The ghost of the aborted TribeOne Dinokeng musical festival is back to haunt city mayor Kosientso Ramokgopa.
The aborted festival, costing the city R25 million, was used as one of the examples of misuse of public funds in the revolt within the ANC ranks, where the regional structures of Cosatu, the ANC Youth League, the Young Communist Youth League, the Tshwane business forum and Tshwane Train sector and others, are crying foul play and demanding that the mayor should be ousted.
The issues at stake involves the city council not accounting to the public, corruption within local government, and incompetency of the city’s legal department.
To this end the Democratic Alliance was quick to respond. Marietha Aucamp, Chief Whip of the DA remarked on the revolt by saying that it is an old reoccurring incidence in the Tshwane administration.
“This however, should be seen in the light of the upcoming Regional Elective Conference and is indicative in a serious and deep routed split in the Gauteng North ranks of the ANC. In terms of the ANC’s own national democratic revolution cadre deployment policy, whether they are experienced or qualified to do the job or not, holds very little if any importance,” she said and added that the recent implosion of service delivery is a very good indication of the seriousness of party political interests which receive attention instead of that of the city’s residents.
‘’Mayor Ramakgopa has been elected because of political patronage and it is evident that he did not distribute his patronage back to structures of the ANC in the city and therefore they would like him replaced with someone who will,’’ she said.
Lex Middelberg, being responsible for introducing litigation against the City in the ward committee issue, wherein the city lost its case and was found guilty of operating it illegally, said that the DA is heartened to see that there are elements within the ANC who are taking note of the opposition’s grudge about mayor Ramokgopa’s management style.
‘’We also say that he has an authoritative bent and that he does not, as the constitution requires, conduct an open administration. This is evident in the fact of the recent removal of all contents of mayoral committee reports to council, so that councillors have no longer insight of what takes place in mayoral committee meetings. It is, however, our constitutional mandate to oversee and hold the mayor accountable, if need be. We are heartened to see that there are other factions also seeing that there is something drastically wrong in our democracy.’’
Referring to the revolt fingering the TribeOneDinokeng musical festival as proof of misuse of public money being misspent, Middelberg said: ”Again this is something which originated a long way back where we have made numerous reports regarding this to the auditor general. We have shown conclusively that capital projects such as this appear on our budget with a note that it has been approved by council when this is not the case,’’ he said.
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Also read: Dinokeng concert cancelled
