Johannesburg — THE fired director-general of the Department of Communications, Mamodupi Mohlala, is not taking her dismissal lying down and said last night she intended taking the matter to court.

Ms Mohlala's decision dashes any hopes that her dismissal would spell the end of the public dispute between her and Communications Minister Siphiwe Nyanda.

The department terminated Ms Mohlala's contract on Friday, saying that trust between her and Gen Nyanda had broken down.

The department has failed to end the acrimony as Ms Mohlala has rejected a R1,6m payout offer, equal to a year's salary.

Tiyani Rikhotso, the department's spokesman, said on Friday: "In the process of trying to find solutions to the challenges, it subsequently became apparent that trust between the minister and the director-general has broken down irretrievably."

Mr Rikhotso emphasised yesterday that Ms Mohlala had been fired with effect from Friday.

"She is not the director-general any more," he said.

Ms Mohlala said last night she would not accept the R1,6m payout and would challenge her dismissal in court. "There is no settlement. They dismissed me. And I will be challenging the dismissal. If you make an offer and the other party does not accept it and the other party decides to fire them, there are two things that can happen - either they challenge it or leave it as it is. I have decided to challenge it," she said.

Ms Mohlala denied that she was frogmarched out of the department's offices after her dismissal. "That is not true. The letter was served to me after I had left the department (on Friday). There was no escorting at all. That is not factually correct," she said.

Mr Rikhotso repeated that Ms Mohlala had been "released" from her contract and said there was no indication that she had rejected the offered payout.

"There has been no correspondence that she does not accept it," he said.

Mr Rikhotso also played down the dispute between Gen Nyanda and Ms Mohlala. "This was an internal issue. Not a saga. This could have been resolved internally," he said. But last week, Ms Mohlala threatened to interdict Gen Nyanda if he failed to provide details of a series of events he claimed had led to the breakdown of trust between the two.

A recent meeting between Gen Nyanda, Ms Mohlala and Deputy Communications Minister Dina Pule failed to resolve the impasse. Their lawyers have also been in talks in the hope of finding a solution.

Ms Mohlala, an attorney, was the pension fund adjudicator before she joined the department last August.

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