The DA has an almost Teflon reputation for clean governance. It doesn’t hurt that they are measured against the ANC, one of the most corrupt and incompetent governments in the world.

But the DA have not been able to keep their noses clean, and have been dealing with serious accusations of graft in several municipalities, from mayor Conrad Poole in Drakenstein to the alleged co-option of Malusi Booi in the City department of Human Settlements by the 28s gang.

Accusations that the DA knew about these corrupt relationships at a senior level have been difficult to substantiate, due to the extremely tight ship run by the DA, and their incredibly deep pockets for litigation purposes.

Mike Hampton of Knysna in particular felt the blunt end of this weapon when he pointed to an abuse of the Municipal Systems Act to fund the debt of a private company (Knysna Tourism Board) run by DA associates. Having no money to defend himself, he faced not only a crushing defeat in the courts, which gagged the publication of his disorganised, but adequately sourced book, but also wild and unfounded accusations spread on Facebook by local DA operatives, up to and including the rape and murder of children, in order to silence and discredit him.

But in the Garden Route District, the public may finally see a glimpse behind the mask.

For twelve years the DA has, at the highest level, neglected to punish or adequately investigate their senior representatives in the area for charges ranging from domestic abuse to misappropriation of public funds, bleeding the coffers of the Garden Route municipalities to the tune of tens of millions of Rands.

All of this could have been prevented by taking action early, but in protecting their members from consequences early on, these early decisions made is harder for the DA to admit fault, and dug a deeper hole than they could climb out of.

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A stitch in time saves nine

When the DA took over Bitou municipality (Plettenberg Bay) from the ANC in 2011, it was in a dire condition, and the DA struggled with a slim and unstable coalition with COPE. A brief excerpt from an account of the handover gives a rather predictable picture:

“the airport was neglected to the point where it no longer has scheduled flights or even refuelling facilities; where the last ANC mayor, Lulama Mvimbi, took delivery of the most expensive mayoral vehicle in the country shortly after the economy had slipped into recession; where charges of tender fraud erupt every few months; where a thuggish VIP Protection squad have effectively been the local ANC's private army and the new DA mayor, Memory Booysen, has been forced to wear a flak vest for fear of his life; where a previous ANC mayor, Euan Wildeman and his municipal manager, George Seitisho, escaped conviction for fraud and theft only because the National Prosecuting Authority refused to prosecute a prima facie case; where council meetings are regularly disrupted; and where the ANC-appointed Municipal Manager had to be suspended after attempting to prevent the new council meeting after the 2011 municipal elections (as well as other misconduct). It is also the town that built a R20m desalination plant in order to survive the 2009/10 drought but sited it so badly that dropping water quality, at the point of abstraction, rendered it ineffective.”

When the DA started out in Plet, there was every indication that they had good intentions. But matters soon developed which made accountability difficult to uphold, and old practices crept up on them. Today, the DA’s administration has come to seem much like what they found when they first showed up, though admittedly with less serious neglect of public infrastructure.

The Bitou Municipality, currently managing 213 cases totalling R37.7 million in its Municipal Public Accounts Committee (MPAC), is entangled in a conflict with the Plettenberg Ratepayers’ Association. The association has accused the council of irregular expenditure and took the matter to the Western Cape High Court, seeking a declaratory order to prevent Mayor Peter Lobese from leasing a new vehicle exceeding R700,000.

In addition to challenging the mayor's vehicle lease, the association raised concerns about the municipality's expenditure of R2.1 million in legal services from six Eastern Cape-based firms. Millions have been sunk into housing projects facing criminal investigation, while municipal managers are in court of a variety of charges, and hundreds of millions are unaccounted for in recent budgets.

The turmoil extends to Knysna Municipality, where the Chairperson of the MPAC, Ian Uys, resigned just two months into his role in September. Uys cited corruption and non-compliance from fellow council members as reasons for his resignation, shedding light on governance challenges in the region.

In the first year of the DA’s governance of the municipality, the DA chose public appearances and showy service delivery over cleaning up the civil service, and as a result set themselves on a long path to decline.

