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The Democratic Alliance (DA) believes that the Minister of Correctional Services, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, needs to appear before Parliament’s portfolio committee on correctional services, so that the committee can iron out a number of anomalies in the handling of Schabir Shaik’s two alleged assaults on members of the public.

We welcome and endorse the fact that the Department of Correctional Services undertook to investigate the two alleged incidents involving Mr Shaik while he was out on medical parole. We believe that in detaining Mr Shaik while the investigation took place, the Department took entirely the right course of action.

What we now need to establish is why the Department says that the allegations of assault levelled at Mr Shaik could not be corroborated. In both cases, witnesses were on hand when the alleged assaults took place; at the most recent incident, at a Durban mosque, accounts suggest dozens of witnesses would have seen the incident. Even if
Mr Ismail, the alleged victim, was unwilling to cooperate with the investigation, the Department ought to have conducted further interviews with other witnesses, and we need to establish if these took place. We also understand that the Sunday Tribune journalist, who was allegedly assaulted by Mr Shaik, was interviewed by the Department. In light of all this, the statement by the Correction Services Department’s regional commissioner, Mnikelwa Nxele, that the Department “could not assert whether the assault did or did not happen”, requires further justification.

It may be the case that the Department has acted entirely in good faith throughout this process, but the minister’s presence before the portfolio committee would help to clear up these discrepancies, and address the impression that the outcome of this investigation may have been a foregone conclusion.