By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Former communications minister Faith Muthambi admitted on Friday that she did send confidential cabinet information to sources outside of government.
She said she sent the information as part of stakeholder engagement.
Muthambi appeared remotely before the state capture commission on Friday evening to testify about allegations that she shared confidential government information with the controversial Gupta family.
“Chairperson,I want to place it on record that I’ve never shared any state confidential documents with people I was not supposed to share such information with, she said”
She welcomed what she said was an opportunity to finally clear her name.
Adv Anton Myburgh led evidence over allegations that Muthambi knowingly and deliberately shared information with Tony Gupta, Duduzane Zuma and Sahara’s CEO Ashu Chawla by e-mail in 2014.
Muthambi’s testimony started off friendly, but ended on a tense note when commission chair deputy chief justice Raymond Zondo had to remind her that she could not choose what she wanted to talk about and that she needed to answer all the questions.
Muthambi said it was critical for the commission to know that the e-mails were leaked, and denied sending e-mails to those who were not entitled to receive them.
Zondo asked if Gupta and Chawla were the people she was meant to send the e-mails to, she responded that she sent the e-mails to Chawla “based on the fact that he owned ANN7”.
“I admit I sent [the e-mails] to Chawla as a stakeholder and interested party, but he forwarded them [to Duduzane Zuma and Tony Gupta].”
Myburgh asked about the implementation of a policy for unencrypted digital terrestrial television, but Muthambi referred to a Constitutional Court ruling which exonerated her.
In 2017 the Constitutional Court ruled that the government could continue to use the unencrypted system and that e.tv’s legal bid to stop the system had failed.
Myburgh then reminded her that Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng said she was wrong in not disclosing who she had consulted with, and that her responses “or lack thereof” were “evasive and suspicious”.
Muthambi said it was “irrelevant” and that it was a problem when “somebody selectively reads … The issue is that I was vindicated so it’s irrelevant for me to comment on it.”
Muthambi was appointed public service and administration minister in March in a midnight cabinet reshuffle. As communications minister, she was accused of allowing the SABC to be plundered and run into the ground.
On Monday evidence will follow the Money Flows investigation and then evidence by Anoj Singh on Eskom.