The former manager in the office of the mayor, Mr Errol Temanie was found not guilty on three counts during a disciplinary hearing last week.
Last year, Temanie was charged with inciting violence in the workplace, gross insubordination and misconduct. In July, he sent an email to everyone in the municipality stating that they should appeal their new positions if they felt hard done by.
This after Ventersdorp and Tlokwe municipalities merged and a new staff establishment had to be designed. According to the Municipal Systems Act, this is the sole responsibility of the municipal manager (MM).
‘Instead of placing employees, regardless of her personal affections towards them, the process was used to punish some and, at the same time, reward others. It was a fairly straightforward and simple matter of placing individuals into the empty boxes that were created on the staff organogram for the municipality,’ he said in the email.
According to him, some people were given positions at lower levels in the new staff establishment while others were promoted to more senior positions. In the communication, Temanie conceded that the task at hand was a mammoth one and that mistakes were bound to be made.
On the same day, he received the notice of intention to suspend, signed by the MM. After receiving it, he wrote another email in which he spoke out against the MM for filling the post of chief of staff within the mayor’s office, the equivalent of Temanie’s job as the manager in the office of the mayor.
‘I am here in this position until the appeal process has been finalised and yet the employer has already gone ahead and appointed an incumbent from 1 July 2017,’ he stated in the original email. It was for this reason that Temanie stated, as an objective fact, that the employer had ulterior motives for seeking to remove him from the workplace. In the ruling, the presiding officer found that the municipality had not produced enough credible evidence to prove that Temanie was guilty of the charges and he was, therefore, found not guilty on all of them.
Willie Maphosa, the municipal spokesperson, confirmed the reinstatement of Temanie. He could not provide details of the costs that the municipality incurred in this matter, however.