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A charity campaign for school children has landed an ANC official in the North West legislature in trouble with unknown people who accuse him of competing with Premier Supra Mahumapelo and plotting to overthrow him.
Oupa Matla, a parliamentary official in the office of the ANC chief whip in North West, told City Press that he had sought protection from the police after receiving threatening phone calls from people alleging that his Oupa Matla Foundation charity drive – which had donated food, shoes and calculators to learners in poor schools across the province – was a plot to undermine Mahumapelo.
Mmabatho police station commander Colonel Bigboy Dube said the police were unable to assist Matla, who is also Mahumapelo’s former spokesperson, because the suspects used a private number and the complaint did not fit the definition of intimidation.
Dube said the police needed to be able to identify the network service provider in order to make an application for information in terms of Section 205 of the Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication-Related Information Act.
The ANC in North West legislature had also suspended Matla pending a disciplinary hearing on several charges related to his office duties as well as his role in the foundation.
ANC chief whip in North West legislature, Hoffman Galeng, said in a statement last week that he wished to “categorically dissociate (the ANC) from all activities of the Oupa Matla Foundation”.
“The office would like to put on record that it is not part of the establishment of the foundation,” said Galeng.
He said the party “had reliably learned that the fundraising has been done through a fraudulent and dishonest manner under the pretext that the ANC and/or the office of the chief whip of the ANC are involved”.
“Whosoever wishes to donate to the foundation can do so out of his or her volition and he or she does not make such financial pledge to the office of the ANC chief whip or ANC but to Oupa Matla as an individual or privately outside the ANC chief whip’s office or ANC,” said Galeng.
He said some funders had “approached the office to indicate that they already donated under the pretext that the Oupa Matla Foundation operates from the ANC or the ANC chief whip’s office as Matla is an official in the office of the ANC chief whip”.
Galeng said the party “condemned in strongest possible terms available on earth, any official who takes advantage of the plight of the poor and the needy for his or her personal mischievous and corrupt gains”.
Matla denied the allegations, saying he will comment further on the charges against him once the disciplinary process was concluded.
