the Deputy President in the eyes of society,” Khoza said.
He listed a number of claims made in the stories that he said were false.
Of the claim that Mashatile bought a R28 million house in Cape Town, Khoza said Mashatile owns no properties other than the house he and his wife bought through a bank loan in Kelvin Johannesburg.
Khoza denied the claim that Mashatile owned a house in Waterfall Estate, Tshwane, that he bought for R37 million through his sons. Khoza said he moved into the Waterfall house because it had better security and that it was bought through regular channels by his sons and son-in-law, Nceba Nonkwelo.
Khoza also denied claims that Mashatile’s sons secured contracts from provincial departments while their father was still a member of the Gauteng government, saying “no provincial or national government department that the Deputy President has overseen has ever awarded, been accused of, or investigated for granting tenders or work to any companies with links of any kind to members of his family”.
Finally, as to claims that the Hawks were investigating Nonkwelo over how he sourced the funds to acquire the Cape Town home, Khoza said Nonkwelo “is a businessperson who comes from an established entrepreneurial family, which owns and operates its own independent enterprises”.
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Picture: X/@PMashatile
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