DA Western Cape provincial leader Tertuis Simmers said Patriotic Alliance (PA) president Gayton McKenzie will soon learn that corruption does not pay off.
The DA said it welcomed the Western Cape High Court’s ruling today, that McKenzie must account for the funds he raised at an event in Sandton in his capacity as mayor of the Central Karoo District Municipality.
Simmers said McKenzie promised that these funds were earmarked for improving service delivery and improving the lives of residents, but he resigned as mayor soon afterwards, leaving residents in the lurch.
“This is why Beaufort West voters punished McKenzie at the polls last week, clearly showing him that his time is up. If the 2024 elections were a local election, the DA would have won an outright majority in Beaufort West, with a clear mandate to rescue the municipality. The DA demands that McKenzie and the PA abide by the high court ruling and urgently account for the monies in question,” Simmers said.
The PA said there was nothing sinister in this matter and the respondents, McKenzie most of all, have always been willing to share this information, provided that certain limited documents and private bank statements were redacted to protect the privacy of individuals who have no relation to the matter in question.
The party said an investigation was set up by the DA’s MEC of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Anton Bredell.
The PA said McKenzie was rightly concerned that Bredell and the DA were on a fishing expedition to find “dirt” on him and the party prior to the recent election, and the DA’s gleeful reaction to the court judgment proved that their eagerness to push this case was deeply politically motivated and was an effort to discredit the PA ahead of elections.
The PA’s head of legal, Eugene Botha, said they were relieved that this judgment was not delivered before elections, as it was not entirely accurate and factual, and the DA would have used it unjustly to campaign against the PA, so they were vindicated in having resisted what they called “abuse” by the DA of its administrative power in the Western Cape, and the legal system itself.
Botha said on that score, they failed, but they were now hoping to use this relatively inane court process to discredit the PA during this current sensitive period of coalition talks, in which they were doing everything in their power to enter into an agreement with the very same ANC that they have previously repeatedly accused the PA of moral bankruptcy for working with.
The party said the DA should be ashamed of themselves for trying to smear the work of a leader and a party who raised funding to eradicate bucket toilets and repair five pools in the Central Karoo, among other things. Not one of the many people who selflessly donated to the campaign has ever complained that they believe their money was misused, and the results have always been plain for all to see.
“The PA has noted the judgment delivered by Western Cape High Court today. Our legal team is perusing and studying the judgment. There is, however, clear factual inaccuracy of the actual court order in some sections of the media that McKenzie ‘has been forced to comply with a forensic investigation’. This is a stretch of the core issues involved in this matter.
“The judgment centres on an order instructing the third to sixth respondents to share certain limited documents and private bank statements, to be redacted, with MEC Bredell’s Section 106 investigation of the Central Karoo District Municipality into the question of whether there was any maladministration by the municipality with regard to the PA president’s completed projects to install toilets in private residences and fix the public pools in the Central Karoo District area,” Botha said.
He said the mischaracterisation of the core issue was clearly a desperate political attempt to taint McKenzie’s name at a time when coalitions were being negotiated.
“At this stage, we are concerned by some of the patent errors of fact in the judgment such as Honourable Judge Allie stating that the tickets to a gala dinner fund-raiser were R200 000 per ticket, which is clearly not correct.
“We will take legal advice and decide the correct way forward to ensure the protection of private individuals from this particular use and abuse of state power,” Botha said.
The Star