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Shooting the messenger

Last week, I received a handful of primary documents relating to the maladministration of Bitou over the past decade. The trove of documents begins with a 2011 email from DA Bitou municipal council speaker Johann Brummer alerting Helen Zille to the issue of Booysen’s physical abuse of his wife, which is a matter of public record.

He had already alerted Spaeker Charles Dreyer and Constituency Leader Donald Grant to no avail. Zille and the rest of the party chose not to respond to the situation, and kept the issue under wraps. Booysen was a leader of marches against GBV for the party in Bitou municipality, and as such, had become a reputational asset for the local DA.

By the time this story hit the local news, five years had elapsed, and his partner chose to withdraw the case. But in the mean time there were additional accusations of trading sex for jobs, which Booysen also managed to avoid disciplinary action for.

Subsequently, other issues more relevant to public administration became an issue, and Brummer’s insistence on addressing them quickly became intolerable to the party.

On the 2nd of August 2012, Brummer alerted MEC Anton Bredell of the fact that Booysen had intervened to quash an investigation into his municipal manager Monde Stratu over undue benefits. According to an inside source, both Zille and Simmers were intimately aware of the details of the case from the beginning.

Back in 2012, Mayor Memory Booysen confidently stated to council that because of his contacts in the Treasury, he was untouchable. On 14 May 2012 the Acting CFO reported irregular expenditure on the part of a senior manager, Monde Stratu. When disciplinary recommendations were submitted to council, the Mayor informed council that his recommendation was that the decision be rescinded and that all charges against Stratu be withdrawn.

He motivated the recommendation by saying that he had spoken to “someone in National Treasury” and that this person had told him that “none of the charges will stick.”

But according to the documents leaked to the Cape Independent, there are no visible fingerprints of National Government, only of the DA, in the defence of Memory Booysen’s malfeasance. This mention of national government protection raises questions which the available information cannot answer.

Despite being made aware of this issue over 10 years ago, Bredell only communicated an intention to investigate on the 17th of March 2023, with a polite request for information around the gratuities.

This followed pressure from the Garden Route Corruption Busters for a payment of over R1 million, and an alleged total of R3.8 million, given to Garden Route District municipal manager Monde Stratu between April of 2017 and 2022.

The Garden Route District Municipality (GRDM) dismisses the allegations as malicious and lacking substance after examining them.

In response to this and other attempts to hold his colleagues to account for criminal and corrupt activity, Brummer’s membership of the DA was terminated by illegitimate means, by alleging an unsubstantiated failure to pay membership fees. After seven years in the courts, Brummer was vindicated, after the DA spent over R3 million to destroy Brummer’s career and public standing.

In his original affidavit, Brummer explained that he had discovered that, while he did indeed owe money to the DA, it was much smaller than the amount they claimed. When he did try to pay the money, the DA rejected his payment, and insisted on terminating his membership anyway. Then they refused to return the payment they had rejected.

Despite this animosity, and the accusations of corruption against Booysen and the local administration, Theuns Botha tried to delay Brummer’s resignation from his position as speaker. Booysen offered Brummer a position in the Mayoral Committee after Brummer announced his intention to resign in the December of 2011. The ANC councillors celebrated his resignation and voiced enthusiastic support for his replacement Charles Dreyer.

After being removed from the party, Brummer set himself up as an independent candidate. He summarised the situation thus:

“The real reasons for my summary dismissal from the DA relate to irregularities within the DA structures in Plettenberg Bay and the Bitou Council on which I blew the whistle. I refused to turn a blind eye to them and refused to be part of the cover-up of actions which will potentially cost the people of Plett millions.”

In 2011, the power struggle from the local ANC perspective was that the DA wanted to concentrate power in the hands of the elected executive rather than civil service appointees. Brummer made it his mission to route out ANC cadre networks from the Bitou administration.

From this perspective, the clash between Brummer and his party appears to be on two levels – function and appearance. His focus on corruption in the local civil service they inherited from the ANC appears to have been disruptive to the new DA council’s ability to conduct business, and his subsequent whistleblowing put the spotlight on the DA council, likely causing concern in the party that the corruption would be blamed on them rather than the ANC.

