Mr Bantu Holomisa, MP
UDM President
The similarities between the Democratic Alliance’s (DA) political manipulation in Cape Town and in Nelson Mandela Bay confirm a pattern of deceit that makes a mockery of the DA’s claims to a better alternative for good governance.
In Cape Town, on Friday, DA Councillors, most probably unwittingly (or maybe mindfully) stood up against deceit conceived, calculated and commanded by their leadership. Perchance, the DA councillors had even learned from the connivance of their leaders when the deputy mayor of the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality (NMBMM) was removed in 2017.
Councillors, and that includes executive mayors, cannot be removed but by council after exhaustive investigative and prescribed disciplinary procedures.
In the NMBMM, the DA conspired to remove the United Democratic Movement’s (UDM) Deputy Executive Mayor Mongameli Bobani, by relying on a draft third party report devoid of any and all Council involvement. They went ahead to eliminate the office of deputy mayor completely, in order to silence any possible voice against DA baasskap, which cannot survive under any form of criticism or review.
The DA deceived councillors into believing that Cllr Bobani was crooked by referring to this “draft report” which the it never shared with anyone outside of its conspiring cabal, because the report did not comply with the International Standards on Auditing and no opinions in the report had been expressed based on these standards.
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), who was forced to provide some report in time for the DA’s total onslaught against all political propriety in the very city that bears the name of the father of our democracy, called the report “for the exclusive use” of the recipient(s), and declared in writing, that it “will not accept any responsibility to any other party to whom our report may be shown or into whose hands it may come”.
Cape Town Executive Mayor Patricia de Lille on Friday refused to resign on grounds that she had already informed legal firm Bowman Gilfillan that their report into her alleged wrongdoing contained “factual inaccuracies” reported to them yet ignored, which led to inappropriate conclusions and recommendations. Council had similarly been informed. Mayor de Lille added that she had not been charged and, obviously, not been found guilty of any wrongdoing.
“It’s not a matter of being pushed, it’s a matter of asking to be treated fairly, to be afforded a fair opportunity in terms of natural justice to state my side of the case, to be afforded an open and transparent opportunity for an independent body to come to a conclusion where I am found guilty of anything and then at that stage I will consider what my options are,” Mayor de Lille said.
Council had, on Friday, resolved to investigate Mayor de Lille for misconduct.
Perhaps the NMBMM council should also have resolved to rather investigate its deputy mayor, UDM Councillor Bobani, and not simply have said “ja baas” to the DA political bully and Nelson Mandela Bay Executive Mayor Athol Trollip’s contrived removal of his deputy, and subsequent elimination of the deputy office.
At least the Cape Town DA councillors had the benefit of having learned from the manipulated NMBMM DA councillors.
The Cape Town DA councillors refused the impugnable instructions of DA Federal Leader Mmusi Maimane, who desperately tried to keep the removal of Mayor de Lille out of Council’s domain. Chief Whip Shaun August even admitted to the African National Congress opposition in Council that his instructions, by Maimane and DA Federal Executive Chairperson James Selfe, to severely limit debate in the De Lille matter were ill-advised and he granted the opposition its rightful time allocation to address Council. The DA Councillors eventually voted for a Council probe in commendable disregard of the irregular, if not illegal pressure by Maimane and Selfe.
By the way, and this is of extreme importance and conclusively indicative of DA connivance, the final PwC Report has since been delivered to the Nelson Mandela Bay Executive Mayor and the report is silent on the accusations Trollip conjured against his deputy; against a councillor of his coalition government. And, the DA had, to date, not apologised for its false accusations and its deplorable self-serving deceit, nor corrected the noisome results of its obvious conspiracy.
Trust to the DA for “good governance” at your peril, South Africa!
Not only have you been warned; you have witnessed baasskap politics, apartheid dressed in a cheap tuxedo, first hand in Nelson Mandela Bay and in Cape Town.
Issued by:
Mr Bantu Holomisa, MP and UDM President
