_: The latest antic by Mr Van Dalen leads me to believe that his job is to distract the Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries from her work.

Mr Van Dalen has recently released a statement (Joemat-Pettersson corruption claims contradicted by Hindle, 19 August 2012) following the Minister’s assertions that she will root out corruption at the Fisheries Branch of the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. Not to be upstaged, Mr Van Dalen today released a statement saying the Minister is lying about the availability of documents to prove that there is sufficient evidence of tender irregularity in the Smit Amandla tender case, and to prove his point, points out that even the Minister’s advisor, Mr Hindle, was not aware of these documents. What the shadow Minister fails to include is the fact that he ‘asked’ the Minister for this information in March. It is now August!

And of course, Mr Van Dalen’s dynamic blogger expert friend also released a statement regurgitating Mr Van Dalen’s assertions. Or is it the other way around? I wonder who is paranoid now. Mr Van Dalen has a tendency to try to connect events that have nothing to do with each other. Mr Van Dalen is the king of paranoia and misleading people about supposed interventions just to elevate his status and to gain space in newspapers. His desperation has once again led him to pass on this false and misleading information.

Mr Van Dalen needs to find a hobby and stop obsessing about the Minister, or, he simply start familiarising himself about investigations in general and quickly learn that there is a big difference between being a knowledgeable shadow Minister and just being a distraction. The Minister said initial findings have revealed that there is massive corruption in the Fisheries Department.

Is Mr Van Dalen concerned about corruption? And if so, why is he being a stumbling block to the Minister’s attempts to get to the root of irregular expenditure at the Fisheries Branch?