What emerges from this dive into the past is that the DA had a golden opportunity to clean house, but instead chose to focus on service delivery first, which naturally requires the cooperation of the civil service. Civil servants cannot be relied on to do their job if they are in an adversarial relationship with elected officials.

The choice by the party executive to protect Booysen from the consequences of his alleged domestic abuse appears to have entangled them in a way that hampered their capacity to discipline Booysen and his partners in municipal management going forward.

Now, 13 years later, the corruption has become so extensive that covering is no longer possible. But having dug a hole so deep, several senior DA members are now implicated – Helen Zille, Anton Bredell and Tertius Simmers, all working now at the highest levels of the party hierarchy.

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Three stooges

Several names, including Monde Stratu, Sitembele Vatala, and Mbelelo Memani, have been bounced around Western Cape municipalities the last few years, holding onto lucrative civil service careers despite malfeasance due to the close bonds they have with the DA.

Monde Stratu, the man whose irregular gratuities triggered this drama, appears to be a perennial weed in the Garden Route. In 2008, Stratu moved from Molteno in the Eastern Cape to Plettenberg Bay, assuming the role of Director of Community Services at Bitou Municipality, a position he held until 2017, establishing the Community Services Department from scratch.

Additionally, he served as the Acting Municipal Manager at Bitou for a quarter before ascending to the position of Municipal Manager for GRDM in 2017. Concurrently, he was elected as the President of the Institute for Local Government Management (ILGM) in South Africa in the same year. This organization, dedicated to Section 56 and 57 municipal managers, provides a platform for networking and knowledge-sharing opportunities.

In a controversial move on May 28, 2020, the Knysna Council (with unanimous DA and ANC support) reportedly unlawfully wrote off irregular expenditure amounting to R93 million. Among the written-off funds was R41 million associated with prepaid water meters which were not approved by council.

The water meters were found in 2020, dumped at an open air facility. Municipal manager Dr Sitembele Vatala initiated disciplinary hearings against CFO Mbulelo Memani, and was promptly fired. But public pressure and attention from the national government forced the DA to become involved, and Anton Bredell initiated proceedings against Memani the following month.

Although the council resolved on June 11, 2020, to appoint a forensic investigator, no such appointment has materialized, and Memani resigned, jumping ship to avoid disciplinary action. His next post was in Clanwilliam, where his alleged corruption stimulated a local protest, after which he was rescued by his former colleagues who gave him a post in Bitou, where he had worked between 2012 and 2016.

Concerns were raised by the National Council of Provinces during a visit to Bitou in 2016, during which allegations of municipal managers selling municipal housing list spots were brought up. Mayor Memory Booysen claimed they were opening a criminal case, but nothing came of this until 2021.

Worse, in 2018, Bitou municipality managed to spend R10 million on a housing project budgeted for 69 units out of national emergency grant of R3.9 million.

This was for temporary housing units for fire victims in KwaNobuhle, Qolweni, and Kurland Village. Construction company Nzuzo Yalo was contracted for the project at a cost of R3.4 million, but only 44 structures have been completed, leaving 25 outstanding, and three containers storing emergency housing material were found empty.

The investigation into this wasteful expenditure was headed by Municipal Manager Mbulelo Memani, who found nothing of consequence.

In 2021, another building contractor, Ukhana Project, cancelled a construction project for 169 houses in Qolweni, just outside Plettenberg Bay, alleging that they were asked to conduct business in a corrupt way by the municipal administration. The administration took them to court, but in their affidavit, Ukhana presented communications demonstrating the Anton Bredell and Tertius Simmers were aware of the corruption and were refusing to look into it.

Tertius Simmers’ public statements in 2021 at the groundbreaking of the housing project in Qolweni, stating that he had “regular and transparent engagements with all stakeholders”, and that his department were aware of the criminal charges against the municipal management, imply an intimate awareness of the corruption occurring in Bitou, despite which he urged all DA cadres to make sure there were no more delays in the project.

