Ex Ward 22 councillor flees SA

ANDRE LOTTER, once the ANC’s councillor for Ward 22 of AbaQulusi Municipality, has fled to the French island of Reunion and applied for political asylum.

Once he had surrendered his seat in council, and after a protracted fight to get the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) to acknowledge and act on the huge case of electoral fraud in the Ward 22 by-election, Mr Lotter joined the National Freedom Party (NFP).

After the elections of May 2014, NFP President kaMagwaza-Msibi offered him a post as administrator and political advisor to her in her office as Deputy Minister of Science & Technology in Pretoria. Mr Lotter said that he “was honoured to serve her and our nation and accepted the offer”.

Then the NFP President fell ill, and it would appear that without her protection Mr Lotter was targeted.

In a long letter from Reunion, to the Vryheid Herald and the voters of AbaQulusi, Nquthu and Mthonjaneni, Mr Lotter writes:

“When I started pressing President Zuma for clarification of the matter [regarding the NFP President’s absence] three months after uVZ’s stroke, the ANC once more started persecuting me intensely in Pretoria.

“Shortly thereafter President Zuma had me removed illegally from my post in service of the NFP President at the Department of Science & Technology.

“The ANC then tracked me down and found my latest physical address in Pretoria.

“My wife started fearing once more that I would die a violent death like my friend, Nicholas Makhosonke Msibi, who had been gunned down in his home in Ulundi some time ago. His killer has still not been found.

“It is to avoid the same fate that we decided to leave South Africa. With the protection of the French government here on Reunion, our struggle for the national freedom of South Africa will continue.”

Mr Lotter made himself hugely unpopular with the ANC when as Ward Councillor for Ward 22, he resigned from the ANC thus forcing a by-election. He intended standing as an independent candidate, and as such discovered that electoral fraud on a massive scale was being perpetrated. So finely balanced was AbaQulusi’s council that the result of the Ward 22 by-election was likely to tip the scales.

The IEC disagreed. Lotter persisted and went to court, and on the eve of the by-election it was postponed. Twice. The IEC argued, Lotter went to the Supreme Court, then the Constitutional Court.

In the end, over 1,800 names were removed from the voters roll.

No one, not an individual nor a political party nor an IEC official has ever been charged with electoral fraud. Not one.

To read Mr Lotters full letter, go to www.vryheidherald.co.za