ANC MP Bongani Bongo. Photo by Gallo Images / Daily Sun / Lindile Mbontsi)
ANC MP Bongani Bongo back in court for corruption trial
ANC MP Bongani Bongo allegedly offered a blank cheque to Eskom inquiry evidence leader advocate Ntuthuzelo Vanara, in exchange for not implicating him in the parliamentary probe into the utility
ANC MP Bongani Bongo. Photo by Gallo Images / Daily Sun / Lindile Mbontsi)
African National Congress (MP) and former State Security Minister Bongani Bongo is expected to make an appearance at the Western Cape High Court on Monday, 15 February 2021, for the start of his corruption trial.
Bongo is accused of attempting to bribe parliamentary legal adviser, advocate Ntuthuzelo Vanara in 2017. At the time, Vanara was the evidence leader of parliament’s inquiry into Eskom. Bongo was arrested in November 2019 and subsequently released on bail.
Bongo denied the allegations from the onset and alleged that Vanara and then Parliamentary speaker Baleka Mbete, were was behind them, mainly because they were jealous that then president Jacob Zuma had appointed him.
“They were just angry that Zuma made me a minister. I am the only minister who was appointed from being an ordinary member to minister. I was not a chairperson of a committee, I was not a deputy [minister], I was a backbencher in the true sense of backbenching and I was appointed not only as minister, but minister of state security,” he had told Sunday Times.
More legal troubles for Bongani Bongo
As if that wasn’t enough, Bongo is also expected to appear before a court in Mpumalanga for his alleged role in suspicious land deals amounting to R124 million.
In February 2012, a complaint was made about the Msukaligwa Municipality, in Ermelo. It was alleged that the municipality had purchased a farm at an exceptionally inflated price – R36.4 million while the property was worth R11 million. The supposed plan was to develop a township at the time – however the department owned a farm that could have been used for the exact same purpose.
At the time, Bongo was the human settlements department’s head of legal services.
“Another whistle-blower alerted the investigators to two other deals involving two farms, a 70ha Malelane farm worth R44m that was allegedly sold to the municipality for R50m in 2011 and a 74.2ha Naauwpoort in Emalahleni worth R16m apparently sold for R37.5m,” the Hawks’ spokesperson Lieutenant-Colonel Philani Nkwalase said at the time.
“The three farms’ combined value was about R70 million but through alleged collusion by the arrested suspects the Mpumalanga of Human Settlements Department suffered a total loss of just under R124m,”
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