Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Public Service and Administration, Jan de Villiers.
The Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Public Service and Administration, Jan de Villiers, said the practice of lobbying is not in itself unlawful, but that when money is involved, “well, that's corruption, basically”.
De Villiers, who is also the national spokesperson for the DA, was speaking to the media in his capacity as committee chairperson as part of a media briefing by Parliament’s governance cluster oversight committees on Thursday.
The matter of political influence and lobbying has come under the spotlight amid the public fallout between former DA leaders Tony Leon and John Steenhuisen.
Steenhuisen set the ball rolling when he detailed the allegations accusing Leon’s PR firm, Resolve Communications, of arranging meetings between DA ministers and its clients – most explosively, Elon Musk's Starlink, which he said met Communications Minister Solly Malatsi while seeking a licence to operate in SA.
