ANC candidates in graft case

WESTERN CAPE ANC candidates charged with tender corruption and fraud after a Hawks investigation will remain on the election list, says the party’s provincial leadership.

On Friday, Beaufort West mayor Quinton Louw, municipal official Norwood Kotze, Central Karoo district municipality speaker Mkhululi Hangana and the Karoo Democratic Force’s (KDF’s) Noel Constable were arrested and charged with fraud and corruption.

The group appeared in the Beaufort West Magistrate’s Court on Friday after handing themselves over to police. Their case is linked to an investigation by the Hawks into an allegedly illegal and irregularly awarded contract worth more than R620 000 back in 2019 relating to the upgrading of roads.

The province has been forced to intervene and implement a financial recovery plan after financially strapped Beaufort West was on the brink of administration. Hangana was accused of receiving more than R50 000 in kickbacks from the irregular contract and Louw allegedly received R8 000.

This comes just weeks before the local government elections where both Hangana and Louw feature prominently on the ANC’s candidates lists for the region.

ANC interim leader Lerumo Kalako said while the party’s step-aside policy could apply, in this instance it would not impact their standing as candidates.

ANC central Karoo regional secretary Windy Plaatjies said the party would meet tomorrow to get a briefing on the matter before making statements.

“We note the arrests. We are trying to get full information from the affected parties trying to process the full information through structures,” he said.

Political analyst Professor Zweli Ndevu said the application of the setaside policy was problematic.

“What has happened with this policy is that people who have been asked to step aside have not actually vacated those positions either within the party or in public office. They have simply taken a leave of absence,” he said.

The State alleged that the group colluded with the director of a company that was awarded a contract to upgrade roads on a project that had already been completed by another company.

The company involved, which name is known to Weekend Argus, and its director are listed as co-accused in the matter but are yet to appear in court.

According to the State’s case, Hangana was instrumental in bringing the director of the company to Beaufort West and went as far as registering an address in the town for the company in order for it to qualify for the bid.

Hangana allegedly benefited by R55 700 between May 2019 and February 2020 from his part in getting the company appointed.

Kotze allegedly facilitated the submission of invoices for work already completed by a different company.

The State in its case highlighted how Kotze’s appointment to the municipality was irregular, beginning with his first job as director of civil services and engineering in 2017, which was not endorsed by the minister of local government. A year later Kotze was hired as manager for civic roads and stormwater on a director’s salary, resulting in irregular expenditure of more than R30 000.

Council set his salary at a director’s level of R69 227 a month instead of R49 090 as a manager. But it was later reduced to R63 724 after other staff complained.

Louw, who was the deputy mayor at the time, is alleged to have misused his authority by interfering with supply chain management processes and colluded with the three other accused to get the specific company appointed.

It is alleged that there were 227 phone calls between himself and the director of the company before the tender had even been advertised.

It is also the State’s case that he called a meeting in December 2019 to inform the director in charge of that department to pay the company, knowing the invoices submitted were irregular.

Constable, who was mayor and later became speaker, is alleged to have had a corrupt relationship with the director of the company.

The State alleges R5 000 was paid to his political party’s (the KDF’s) account as well as a donation made to his child’s school in the area.

Constable told Weekend Argus he was cooperating with the investigator as he has nothing to hide and believed the case was politically motivated.

“I was aware of the investigation. I was contacted by the investigator last year between March or May,” he said.

“I am very suspicious of the timing. I know this is a political game. The DA does not have a campaign and a message to give to the residents of the Central Karoo. They will use this to boost their agenda. But for them it is too little, too late.

“Also this happened two weeks after we instructed the municipal manager through a council decision to lay charges against the DA Central Karoo district municipality mayoral candidate, Derick Welgemoed.

“I look forward to whenever I will be called to stand trial. But this will not affect my position in my party.”

THE Cape Town metro is among at least 12 hotly contested municipalities in the Western Cape as political parties have drawn battle lines.

