Written by Patience Nyangove
Thursday, 13 May 2010
A South African catering company, Independent Site Services, says Swapo Secretary to the Women’s Council and Deputy Minister of Health and Social Services Petrina Haingura and Secretary for Documentation, Mildred Jantjies allegedly tried to extort over N$300,000 from them.
It is alleged Haingura through Jantjies wrote an email to Independent Site Services that is in a joint venture with the SWC requesting N$100,000 purportedly to fund her “election campaign” while Jantjies tried to extort N$100,000 for her son’s hotel bill in Zimbabwe.
ISS paid the SWC leadership money allegedly to get multi-million dollar Government tenders to supply food to Government secondary schools across the country.
In an email dated 2 March 2009 written by ISS Chairman Les Webber to Doreen Sioka now Minister of Gender and Child Welfare who was then Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Webber accuses Jantjies of requesting money to pay her son’s R100,000 hotel bill at Zimbabwe’s Rainbow Towers Hotel.
“I would like to place on record the payments we have made in respect of Swapo Women’s Council to date: R30,000 for SWC offices, R5,000 for seed for rural women, R2,000 for Mildred’s airfare to Johannesburg, R1,500 for a handbag made by the rural ladies.
“Over and above this in the last four days we have had two requests, both of them for over R100,000 each. The first was an extremely urgent request for R100,000 for the Minister’s campaign. The second was R100,000 for Mildred’s son’s hotel bill mentioned above,” Webber wrote.
Another letter written by a former employee of ISS only identified as Martin to ISS Group Operations Director Brenda Swanepoel on 4 March 2009 shows that Haingura and Jantjies were allegedly extorting money for their personal use.
“My email is just a cover up to Les’ email for this was nothing to do with the Deputy Speaker and still Les included her name. This email was just to save the situation for Mildred and the Deputy Health (Minister) was (sic) very upset and felt that the money they wanted to borrow was in their own capacity and had nothing to do with Swapo,” part of the letter reads
Swanepoel also mentions in one of her letters that Martin should be careful when dealing with the Swapo women.
“Martin, I want you to be very careful with these ladies, keep strictly to business with them. We need them and don’t want to put them or us in difficult situations. In short we have both been set up.”
In another undated letter written by Swanepoel she said it was Jantjies who approached ISS seeking donations for Haingura’s election campaign.
“...The next time we were in Namibia, our chairman and deputy chairman met Mildred for lunch at the Kalahari Sands Hotel. At this luncheon Mildred asked us to donate R100,000 to the Honourable Deputy Minister’s election campaign. We declined,” she wrote.
In an email dated 1 March 2009 written by Webber addressed to Sioka, Haingura and Jantjies, he asks the trio to assist ISS with the lobbying to get the Government tenders.
“In-order to kick this relationship off, you need to urgently assist us with the lobbying. As we only have a week or two before the tenders are awarded. We need to act quickly. Just to reiterate we have two companies Atlantic Food Services and Catering Solutions. We need to get two areas for each company, i.e. 8 regions as each area is made up of two regions. The critical area is the two regions made up of Kavango and Caprivi. We want this area to be awarded to our Catering Solutions company. We tendered slightly higher in Caprivi (R22,82) and Kavango we were the cheapest at (R18).
They will treat this one area and although we are higher in Caprivi, we are the cheapest in Kavango, which has more schools and the bigger section.
“Coupled to this is the fact that both the Honourable Deputy Minister and Deputy Speaker have considerable influences in this area. We also donated R5,000 for the local woman (sic) to plant seeds and grow vegetables in this specific area. We are already assisting the community. Please mention the above points in your lobbying,” the letter reads. When contacted for comment Haingura could only say the issue was politically motivated.
“This thing is politically motivated, I didn’t ask Webber for money. If you want to know more call my lawyers Conradie and Damaseb.”
Presidential Affairs Minister Dr Albert Kawana said it was ridiculous for a politician to ask for money to fund his or her election campaign as Swapo didn’t operate in such a way.
“In terms of the Swapo party there are mechanisms to address those cadres who behave in such a way. Those mechanisms are known to all at all party levels. We have rules and procedures that regulate the conduct of members, people must subscribe to party rules.”
Swapo deputy Secretary-General Nangolo Mbumba refused to comment on the issue referring Informanté to Haingura and Jantjies. Sioka chose to hung up on Informanté while Jantjies’ mobile phone was going on voicemail. A visit to the Women Centre were she works yielded nothing as they said she was on her way to South Africa to attend her sister’s funeral
Efforts to get a comment from Webber or Swanepoel were fruitless as Webber’s South African mobile number went unanswered while Swanepoel’s went on voice mail.
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