Johannesburg (Sapa) - Pan Africanist Congress president Dr Stanley Mogoba vowed on Thursday that his party would continue its campaign to expose corruption in government and that PAC MP Patricia de Lille would continue to lead this charge both within and outside of Parliament.

He was reacting to a report in the Business Day newspaper quoting unnamed sources claiming PAC members were gunning for De Lille, the party's Chief Whip, and wanted her removed from Parliament.

The members believed she was on "a personal glory-seeking mission" rather than serving the party. Mogoba said the timing of the report in itself was suspicious, coming at a time when De Lille was threatening to take President Thabo Mbeki to court if investigator Judge Willem Heath was excluded from the multi-agency probe into South Africa's R43-billion arms deal.

De Lille was the first politician to publicly allege corruption in the deal, implicating senior ANC members. She subsequently supplied the information to Heath."Of course she's not popular with the ANC," Mogoba said. De Lille has been a thorn in the ANC's side, naming some members as spies, and then winning a constitutional court case after the ANC through Parliament tried to suspend her as an MP. 

If anyone would benefit from De Lille leaving Parliament it would be the ANC and not the PAC, Mogoba said. He believed there were a few PAC members who were jealous of De Lille's high profile and who were being used by the ANC to put pressure on De Lille. "Clearly we have our suspicions about who is being used." The matter was being investigated, he said. "Quite obviously this cannot come from a clear-thinking member of the PAC." 

Mogoba said it was clear during the party's recent election campaign that De Lille had many PAC supporters countrywide. "I've never known a member of the party as popular among PAC members as Patricia de Lille. The experience of the party is that we are most blessed to have a member like De Lille." De Lille was one of the country's most outstanding champions of good government and anti-corruption. She would remain in Parliament despite the ANC's attempts to engineer otherwise, Mogoba said.

With acknowledgement to Sapa and Woza.