death threats – praag.org

White ANC member receives death threats after Pule investigation

The chairman and registrar of parliament’s joint portfolio committee on ethics and members’ interests say they received death threats while conducting their investigation into the conduct of former communications minister Dina Pule.

On Wednesday, a multiparty panel appointed by the committee released its report, which paints a damning picture of the former minister’s behaviour. She was sacked from president Jacob Zuma’s cabinet last month.

The committee recommended further investigation by the police and the National Prosecuting Authority.

The panel’s report has revealed that during the investigations, committee co-chair and ANC MP Ben Turok and committee registrar Fazela Mahomed were alerted to threats of harm against them.

According to Turok, Pule’s partner, businessman Phosane Mngqibisa — who the committee found benefited improperly from last year’s ICT Indaba organised by the department of communications — was accompanied by a bodyguard to one of the early hearings.

Although the bodyguard was made to wait outside the room where the hearings were taking place, his mere presence was against parliamentary protocol, Turok says.

“This man stood outside the room in which we were having our hearings, but strictly speaking he should not have been allowed in parliament at all. I don’t know what pretext he came in under, or if he was armed, but as committee chair I was told he was outside the door and I was told he was the bodyguard of a witness, Mr Mngqibisa.

“We were unhappy about that, but we were so busy with the investigation that we didn’t follow it up. So when this other thing pops up, we link one and two,” Turok says. “There’s something unsavoury about it.”

TechCentral was unable to reach Mngqibisa on his mobile phone on Thursday.

“The police have been involved at quite a high level and the speaker of parliament knows about it,” Turok says. “We expect that someone will be investigating the basis for all of this, but it has been taken quite seriously.”

He adds that he is less concerned about his personal safety and far more about the threat of interference with the “legitimate processes” of parliament. “Any threat to disrupt a formal procedure in parliament is to be examined very carefully.”

Turok and Mahomed continue to be accompanied by members of the parliamentary protection service.

He says the South African Police Service in the Western Cape branch is also involved in the matter.

“A threat was received through a certain person, that they would try to stop the investigation and the report,” said Turok.

He said certain witnesses were also threatened and some tried to change their evidence.

The death threats were reported to the national VIP unit, and both Turok and Mahomed were provided with two security personnel each. Turok was told not to trust his food as it could be poisoned and warned never to be alone.

Turok said the matter was reported to the speaker of the national assembly Max Sisulu, Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa and to police commissioner Riah Phiyega because the protection services felt it was an attack on Parliament.

Turok suspects that a person or people mentioned in the report had felt threatened and wanted to stop the report from being published.

“Well, they are late now. It’s been tabled to Parliament and it is a public document now.”

On Wednesday, Parliament’s joint committee on ethics and members interests found Pule guilty of breaching the code of conduct for MPs and recommended maximum penalties allowed by the rules, which include a reprimand by the speaker of the National Assembly during a sitting of the House, a fine of an equivalent of 30 days’ salary, a suspension of her privileges for 15 days and an exclusion from any parliamentary debates or committees during that period.

Turok told journalists that the committee would have given her more severe penalties but it was limited by the rules of Parliament.

Last month President Jacob Zuma dismissed Pule, who had been dogged by controversy for months over allegations of funnelling contracts and government resources to her boyfriend, Phosane Mngqibisa, during the controversial Information and Communication Technology Indaba.

“As a result of lengthy and detailed investigations, the panel found that Mr Mngqibisa was the de facto permanent companion or spouse to Pule,” found a seven-member panel which was appointed by the ethics committee to investigate the matter.

“Through that relationship, he was able to obtain government funding for overseas trips and participate in official meetings despite having no formal department role in respect thereof.

“He was further able to obtain financial benefits for himself and his company Khemano as a result of his relationship with Pule,” found the panel.

The panel said Pule wilfully misled them and that several officials of the department may have committed perjury in their evidence and colluded with her. – 2013 NewsCentral Medi/ M&G

Zimmerman’s parents in hiding from ‘enormous amount of death threats’

George Zimmerman immediately went back into hiding after being acquitted of murder in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, his parents told Barbara Walters in an exclusive interview with ABC News, adding that they haven’t seen him since he left the courthouse.

The Zimmermans said that because of “an enormous amount of death threats,” they, too, have remained in hiding and still don’t feel safe enough to return to their home in Orlando, Fla.

Two days after a Florida jury found their 29-year-old son not guilty of second-degree murder and manslaughter charges in the death of Martin, 17, Zimmerman’s parents, Robert Zimmerman Sr. and Gladys Zimmerman, sat down for their first television interview. They opened up about how their son’s murder trial has affected their family and how he and they are struggling to cope with the aftermath.

“Under the circumstances, we have not been able to talk to him,” Gladys Zimmerman told Walters. “To tell you the truth, we don’t trust anything, not even the phones.”

“We have had an enormous amount of death threats. George’s legal counsel has had death threats, the police chief of Sanford, many people have had death threats,” Robert Zimmerman said.”‘Everyone with Georgie’s DNA should be killed’ — just every kind of horrible thing you can imagine.”

George Zimmerman was accused of second-degree murder for shooting Martin on Feb. 26, 2012 inside a gated community in Sanford, Fla. While he admitted to shooting the unarmed teenager, Zimmerman maintained that Martin attacked him and he acted in self defense.

