he revelation is contained in court papers in which Madonsela opposes an urgent application to the Pretoria High Court by the ministers of police, public works, defence and state security for an injunction barring her from releasing a provisional report on her investigation, pending the vetting of her report by the security cluster ministers.
The urgent application was made on Friday. The case returns to the high court tomorrow.
In her opposing affidavit, Madonsela denies the ministers' claim that her report contained a "plethora of security breaches" and charged that her investigation met "very strong" resistance.
"There were separate attempts by the minister of police, and thereafter collectively by the ministers of police, public works and state security (with the assistance of the acting state attorney and the chief state law adviser) to stop the investigation," Madonsela said.
She said the report had been "carefully compiled" to ensure that there were no security breaches.
The ministers had had a "considerable period" in which to identify security concerns, she said . Scrutinising the report should not have taken them more than a few hours - at most, two days.
She gave the court a copy of the report to allow it to establish that there was no basis for the ministers' concerns. She noted that they had not previously made "a single reference to any conceivable security issue".
Madonsela rejected the claim that she was not entitled to release the provisional report without the ministers' consent.
Earlier, Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa had said in an affidavit that the "release of the provisional report to third parties such as 'other affected, implicated and interested parties' without prior authorisation of the [ministers] . entrusted by relevant legislation to grant authorisation for classified and/or confidential information to be released to third parties, is unlawful and carries with it a criminal penalty".
But Madonsela countered this assertion by saying that, as the author of the document, she was responsible for classifying it.
She alleged that the ministers acted illegally when they distributed the report to officials in their departments without her consent.
Political analyst Ebrahim Fakir said Madonsela had done the ministers "a favour" by giving them the report before releasing it to the affected parties.
Culled from The Times ZA.
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