Vatala now faces charges with Monde Stratu for charges of fraud and corruption, forgery, and uttering (intentionally passing off a forged document) involving property valued at approximately R60 million, following charges laid by Knysna Councillor Susan Campbell, representing the Knysna Independent Movement (Kim) in 2020 as chair of the local ratepayers’ association.

In 2021, Dawie Adonis, Acting Knysna Municipal Manager at the time, also laid criminal charges in connection with the case.

In a special council meeting held on the 14^th of March 2023, it was decided that Monde Stratu would remain in office, and the council will bear his legal costs during the ongoing court case. Inquiries seeking further clarification on Stratu's current status during the court proceedings have been directed to the Garden Route District Municipality.

Zinzi Hani, spokesperson for the Hawks, said that between April and December 2019, the accused individuals failed to declare seven municipal contingency assets to the Auditor General, previously included in the 2012 and 2017 financial year audit reports of Knysna Local Municipality.

These properties, valued at R64 million, were intended to be transferred from Knysna Local Municipality to the Garden Route District Municipality, but the transfer did not materialize, leading to potential losses for Knysna Local Municipality.

Furthermore, it is alleged that they falsified the 2018/2019 audit report. Vatala and Stratu are scheduled to appear in the Regional court on May 12 as the investigation progresses. The unfolding legal proceedings raise questions about financial transparency and accountability in municipal governance.

Vatala left the Garden Route in 2019, after which he ended up at the Central Karoo Municipality, where he was again implicated in corruption allegations, in just the first year of his new position.

Stratu was threatened with suspension last year, apparently for having too close a relationship with the local ANC.

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“Cooperative governance”

Through all of this, the Bitou mayor (now Garden Route District Executive Mayor) has remained a curious constant feature. Booysen was originally an ANC councillor who left to join COPE before being recruited by the DA, just in time for the elections.

Booysen caused a minor stir when he responded in an unguarded way to a question in council from an ANC representative on the 26th of April 2022. Asked about gratuity payments to municipal manager Monde Stratu, Booysen said, “I am not comfortable dealing with that matter, since it’s been part of the investigation […] because I do not want to incriminate myself.”

The gratuity payments were unanimously approved by council, by both ANC and DA cadres alike. It is telling that, when Brummer was removed from his post as speaker back in 2011, both sides celebrated a return to “cooperative governance”.

The DA’s grip on the district municipality has been weak in the recent past. In 2018, Knysna's DA mayor, Eleanore Bouw-Spies, was ousted in a vote of no confidence, labeled a "coup" by the party's Western Cape leader, as DA members colluding with the ANC. The motion by ANC councillors accused Bouw-Spies of failing in her duties, and had DA's Mark Willemse voted in as new executive mayor.

But through it all, the three stooges remained intermittent features of local governance. The matter regarding their gratuities has been investigated by MEC Anton Bredell, but has been kept secret until now.

The financial misbehaviour by Booysen and Stratu has been a matter known to the party since at least 2012, when a communication from Brummer was sent to Bredell detailing the investigation by the Acting CFO at the time on 14 May 2012, reporting details of irregular expenditure.

The GRDM mayor, Memory Booysen, states that the council's decision exonerated Stratu and others mentioned in the allegations, considering the matter closed.

But the Garden Route Corruption Busters argue that payments exceeding limits constitute irregular expenditure, and pointed out that the remuneration exceeds the salary drawn by the president himself.

Hawks’ spokesperson Zinzi Hani stated, "As a result of this fraud, Knysna’s municipality had suffered potential loss," adding that the accused also allegedly falsified the 2018/2019 audit report.

Garden Route District Municipality Executive Mayor Memory Booysen expressed disappointment in how the matter is handled by law enforcement agencies, stating it contradicts the positive discussions between the municipalities. Booysen accused the prosecution of being malicious and claimed procedural flaws in an attempt to tarnish the reputation of the institutions and further embarrass Stratu.

Booysen revealed that positive discussions were ongoing between the two municipalities, emphasizing that Knysna Municipal Manager Phineas Sebola had not received any legal documents related to the case against the Garden Route district’s municipal manager.

