State Security Minister David Mahlobo has classified as "top secret" a parliamentary reply on an investigation into "Project Spider Web", a bizarre "intelligence report" that sought to smear senior officials in the National Treasury.
The DA, which asked a parliamentary question about the investigation, has alleged that this is an attempt to "bury the information" about the controversial intelligence dossier.
The report was circulated in government circles last year and alleges that in the dying days of apartheid, national intelligence and the white establishment hatched a plan to keep the nation’s finances under control — a plot said to have been funded by the Oppenheimers and the Ruperts.
Former finance minister Nhlanhla Nene at the time dismissed the "Project Spider Web" report, saying it was not credible, but expressed concern about its intent, which appeared to be to undermine the integrity of the Treasury.
Since then, the Treasury has been at the centre of the controversy over state capture, particularly after Nene was removed from his post and replaced with then backbencher, Des van Rooyen, who has links to President Jacob Zuma’s friends and family benefactors, the Gupta family.
Mahlobo said in a letter to DA MP David Maynier, who posed parliamentary questions about the investigation into the report, that he had forwarded the response to the joint standing committee on intelligence.
This means the response will not be made public.
The letter to Maynier was headed "Top Secret".
This differs from a response to the questions on the investigation asked last year.
Mahlobo responded to a question from the party last year, saying his department had received a request to investigate the matter and that the investigation was under way.
Maynier said on Monday that the State Security Agency was trying to keep the information behind closed doors in the JSCI.
"We have to get to the bottom of who was behind Project Spider Web, which was an attack on the institutional independence of the National Treasury," he said.
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