South Africa’s speaker of the national assembly, Baleka Mbete, on Tuesday admitted that a certain “device” had been used as part of security measures for the-state-of-nation address last week. However, she said it was never the government’s plan to jam reporters’ cellphones.

“It is an item we received as a report along with many other reports, without necessarily knowing the detail, in particular [the] effects, because it was an item dealing with what measures had to be taken for the protection, in particular, of the head of state and the deputy president,” Sapa quoted Mbete as having told journalists in Parliament.

“I repeat, the media was not a target, was not mentioned, was never on anybody’s mind. Of course what happened, happened,” she said adding the device belonged to a state department, which she refused to identify.

Parliament had received a report about the incident. However, she said she would leave that to the responsible department to pass on more details over to the media. “We believe that the media will still be addressed [by the department] and they will be able to probe the detail of that report that will come from the owners of the device,” Sapa qouted Mbete as saying.

Media attending the State of the Nation address (SONA) at Parliament in Cape Town on 12 February 2015 reported that cellular phone signals (including mobile data) in the National Assembly have been jammed. In 2012 the

Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) stated unequivocally that signal jamming was illegal. “No organisation is allowed to jam cellular signals, and any device which is used to jam signals is illegal,” Icasa spokesman Paseka Maleka said at the time.