With six weeks to go before voters head to the polls for the local government elections, political parties are trying to garner support from the electorate to either secure their hold or take over municipalities.

This week DA leader John Steenhuisen was on the campaign trail with the party’s mayoral candidate for the City of Cape Town Geordin Hill-Lewis as well as the party’s Gesie van Deventer in the party’s other crown jewel, Stellenbosch municipality.

The ANC’s deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte also spent two days in the metro criss-crossing Mitchells Plain, Khayelitsha and the Bo-Kaap in a bid to encourage supporters to vote and smooth things over with councillors still aggrieved by the party’s candidate-list process.

The Good Party’s Patricia de Lille has been busy putting up posters in Cape Town while the Patriotic Alliance deployed self-proclaimed “Sushi King” Kenny Kunene to woo residents of Mfuleni.

In the Western Cape parties are hoping to swing the vote in their favour where the outright majority vote in targeted councils has been flimsy.

Some municipalities have changed control multiple times since the last local government elections in 2016. These municipalities include Bitou in Plettenberg, Beaufort West, Laingsburg and Prince Albert in the Karoo. Oudtshoorn, Kannaland and Knysna in the Garden Route.

And then Cederberg and Matzikama on the West Coast.

On Friday the DA lost control of the Oudtshoorn municipality after the party’s 12 councillors abstained from a council meeting which left 13 opposition councillors to vote in the Independent Civic Organisation of South Africa’s Vlancio Donson as mayor and fellow party member Barbara Owen as speaker.

The ANC’s interim leader Lerumo Kalako said the party was working toward retaining the nine municipalities it currently controls as well as move in on DA territory.

“We are targeting municipalities like George, Oudtshoorn, Hessequa and Witzenberg where the DA’s control is flimsy,” he said.

“It is important that we take

municipalities with an outright majority because we have learnt some hard lessons from past coalitions where it became apparent that an individual from one party would demand things out of self-interest that don’t necessarily follow the prescripts of the law.

“People have demanded people be hired only to find that those people don’t even have the necessary skills or qualifications.”

Good Party’s Brett Herron said they would be targeting all councils as instability exists in every municipality.

“The whole province is destabilised, be it DA or ANC-run municipalities, where those in power are consumed by it and voters can feel that they are not a priority,” he said.

“We are seeing a lot of fluidity in voter patterns and there are a lot of opportunities for Good (party) to make inroads.

“We have seen in past by-elections how we managed to take a DA ward in George last year and in other outcomes we have come in second to either the DA or ANC in different wards, so that signals change. We are in it to win it.”

The EFF’s Melikhaya Xego said their focus is targeting smaller municipalities and ensuring the DA loses its outright majority in the metro.

“We are targeting a number of municipalities, Bitou for instance has changed hands between the DA and ANC and the EFF has grown its support in the area so much so that we could be the new kingmakers in the space given the state of the AUF,” he said.

“In Knysna we lost a seat by just one vote in 2016 and we have since grown. And in Matzikama we were instrumental in removing the DA only for the ANC to spit us out after they gained power through a by-election

“There are at least four other municipalities we are targeting but our key focus is the Metro where we want to have it hung, once the DA loses its outright majority we will have done our job.

Steenhuisen said they were looking to make a clean sweep in the province to eliminate unstable coalitions that has lost the party key councils.

“Unfortunately in the last elections a lot of the smaller parties were given votes and it led to this instability where you have had to put forward a lot of unstable coalitions and it affects delivery,” he said.

“The message is that if you want your town to be stable, working for you and providing services, you have to give the DA a majority and not waste votes on smaller parties.

“We are open to coalitions but we can’t go into government with parties that don’t share our core values, it’s been difficult to work with a party like the EFF. We have learnt some tough lessons in Joburg and it led us down some rabbit holes.”

Political analyst Zweli Ndevu said both the DA and ANC would face challenges in garnering support.

“I think due to unhappiness with candidate nominations the ANC will find it difficult to convince its members to support a candidate imposed on them from top down,” he said.