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Former Minister of Social Development Bathabile Dlamini. (GCIS)
- The claim that former Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini is being deprived of her pension for political instruction is false, the justice department says.
- His pension is being withheld according to an instruction from Sassa and Dlamini knows “the current legal situation”.
- The Justice Department says it is “not free to reveal the exact nature” of the State Attorney’s instructions on the matter.
Claims that former Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini is being deprived of her pension, allegedly due to political instructions, are “without foundation and without any truth,” the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development said on Wednesday.
Dlamini recently told the Sunday Times that he had no cash because his pension had been blocked. He cited this as a reason for challenging an order from the Constitutional Court to pay part of the legal costs to non-governmental organizations that won a social grants case against him in 2018.
The Constitutional Court found that Dlamini had lied in court documents when he defended a request from Black Sash and Freedom Under Law (FUL) regarding the distribution of social grant payments. The court then ordered him to personally pay 20% of the legal costs incurred by Black Sash and the FUL, according to The Witness.
READ HERE | Questions about the Bathabile Dlamini pension
The Attorney General’s Office launched an investigation into the claim and found that the instruction to withhold the former minister’s pension payment was received from the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa), department spokesman Stephen Mahlangu said.
“The reasons for the withdrawal of the pension are well known to the former minister and Sassa. Until now, neither party has questioned them nor has there been any intention to do so,” Mahlangu said.
“The State Attorney acts on the instruction of his client, who are the state departments and entities he represents. This particular matter is currently being litigated by the parties, including the former minister.”
Mahlangu said the attorney general was not “at liberty to reveal the exact nature of the instructions to the State Attorney.”
READ ALSO | Bathabile Dlamini says ‘the best judiciary is the judiciary that listens to the people’ – report
He said it would be at the discretion of Sassa as a customer department.
“However, we can confirm that all parties to the matter are in possession of the necessary documents that derive from this instruction and are fully aware of the current legal situation. This includes the former Minister of Social Development,” he said.
“Politics plays no role in the work of the State Prosecutor’s Office and insinuations that suggest otherwise are malicious and should be flatly rejected.”
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