The spokesperson for South Africa’s Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba has said that “state security agents” hacked his phone and tried to blackmail him over the sexually explicit material that they found.
“Several started demanding from around April an amount of 10m rand ($690,000, £540,000) in cash.
“When it became clear that he was really not interested in entertaining these blackmail demands the call now began to demand that he intervenes in various state entities,” Vuyo Mkhize is quoted by the public broadcaster SABC as saying.
A tape with sexually explicit material from Mr Gigaba’s phone was leaked over the weekend.
The home affairs minister responded by saying that the video was meant for him and his wife only.
He also issued an apology for the embarrassment that it caused.
But the minister has said this was a privacy issue.
A position that was backed up by the country’s former anti-corruption tsar Thuli Madonsela who tweeted that “what [the minister’s] does in private without harming anyone or the dignity of his office is nobody’s business”.
Source : BBC
