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Three days ago President Jacob Zuma announced he had instructed the Minister of Finance, Pravin Gordhan, to cancel his international investor roadshow and immediately return to South Africa.

There has been no reasonable explanation for the bizarre instruction, beyond the speculation that the minister is about to be fired in a cabinet reshuffle.

However, bizarre explanations for the bizarre instruction are now beginning to surface.

The most bizarre explanation by far is that President Jacob Zuma issued the instruction on the basis of an “intelligence report” claiming that the finance minister would be holding secret meetings with people in the United Kingdom and the United States to discuss “overthrowing the state”, as part of “Operation Check Mate”.

This is by far the most bizarre explanation for the bizarre instruction and is exactly the kind of rubbish that one would expect President Vladimir Putin to dream up and have published in “Pravda”.

The fact is that nobody in their right mind would believe the finance minister would participate in secret meetings with the intention of overthrowing the state.

However, President Jacob Zuma and his inner circle of securocrats are so prone to conspiracy and so clueless about international finance that we cannot be sure, mad as it may seem, that the bizarre instruction was not based on a fake intelligence report about a fake intelligence operation, comically called “Operation Check Mate”.

I will request the Inspector-General for Intelligence, Isaac Dintwe, to probe these allegations because we need to know whether a fake intelligence report about a fake intelligence operation played any role in the bizarre instruction for the finance minister to cancel his international investor roadshow and return to South Africa

Issued by DA