A jury made up of six women found Zimmerman not guilty of both second-degree murder and manslaughter charges Saturday after deliberating for more than 16 hours over two days.

But the family’s celebration of George Zimmerman’s new freedom has been short-lived. His parents said that their son has no job and no health insurance. Gladys Zimmerman said her son has been living off small monthly stipends from his legal defense fund.

“Even for us, we have not been living a normal life for the past months, it is hard,” she said. “We have lost everything, everything — the whole family, not only George. The whole family. We have lost everything.”

When asked if her son could ever live a normal life again, Gladys Zimmerman said, “Only time will tell.”

In the wake of Martin’s death, the case quickly developed racial overtones when Sanford law enforcement declined to arrest Zimmerman, who is a white Hispanic — his father is white and his mother is originally from Peru. Trayvon Martin is black.

George Zimmerman was arrested nearly two months after the incident when the state appointed Angela Corey as a special prosecutor and she brought second-degree murder charges against him.

Outrage and protests have reignited across the country since the not-guilty verdict was announced, something George Zimmerman’s mother said was “hurtful.”

“This is America, and we went through all of this with the judicial system,” Gladys Zimmerman said. “They wanted an arrest for my son. They got an arrest. Now lets, you know, find a verdict … now they have a verdict. … He went through the whole process they were pushing for, and now they are not happy with the verdict, and I pray. I pray for them, for God to touch their heart.”- ABC

Italy’s first black minister receives death threats

Italy’s first black Cabinet minister is facing Internet death threats before a visit to a region known for its anti-immigrant political base.

But Cecile Kyenge says she’s not afraid and challenged Italians to respond to such intimidation themselves to prove that Italy isn’t racist.

Kyenge, a Congolese-born doctor who has lived in Italy since 1983, has been the target of racist diatribes ever since she was named integration minister in April. She has been called “Congolese monkey,” and a member of a “bonga bonga government.”

Last week, a local politician from the xenophobic Northern League party was expelled from the party after she suggested on Facebook: “Why doesn’t someone rape her (Kyenge), so she can understand what victims of atrocious crimes feel?” The official, Dolores Valandro, was implying that immigrants were responsible for violent crime in Italy.

Kyenge on Wednesday acknowledged “racist episodes,” but declined to brand the country as a whole racist. She has offered a muted response to the attacks against her, saying it’s more for Italy as a nation to respond.

“These actions are directed against all of us, not just me,” Kyenge told reporters. “Surely it hasn’t left me indifferent. But I think the response that the country gives is important.”

Unlike France, Germany or Britain, where second and third generations of immigrants have settled, albeit uneasily, Italy is a relative newcomer to the phenomenon, with the first waves of immigrants coming to Italy’s shores only in the 1980s. The country’s race problem was then largely seen at soccer stadiums, where even today black stars like Mario Balotelli are routinely subjected to racists taunts.

But Kyenge’s emergence onto the political stage has brought the issue to the fore, spurred on in part by her call for Italy to change its citizenship law to allow children born in Italy of legal immigrants to obtain citizenship more easily.

Currently, such children can only apply once they turn 18, and can be denied citizenship for a host of bureaucratic mistakes or omissions. Kyenge says changing the law is a key part of changing Italians’ very concept of citizenship, to take into account the country’s changing demographics.

Foreigners made up about 2 percent of Italy’s population in 1990; currently the figure stands at 7.5 percent.

“It’s a new citizenship that comes about by the meeting of different cultures,” she said.

Her call, however, has been met with stiff resistance by the anti-immigrant Northern League, which isn’t taking part in a parliamentary committee drafting the new citizenship law. Kyenge’s spokesman, Cosimo Torlo, said it’s unclear at what age citizenship could be obtained under the proposed legislation – at age 3, 5 or 10 – but that “Whatever it is, it will be better than the current law.”

The threats against Kyenge are real. She arrived at the Foreign Press Association with a phalanx of bodyguards, two of whom flanked the dais where Kyenge spoke, talking into their shirt cuffs and sending signals to two other colleagues at the back of the room.

Asked about the unusually high security detail, Kyenge noted that all ministers have bodyguards. “But it’s clear that for me, because of the threats I have received, there’s a greater attention on protection.”

This weekend, Kyenge will give the opening address to a multicultural festival in the northern region of Veneto, the political home base of the Northern League. Far-right groups are planning a protest. Isabella Zuliani, vice mayor of the town hosting the event, told newspaper Il Gazzettino that police have already been informed about a new round of Internet death threats directed at Kyenge, including one that exhorted simply: “Kill her.”

“Racist episodes exist, but you can’t say that a country is racist because there are certain episodes in the territory,” Kyenge said.

That said, Kyenge appeared more ready to acknowledge such “racist episodes” than in her first meeting with the media, soon after she was nominated. Then, she said Italy’s problem wasn’t so much racism as ignorance of “the other.”

After two months of taunts directed against her, Kyenge said, “Maybe what is missing in Italy is a culture of immigration: We have to try to know, understand the ‘other,’ and that diversity is a richness.

“As soon as we understand that, we can evaluate whether Italy is racist,” she added. – AP