Booysen and Knysna's executive mayor, Aubrey Tsengwa, deemed the actions as malicious prosecution with significant procedural flaws aimed at harming the reputation of the institutions and causing embarrassment to Stratu.

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At last, some tentative actions

In 2023, Booysen was investigated by the DA Federal Legal Commission (FLC), and official documentation insists in opening paragraphs that there was no disciplinary aspect to the proceedings. Booysen inquired about 20 allegations hanging over him that he wished to see cleared, and the FLC insisted that they were not relevant, keeping the meeting focused on “fact finding” concerning the property dispute between the local (Knysna) and district level (Garden Route) municipalities.

These were listed as contingent assets in Knysna, but as contingent liabilities by the District Municipality. These declarations were apparently dropped from both the annual Knysna and the District Municipalities reports.

In 2020 the Knysna Ratepayers Association filed financial misconduct charges against former MM Vatala and former CFO Memani for omitting these Assets from the Knysna Municipality annual reports as well as in connection with the housing and water meter tenders.

Both Booysen and ANC Mayor Tsengwe of the “coup” government had agreed not to file charges. But when the Hawks charged Stratu and Vatala with corruption and they were summoned to appear in court, the District Council resolved to provide legal representation to Stratu on a no-loss-no-fee basis.

The council also agreed a statement that the court case had no basis, and that there was no reason to believe that any wrongdoing occurred.

The DA FLC concluded that Booysen must offer a public apology for “preempting the outcome of a legitimate court process, […] making the unsubstantiated claim that the prosecution by the Hawks and the NPA was malicious and procedurally flawed, [and] commit himself to allowing the law to take its course”

With the corruption charges finally coming to light in open court, DA caucus chairman Hilton Stroebel finally sent a letter of recommendation to Helen Zille in August 2023, requesting leave to issue a motion of no confidence against Booysen for “damaging the brand” of the DA.

This reflects the pattern seen elsewhere, as in the case of Malusi Booi, whose alleged corrupt relationship with the 28 gang was brought to the authorities’ attention by Cape Coloured Congress president Fadiel Adams in 2019, but was only acted on when the police raided his office four years later.

Despite the beginnings of disciplinary action in August, Booysen sent the Ministry of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs in South Africa an application to waive the limits on total remuneration for Monde Stratu. The Minister, Ms Thembisile Nkadimeng, granted the waiver approval, allowing remuneration at two notches above the current salary notch of the highest-paid divisional manager/ third-level manager within the municipality of a category 5 municipality.

The failure to discipline or remove Stratu resulted in further costly contracts, such as a R278 million loan was approved for a new landfill site, and a luxury development on a conservation area.

Disciplinary action was initiated through a joint effort, again initiated by local activists, this time the Wilderness & Lakes Environmental Action Forum. SANParks also got involved, issuing statements that the development was inappropriate and threatened the local ecosystem.

The only company to bid for development was a joint venture with no assets or known business known between the two subsidiaries.

The Executive Mayor Booysen was made aware of the maladministration involved in the luxury resort deal, and subsequently prevented discussion in council. As a consequence he was asked, along with his deputy Gert van Niekerk, to recuse themselves.

They did not, and disciplinary action has been slow to materialise.

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Too late

What is remarkable about this entire saga, and all of the millions of Rands missing, all of the bending and breaking of regulations and procedures, is that at no point did the municipality get a bad audit.

Somehow despite the several instances of clear malfeasance, there has been nothing to punish elected officials.

As for the DA Executive Commmittee, their awareness of this ongoing and systemic corruption raises several questions about the decline of their governing quality over the past several years.

While many of us take issue with the ANC, whose governance record is as abysmal as it is possible to be, most generally expect the DA to represent a higher standard.

Instead, they have settled for being simply better than the ANC.

This is not only not good enough, but as Bitou and the rest of the Garden Route shows, this low standard will keep being revised downward as the ANC themselves become more cynical and sclerotic.

If the DA do not find a way to reform themselves internally, and at the highest level, they are likely to drag the Western Cape down with the resto f the country, only with a 10-15 year delay.

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